Iconic Australian brand Country Road has announced the launch of the Country Road Climate Fund, investing $1.5million in grant funding to projects driving climate solutions in the Australian fashion industry over the next three years.
The fund aims to help accelerate projects or products that need funding to push solutions that directly and indirectly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
These could include projects that improve energy efficiency in the production of textiles or projects that provide consumers with accurate data on the emissions intensity of fashion items, or encourage more sustainable fashion choices by consumers.
Country Road brand sustainability manager Fabia Pryor told The Australian Financial Review the fashion industry has a key role to play in addressing climate change.
“We are a direct and indirect contributor to climate change. The fund is playing a really important role since there are many solutions out there, but often there’s a lack of funding, so they aren’t able to be deployed or rolled out at scale,” Ms Pryor said.
The annual grants program will allocate up to $500,000 in the first year, and will be topped up every three years.
Fashion makes a sizeable contribution to climate change. McKinsey & Co research shows that the sector was responsible for some 2.1 billion metric tons of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions in 2018, about 4 per cent of the global total.
That means the fashion industry emits about the same quantity of GHGs per year as the entire economies of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined, according to McKinsey’s 2020 Fashion on Climate report.
It flagged three main areas that clothing companies can address: reducing emissions from upstream operations; reducing emissions from brands’ own operations such as improving packaging and minimising returns; and encouraging sustainable consumer behaviour.
Country Road has a goal to reach net-zero by 2040, and by 2030 is aiming to have all its Australian and New Zealand stores, and its head office and distribution centre, running on renewable energy.
Article Attrition: AFR, Carrie LaFrenz