GFA and Deloitte's Fashion Impact Toolkit serves as an interactive guide for businesses to pinpoint critical sustainability issues within the textile value chain and ensure compliance with changing regulations.
It emphasises key environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, promotes supplier collaboration for improved transparency, and encourages innovation in materials and business models.
The toolkit features a detailed visual of the value chain, which outlines activities, sub-activities, and material filters to facilitate thorough impact assessments.
This follows the creation of a ‘strategic Knowledge Collaboration’ by the two companies in January this year.
The Fashion Impact Toolkit provides a structured overview of both positive and negative sustainability impacts according to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).
By mapping influence areas based on factors like materials, processes, and geographies, the toolkit acts as a practical starting point for impact identification along the textile value chain.
However, the toolkit has its limitations. It does not offer a complete double materiality assessment since it does not account for risks and opportunities along the value chain, nor does it provide a quantitative evaluation of identified impacts.
Aimed at fostering business-to-business collaboration rather than consumer communication, the toolkit offers a sectorial level of detail and cannot fully capture each company's unique characteristics.
The Fashion Impact Toolkit is designed for various stakeholders within the textile value chain — from raw material producers to waste managers — and is applicable across major sub-sectors such as high-street fashion, luxury goods, footwear, sportswear, and textile manufacturing.
Functionally, the toolkit compiles an inventory of sustainability impacts organised systematically by activity and sub-activity within the value chain.
Users can filter these impacts by materials and geographies, which provides a foundational layer for companies to customise and expand upon according to their specific operational context.
To aid users in navigating the toolkit and identifying relevant information, an illustrative seven-step framework based on Deloitte’s expertise has been developed.
It has the potential to facilitate a transition from understanding impacts to taking concrete steps. By using this tool, GFA and Deloitte believe companies can be equipped to not just recognise areas of impact but also to prioritise and apply effective solutions, thereby fostering tangible progress throughout their supply chains.
