Sharm El Sheikh, November 14, 2022 – Today, during COP27, leading companies including,
H&M, Inditex, Stella McCartney, Ben & Jerry’s, HH Global, and Kering announced a collective commitment to purchase over half a million tonnes of low-carbon, low-footprint alternative fibers for fashion textiles and paper packaging. It is a move that will support the protection of the world’s vital forests and ecosystems and lower forest degradation pressures from the fashion and packaging supply chains.
Spearheaded by environmental nonprofit Canopy, this commitment towards more sustainable, lower-carbon alternatives — known as Next Generation Solutions — reflects a
building urgency across industries to accelerate the transition to nature-positive business
models. This market pull is essential to attract the investment necessary to scale these
game-changing Next Generation alternatives on ecologically meaningful timelines.
At last year’s UN Climate Change Conference, protecting nature was at the center of
commitments to deliver on global climate targets. Today one-third of the world’s most
influential companies have yet to make forest conservation commitments, despite the
scientific community’s warnings that at least 50% of the world’s forests need to be
conserved or restored by 2030 to ensure global temperature rises stay below 1.5 °C.
Every year, over 3.2 billion trees are cut down to produce fiber for packaging and clothing,
releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Alternatives to wood — such as
agricultural residues and recycled textiles — are readily available and can be scaled in order
to prevent the logging of these forests at this untenable rate. Moving to Next Generation
Solutions could help avoid almost 1Gt of CO2 emissions between now and 2030.
“We are thrilled to advance this commitment with forward-looking partners who are willing
to challenge the status quo and in doing so provide a breakthrough for these
game-changing technologies,” said Canopy Founder and Executive Director, Nicole Rycroft.
“This commitment will allow us to take a historic leap closer to the $64 billion of investments in sustainable alternatives needed to ensure forest conservation for our
planet’s climate and biodiversity stability.”
Today’s commitment will help unlock the investment needed to build 10 – 20 new
low-footprint, Next Generation pulp mills; provide farm communities and cities with new
markets to replace the burning of straw residue and textile landfilling; and prevent an
estimated 2.2 million tonnes of GHG emissions from going into the atmosphere relative to
the equivalent production of virgin forest fiber.
”At Kering, we aim at reducing our footprint on biodiversity, and contribute to preserving and restoring critical ecosystems,” said Yoann Régent, Head of Sustainable Sourcing & Nature Initiatives. “We are excited to be joining our long-time partner Canopy to support a rapid scale-up of sustainable Next Generation materials production as well as uptake of
low-carbon, low-footprint alternative fibers for textiles and paper packaging.”
The signatories have also committed to ensuring their respective supply chains are free of
Ancient and Endangered Forests and are calling on industry peers to follow suit by shifting
towards sustainable Next Generation alternatives – such as fibers made from agricultural
residue or recycled textiles.
When compared to forest fibers, Next-Generation Solutions have on average:
- 95% to 130% less CO2 emissions
- 18% to 70% less fossil energy resource depletion
- 88% to 100% fewer land-use impacts
- at least 5x lower impact on biodiversity/threatened species
“We are so pleased to be a part of this initiative to keep precious forests standing and to
help speed the switch to low-impact, circular alternatives for forest fiber,” said Kevin
Dunckley, Chief Sustainability Officer at HH Global. “Now is the time for all of us —
businesses, governments, and individuals, to do all we can to keep our climate stable. We
hope today’s announcement starts a trend toward supply chain shifts across all sectors and
hope this announcement will inspire many other companies.
