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Discover how to build and manage an effective low-carbon trajectory in 3 key steps: accurately measure your emissions, define realistic objectives, and get your business teams on board to achieve your reduction ambitions in the long term.
The low-carbon transition is no longer an option, but a necessity for companies - and especially for fashion and textile brands, subject to increasing demands (regulatory, investor, consumer) to reduce their environmental impact.
Building a credible, measurable low-carbon trajectory means relying on reliable data, defining coherent objectives and involving all business teams in a continuous improvement process.
In this article, we propose a 3-step method for structuring and managing your impact reduction strategy.
Committing to a low-carbon trajectory means first and foremost responding to an environmental emergency by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But beyond this global challenge, brands also have other reasons to build a low-carbon trajectory:
With regulations such as CSRD and CSDDD coming into force, the brands concerned must be able to measure their emissions and propose a reduction plan.
Building a low-carbon trajectory enables them to anticipate and meet these legal obligations, while responding to growing demands for transparency from investors, partners and consumers. Indeed, banks and investors are increasingly demanding that companies build a trajectory for reducing their environmental impact (in particular to gain easier access to sustainable financing, green bonds, preferential rates and calls for projects).
Building a trajectory of impact reduction will also reduce your dependence on fossil fuels, thus strengthening the resilience of your business model. Implementing the various levers of action will give you better knowledge and control of your value chain, a crucial issue for the future of fashion brands. Some levers may even enable you to reduce your costs (improving energy efficiency, reducing wastage rates, cutting energy-related costs, etc.), thereby boosting the competitiveness of your business model.
+ 88% of consumers expect brands to commit to the fight against climate change.
Today, a large majority of consumers expect companies to assume their role in the face of the climate challenge, particularly in the fashion and textile sectors. Affirming a credible low-carbon trajectory strengthens a brand's appeal to the general public. What's more, this approach gives meaning to employees and future employees, who are particularly sensitive to their company's ecological commitment.
Setting a clear course for impact reduction enables all the Group's businesses (purchasing, design, production, marketing, etc.) to embrace the same vision. This cross-functional dynamic generates greater buy-in and enhances the value of everyone's work, strengthening internal cohesion and employee motivation.
The first essential step in building a low-carbon trajectory is to assess your carbon emissions over a reference year. From this initial assessment, you can build the next steps. This reference year must be representative of your usual activity, to avoid biases linked to atypical periods (e.g. avoid using the COVID year as a reference year).
When we look at the context of the sector, we see that the vast majority of emissions come from scope 3, and in particular upstream scope 3 (raw materials, manufacturing processes, transport, etc.). For many textile brands, more than 80% of total emissions fall within this scope 3.
What does this mean?
To measure your scope 3 with the necessary precision and granularity, you need :
1. Get your suppliers on board to collect reliable, up-to-date data.
Best practice: Organize regular conferences or meetings with your suppliers to explain how and why they need to send you their data (formats, deadlines, etc.). This can also help you, in the long run, to identify suppliers who don't play the game, and to rationalize your panel according to the quality of the information provided.
2. Set up a scalable collection and measurement process, enabling you to track andupdate your emissions over time (each new collection, each new product range, etc.).
A well-organized collection and measurement system will enable you to :
3. Rely on Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) to gain up to 50% additional precision in the evaluation of your Scope 3 emissions.
In short, having a detailed (and regularly updated) carbon footprint is essential if we are to move from simple intentions to an effective, manageable action plan.
Once you've assessed your emissions and identified your main areas of impact, you can begin to define and challenge your targets. There are recognized methodological frameworks for this, notably the SBTi (Science Based Targets) initiative, based on the conclusions of COP21.
Companies wishing to go all the way can have their trajectory officially validated by SBTi in several major stages:
Remember: Using the SBTi methodology does not require you to officially register your trajectory with the initiative. It can simply help you establish a solid framework for building your objectives.
1. Define the time horizon:
The starting point is the GHG balance for the reference year. Then set a medium-term target year, usually between 5 and 10 years after the submission date. Today, this often takes us between 2030 and 2035. In the longer term, the aim is for all companies to be on a net-zero trajectory by 2050.
2. Define the perimeter:
You must commit to all three scopes (1, 2, 3), but you can choose not to include certain sub-items that are not very representative.
