Sustainable Clothing Roadmap

Defra hosted the 2nd Sustainable Clothing Roadmap stakeholder meeting on 31st March 2008 at Church House Conference Centre in central London.

Please click here to go to the website for the Third Multi-Stakeholder Meeting on 20th February 2009.

The proceedings of the meeting can be viewed here.

The UK Sustainable Clothing Roadmap aims to improve the sustainability of clothing, by gathering evidence on the impacts, and working with a wide range of stakeholders across the clothing supply chain to build on existing interventions and add value to work already underway. Co-ordinated by Defra, the roadmap is a collaborative process, seeking the active involvement of stakeholders, with a strong action focus. For those stakeholders who are prepared to be part of the action, a working group is being formed to take these forward.

This meeting, by invitation, is aimed at organisations with an active interest in the clothing supply chain and its impacts and will provide:-

• updates on actions underway (by Defra and other stakeholders)
• an opportunity for stakeholders to participate by giving their views
• facilitated sessions for stakeholders to discuss action areas they wish to lead or participate in.

The meeting will start at 10:00 with registration from 9:30 and will close at 16:00.

Following this meeting, the clothing roadmap actions will be finalised and a working group established to monitor progress.

Following the first roadmap meeting on 5th September 2007, specific action areas for improving the sustainability of clothing were proposed under the following headings:

• Sustainable design; fibres and fabrics, including creating market drivers
• Maximising re-use; recycling and end of life management
• Clothes Cleaning
• Instruments for improving traceability along the supply chain; ethics and trade
• Consumption trends and behaviour; awareness, media, education and networks.

These will form the discussion topics in the facilitated breakout sessions of this meeting. On registering, delegates can choose those breakout sessions they are most interested to attend. For further background on the roadmap and detail on the actions, click here. In order to be able to participate fully in the second stakeholder meeting, we would recommend that delegates review these action areas ahead of the meeting.