• It’s time to tax fast fashion

    As Kenneth Pucker reports in the Harvard Business Review, “Like all industries, fashion is nested in a broader system. It is a system premised on growth. The urge to sell more and get consumers to buy more is still in the DNA of the industry.”

    The fashion industry is rapacious. Production has doubled over the past 15 years and will double again by 2030 while the amount of time clothing is worn has dropped 40%.  Every year, fashion uses vast amounts of earthly resources, makes between 100-150 billion garments, incinerates or landfills 87% and creates 92 millions of tons of waste.

    https://www.ntxe-news.com/artman/publish/article_145439.shtml

     

    Read More

  • What Allbirds got right

    “Allbirds recognized that the scale of our shared environmental challenges cannot be addressed by companies acting in isolation — no matter that company’s size,” said Ken Pucker, the former Timberland chief operating officer who is now professor of practice at Tufts’ Fletcher School. “All of the brand’s natural materials innovations were co-developed and openly shared with their competitors.”

    https://trellis.net/article/what-allbirds-got-right/

    Read More

  • Amid Sweatshop Scandals, Luxury Hits Back: ‘We’re Not the Financial Police’

    Some in the industry are becoming more vocal in suggesting that government, not brands, should be responsible for violations deep in the luxury supply chain and things are getting political.

     

    https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/sustainability/luxury-hits-back-on-sweatshop-scandals-were-not-the-financial-police/?utm_source=newsletter_dailydigest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Digest_271025&utm_term=F2G5L7RRDVBHJKFPPHLF5MQRAY&utm_content=top_story_2_dek

    Read More

  • Is the Fashion Industry in a ‘Sustainability Retreat’ Or Not?

    Whether the fashion industry is or isn’t in a so-called “sustainability retreat,” as Tufts University professor Ken Pucker first described a year ago, has been a bone of contention. What some have characterized as a much-needed reset to adapt to turbulent economic and geopolitical realities is being interpreted by others as a feckless rollback of once-vaunted, if perhaps overly confident, greenhouse gas ambitions.

    https://sourcingjournal.com/sustainability/sustainability-news/fashion-industry-sustainability-retreat-climate-commitments-1234783318/

    Read More

  • ‘2 dolls instead of 30’: Will tariffs curb America’s passion for cheap goods?

    Even with high tariffs, says Ken Pucker, former chief operating officer of Timberland, an American footwear and apparel company, the economics of apparel making “continue to be overwhelmingly in favor of low-wage countries.” The U.S. lacks the skilled workforce, supplier network, and machinery to mass produce garments after decades of offshoring, he says.

    https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2025/0821/trump-tariffs-imports-consumer-culture?icid=rss

    Read More

  • A Critical Examination of Corporate Environmental and Social Impact Measurement and Valuation

    Can measuring and valuing the impact of business on society and the planet lead to a more environmentally and socially oriented style of capitalism? This is the main hope and assertion of corporate environmental and social impact measurement and valuation (IMV), which calls on organizations to measure their positive and negative impacts on their stakeholders and the environment and to subsequently translate them into monetary units. This curated dialog critically examines the components of this concept—environmental and social impact, its measurement, and its monetary valuation—by bringing together leading experts in the field who discuss the opportunities and risks of IMV. The purpose of this article is to place IMV under deep investigation and envision new ways that work with, complement, or replace organizations’ desire for management via quantification and financialization.

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926251330815

    Read More

  • As Companies Abandon Climate Pledges, Is There a Silver Lining?

    Coca-Cola, BP, HSBC and countless others are dropping environmental goals, highlighting the inadequacy of voluntary action.

     

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-06-12/climate-pledges-dropped-by-coca-cola-bp-hsbc-as-planet-heats-up?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc0OTczNzE4MiwiZXhwIjoxNzUwMzQxOTgyLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTWFFTMEVEV1gyUFMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIzRjRGRUZFRDYwMzQ0Q0RDQjlGMTIwNTMyNzFCMUVBQiJ9.-J-3klDvYKh-TIgtwS7ZKPWLwaLmSej9ESX2K066Aw4&leadSource=uverify%20wall&embedded-checkout=true&sref=fnjoKOAK

     

    Read More