Levi’s and M&S are pooling their power to solve fashion’s biggest climate challenges

Fashion brands have spent years addressing sustainability and setting ambitious climate goals. The harder part? Getting the thousands of suppliers that actually make their clothes to agree to come along for the ride.

Enter: Levi Strauss & Co. and Marks & Spencer, which are hoping there’s strength (and maybe some savings) in numbers.

The two retailers, alongside Schneider Electric’s SE Advisory Services, launched the Fashion Renewable Collaborative (FRC) during the recent New York Climate Week, an initiative designed to help fashion suppliers transition to renewable electricity. However, instead of having brands approach factories individually with their own sustainability goals, the program brings them together under one shared system that offers suppliers education, technical support, and eventually help procuring renewable power.

For Levi’s, the collaborative builds on work the company was already doing through its Levi’s Energy Accelerator program, which it launched last year with suppliers in India. But Jennifer DuBuisson, senior director of sustainability at Levi Strauss & Co, said the company realized a brand-by-brand approach could only go so far.

“What we saw is that in order to generate that impact at scale, we really need to come together as an industry and do this across multiple brands with a larger number of suppliers,” she told Retail Brew, adding that pooling suppliers can also help them access renewable energy at better prices.

Meanwhile, for Dave Rimkus, head of global supply chain decarbonization at SE Advisory Services, aggregating demand means potentially saving suppliers between 5% and 7% on certain deals, depending on the market. It could also help tackle a less obvious sustainability challenge: suppliers hearing the same thing from a lot of different customers.

“Rather than having 5–10 different customers walking through that sustainable journey and talking to these suppliers in five or 10 different ways, we can streamline that messaging through this consortium approach and really give them a clear, simple path,” Rimkus told Retail Brew.

Suppliers that join will be judged based on factors including their location, electricity use, and how far along they already are in adopting renewable power. Then, Schneider Electric can point them toward options ranging from energy attribute certificates to power purchase agreements and on-site renewable generation.

There is, however, the age-old question of…well, money. Participating brands will pay for the program itself, including its technical and advisory support, while suppliers will remain responsible for actually purchasing renewable electricity.

For Levi’s, the hope is that more fashion companies eventually join the effort. In fact, DuBuisson said that three years from now, she’d like to see more than 20 sponsors participating and suppliers moving beyond education to actual renewable energy procurement.

“There are a lot of initiatives that go on in the apparel industry,” she said. “This is one very specifically focused on renewable electricity, where we felt like there was a bit of a gap for collective action.”