IAF launches CO₂ Improve Initiative

IAF is launching its ‘CO₂ improve’ initiative today, aiming to help the worldwide fashion & lifestyle community to do better when it comes to CO₂ emissions through fashion logistics. Han Bekke, IAF chairman explains: ‘Fashion supply chains cover the globe so the logistical operations in the fashion industry almost by definition add up to a very high level of pollution. With growing attention from consumers, governments and NGO’s, individual companies are willing, but also struggling, to do better. With future CO₂ taxes looming on the horizon, it is ever more important for any company to know where it stands and to know how to do better.’

A standardization of the CO₂ monitoring has become very important, to create a level playing field for the worldwide fashion & lifestyle community, and to end the chaos that is being created by the ever growing amount of national and generic monitoring systems, with many different and often dubious outcomes. The ‘CO₂ Improve initiative’ will initiate and support the creation of the worldwide industry standard for measuring CO₂ emissions through fashion logistics. Additionally and importantly, the initiative will support the fashion industry in reducing the carbon footprint of its logistics operations by innovating and by cooperating. It’s about improving instead of compensating.

Currently, IAF is mobilizing its industry association members, and many countries are already signing up, with the first encouraging results showing. IAF is working close together with both fashion-logistics and data analyses experts under direction of longtime partner Greenway Logistics. As its CEO Willem-Jan Drost adds: ‘IAF has now created its CO₂ improve initiative in a way that will help the largely SME fashion & lifestyle community to do better, by offering practical, hands-on support.’ IAF offers its member associations a suite of services to help their member companies measure and then reduce their CO₂ level in logistics through individual actions and particularly through collective industry projects.

Author: IAF
Photo Credit: IAF