Fashion’s Responsible Supply Chain Hub (FReSCH): Investigating a just transition to a low-carbon circular fashion industry: FReSCH

Programme(s): H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility

Topic(s): MSCA-IF-2019 - Individual Fellowships

Call for proposal: H2020-MSCA-IF-2019

Funding Scheme: MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF

Grant agreement ID: 895711

Project description:

Just transition to a low environmental impact circular fashion industry

The fashion industry has come under fire for harming the environment, committing human rights violations and providing poor job conditions for workers. The EU-funded FReSCH project aims to move the industry towards environmentally sustainable practices, built on justice and fairness. The project will research the optimal strategies for a just, fair and inclusive transition to a low-carbon circular fashion industry, using a novel methodology. This will be among the first attempts to examine economic, environmental and social sustainability to understand the trade-offs, tensions and outcomes in the transition to a more viable model.

Objective:

The fashion industry is harming the environment and is also creating psychological and health impacts for workers due to poor working conditions and human rights abuses. Much of the focus of the fashion industry is on environmental sustainability with social sustainability largely ignored. There are trade-offs not only between business goals and sustainability but also between environmental and social sustainability practices. Ensuring environmental sustainability requires a parallel focus on justice and fairness. This action will contribute to the thematic European Commission priorities in terms of building a climate-neutral, fair and social Europe, and sustainable fashion value chains. It will research the optimal strategies for a just, fair and inclusive transition to a low-carbon circular fashion industry. This action is one of the first to investigate economic, environmental and social sustainability to understand the trade-offs, tensions and outcomes between these three in the transition to a low-carbon circular fashion industry. By using a novel methodology, simultaneous multi-level action research, this action will take a top-down and bottom-up perspective by examining a fashion supply chain in transition, H&M and its suppliers, in a country characterised by complex economic, environmental and social issues, Turkey. Action research in H&M will be instrumental in understanding the development of strategies and resources to cascade environmental and social sustainability practices throughout its supply chains. While, action research with suppliers, ‘Worker Circles’, will uncover the realities of SME suppliers and the outcomes of economic and environmental demands on working conditions and human rights practices to enable worker self-determination to solve problems in unique context-specific and customised ways.