Note: for a fashion brand, scope 3.1 (related to product impact) must be taken into account, as it often represents over 70% of the carbon footprint.
3. Define level of ambition and monitoring method
There are several possible levels of ambition (2°C, 1.5°C, etc.), and several methods for setting impact reduction targets.
This can be done in absolute terms (e.g., going from 400,000 to 300,000 tonnes of CO₂), or in terms of intensity (e.g., CO₂ per euro of margin or per product sold).
For example, a fast-growing brand may prefer intensity targets (kg CO₂/€ margin) rather than absolute values. So there isn 't just one type of SBTi target, but several options to combine according to your strategy.
Once you've defined your "theoretical" targets based on the carbon footprint and an SBT (or equivalent) benchmark, the next step is to formalize a concrete action plan to achieve these targets.
The first step is to identify all the action levers that can help you reduce your impact.
To guide you, here are a few families of levers to explore:
Tip: To work on this list of potential levers, you can organize collaborative workshops with your business teams (product, purchasing, design, CSR, etc.) to identify together the most relevant and realistic levers. This facilitates team buy-in right from the action plan design phase.
Once you've identified your list of levers, you'll need to cost and prioritize each one according to several criteria:
The idea is to create an evaluation sheet for each lever, enabling you to estimate its overall impact. You can then draw up a global scenario in which you superimpose several levers (taking into account their cumulative effect and theevolution of your business).
The aim is to check that the sum of these actions actually brings you closer to your reduction target within the chosen timeframe.
Once you've assessed these criteria, you'll be able to prioritize your levers and build a structured action plan.
It's essential here to also take into account the effect of your company's growth (increased volumes, sales...), which will mechanically increase your footprint. You'll then see whether your action plan is sufficient to compensate for growth and meet your targets.
There are two possible scenarios:
Best practice: Have the trajectory and action plan validated by the COMEX, then officially revise your objectives (if necessary) to guarantee overall consistency (economic & environmental).
The aim, at the end of this work, is to reduce as far as possible the gap between the levers activated and the objectives set. This strengthens your confidence in your ability to stay on track, facilitates internal and external communication, and lends credibility to your strategy as a whole.
And it's here again that we measure the importance of having a sufficiently precise carbon footprint: the more granular your data (by product category, by range, by supplier...), the more you'll be able to identify the right levers, in the right place.
Having a precise carbon footprint and a structured action plan is essential, but it's not enough. Achieving your reduction targets depends above all on your ability to mobilize your teams and manage the process as close to the ground as possible.
In the textile sector, it is estimated that 90% of a product's impact is decided before production begins (choice of materials, place of manufacture, volumes, etc.). In other words, it's mainly the Product, Purchasing and Design teams that have a hand in the decisions that weigh most heavily on your carbon footprint.
1. Translate the action plan into concrete operational objectives for your teams
It's essential to adapt your objectives to each business. If you have defined a reduction target expressed in terms of carbon intensity per euro of margin, this is not necessarily a meaningful indicator for your product teams. They need concrete, actionable KPIs, linked to their day-to-day reality.
For example: the average carbon footprint of a range, or the proportion of low-impact materials in a collection, percentage of suppliers audited, etc.
2. Equipping product teams
Provide dashboards and easy access to data (clear reporting, visual dashboards) so they can understand their impact, make informed decisions at every stage of the development cycle, and track the achievement of their objectives.
3. Integrate goal reviews into the development cycle
Key milestones in the product development process (materials brief, prototype validation, collection review, etc.) are propitious moments for assessing consistency with the low-carbon trajectory.
The aim is to be able to integrate impact considerations into these stages, so that each product manager knows whether he is aligned with his objectives.
More and more brands are starting to integrate environmental objectives into their teams. This applies to purchasing managers, product managers and even designers. It's a powerful way of encouraging buy-in and accountability.
Building and managing your low-carbon trajectory is an in-depth process, based as much on data quality (and therefore collaboration with your suppliers) as on the ability to involve your business teams over the long term. The approach can be summed up in 3 key stages:
By proceeding in this way, you ensure that you define a credible trajectory, based on concrete data, which will ultimately translate into actions with measurable results. A well-constructed low-carbon strategy is at once an environmental, economic and social asset, as it enhances the value of all employees and strengthens your brand's resilience in the face of tomorrow's challenges.
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