ILO Working paper 52

Greening the sector - Environmental initiatives and tools in the garment sector in Asia

This paper reviews environmental initiatives, tools and assessment platforms aimed at improving sustainability in Asia’s garment sector. It examines their scope, approaches and beneficiaries, identifies gaps in existing initiatives, and highlights opportunities to better address the knowledge and learning needs of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).

The increasing social and environmental impacts of the textile and garment supply chain are well known and have resulted in the development of an array of initiatives, tools and assessment platforms to enhance the sustainability of the sector. There is a great deal of diversity in these initiatives, including differences in their focus, the actors involved, who the beneficiaries are, the longevity of the activities and how they define and measure success. The paper highlights where there might be gaps in the current offerings of initiatives, and what types of initiatives have alignment with MSMEs knowledge and learning needs, as a way to highlight where future attention in developing new or enhanced initiatives might lie.

Additional details

Author(s)

  • Fiona Berry, Samantha Sharpe, Maria Cristina Martinez Fernandez

References