Take a deep breath, please! How textile companies can reduce their CO2 emissions and those of their suppliers

The environmental and social challenges facing the textile industry these days are enormous. Legislation is putting a lot of pressure on the industry: the Supply Chain Act, the European Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan are just a few of the challenges the industry is facing. And the players are also increasingly under pressure from consumers. With the requirements for CO2 reporting becoming more and more stringent, how can they be met as efficiently as possible? The solution is digitalization. What is meant here is not the 3D printing of textiles but the digital representation of a physical product along its life cycle. It is precisely this digital mapping that is the prerequisite for calculating a carbon footprint. Recent practical examples of so-called carbon accounting show that this is neither fiction nor an elaborate research project.

Legislators and consumers challenge textile manufacturers and retailers
The goals of the European Commission are ambitious. Among other things, Europe aims to be climate-neutral by 2050. In addition, consumers are increasingly demanding sustainable products. A survey by the Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung, a leading provider of data and analytics to the consumer goods industry, reveals the relevance of the topic among the public: 45 percent of all respondents consider sustainability “very important” or even “extremely important” when buying clothes.

So there is no alternative other than becoming more sustainable, and that means more data procurement. While data for a company’s own properties and vehicles are comparatively easy to collect, data for the so-called Scope 3, purchased products and services (e.g., contract manufacturing or deliveries to customers) are very difficult to determine. The evaluation of upstream and downstream supply chains is increasingly coming into focus (see EU Green Deal and science-based targets), causing headaches in many companies.

Simply digital for a better CO2 balance
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a mammoth task for many companies, but carbon footprint calculators and platforms offer a remedy. They can provide network and emission factors as well as standard-compliant calculation logic, including continuous updates. One example is BearingPoint’s Emissions Calculator, which calculates both the carbon footprint of a single T-shirt (over the entire product life cycle “from the cradle to the grave”) and the footprint for the whole company. This transparency is much more than just reporting information because it also reveals where CO2 should be saved and paves the way for a greener future.

“From product carbon footprint to corporate carbon footprint, the ecological footprint can be determined digitally – and improved!” Adrian Nowak, Business Development Senior Manager at BearingPoint

Digital solutions are a gamechanger for becoming proactive
Many companies have already set out on their journey but remain at an unsatisfactory data collection level. Surprising but true: Excel is still the standard in many companies. Excel spreadsheets are sent back and forth around the world and laboriously consolidated, which is neither efficient nor secure. Specialized cloud solutions have long since offered a remedy – they enable workflow-controlled collection, validation and calculation of emission data with a certified methodology and up-to-date emission factors from a single source, the “single point of truth for carbon data.”

It is no longer sufficient to report on CO2 emissions ex-post, e.g., after one year – the drivers must be identified and eliminated promptly. It is about actively controlling and managing CO2, whereby digital and networked solutions are gaining importance.

Leading practices: how the big players in the textile industry are doing it
The global players in the textile industry are doing pioneering digital work and are successfully putting their reporting on legally compliant footing. Working with the Emissions Calculator ensures clean data basis, validation, and calculation with less work. Even weekly reporting is no longer a headache for those responsible for sustainability because the processes are largely automated. The insights provided by our tool cover the entire product life cycle. The inclusion of purchased products and services, the so-called Scope 3, is a real benefit for our customers.

“Scope 3 emissions make up the majority of emissions for most companies, at around 80%. At the same time, however, emissions from outsourced activities along the value chain are a “black box” for most companies. Collaborative partnerships and the use of digital platforms are key factors for success here.”

Matthias Wohlfahrt, Head of Carbon Accounting Services at BearingPoint

The combined platform and calculator approach allows companies to calculate individual values and share them with their partners worldwide, creating transparency and reducing manual effort.

How global players survey the current state
The changeover to sustainable processes is most successful if it is approached systematically. To do this, the status quo must first be clarified in detail. If companies are just starting to collect detailed data, it often turns out that information is missing. But that doesn’t matter. Today, internal data gaps can easily be filled by digital products. With the Emissions Calculator, if primary data is not available, we use secondary data from official sources and can thus make very realistic assumptions. For example, how much fertilizer and energy a supplier in India needs to plant its cotton – a level of information that many companies have not yet been able to access. The data is then automatically calculated and put into a reporting structure compliant with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which already fulfills many existing regulations. The database also opens up excellent opportunities for comparison, both within the company and as an industry benchmark. These are already pre-installed in the dashboard. However, companies can also set individual targets and track them regularly – a must for all companies committed to science-based targets.