Fashion’s Carbon Problem Just Got Worse, and the Industry Can’t Afford to Ignore It
Apparel sector emissions hit one gigatonne in 2024 as polyester production surges and decarbonisation efforts stall.
The numbers are in, and they’re uncomfortable reading for anyone hoping the fashion industry had turned a corner on climate. According to data released by the Apparel Impact Institute in February 2026, greenhouse gas emissions from the global apparel sector rose 6.3% in 2024, pushing total output to roughly one gigatonne of CO2 equivalent. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a reversal.
“The trend is one that’s quite concerning,” says Kurt Kipka, Chief Impact Officer at the Apparel Impact Institute, the nonprofit collective working to decarbonise apparel and footwear supply chains globally.
He’s being measured. The reality is more pointed. After years of incremental progress, corporate sustainability pledges, and visible consumer pressure, the industry is moving backwards. And the commercial consequences of inaction are starting to crystallise.
The Polyester Problem
What’s driving the surge? Look at your wardrobe. Or more specifically, look at the labels.
Polyester accounted for approximately 57% of global textile fibre production in 2023, making it the dominant material in modern fashion by a significant margin. Virgin polyester production, in particular, has climbed sharply, powered by cheap feedstock and relentless demand for affordable apparel.
In 2023, sector emissions grew 7.5% to reach 944 million tonnes CO2e. The following year pushed past the one gigatonne mark. Two consecutive years of steep increases have effectively wiped out whatever ground the industry thought it had gained.
The appeal of polyester is obvious. It’s versatile, durable, and inexpensive. It dyes well, wears well, and travels well through global supply chains. But its carbon intensity is brutal. Derived from petroleum, virgin polyester carries a heavy upstream footprint, and the sheer scale of production has turned a material advantage into an emissions liability.
Recycled polyester offers a partial solution, but adoption remains patchy and constrained by collection infrastructure, processing capacity, and cost. Most brands still default to virgin material when margins tighten.
The Business Case for Doing Something
If environmental arguments haven’t moved the needle fast enough, the financial ones might.
The projections are sobering: climate related risks could reduce sector profits by up to 34% by 2030 and as much as 67% by 2040.
These are not observed losses. They’re modelled scenarios based on rising input costs, supply chain disruptions, regulatory penalties, and shifting consumer behaviour. But they represent a serious attempt to quantify what inaction costs, and the figures are large enough to command boardroom attention.
“While it’s encouraging to see progress across the value chain, with meaningful case studies from both brands and suppliers, this data is a stark reminder of how far we still must go as an industry,” says Lewis Perkins, President and CEO of the Apparel Impact Institute.
Energy and material costs have already climbed. Supplier side decarbonisation, once treated as a nice to have, is now an operational priority for brands trying to protect margins and meet regulatory disclosure requirements. The EU’s incoming sustainability reporting rules, combined with tightening import standards in key markets, have made emissions data a procurement issue, not just a communications one.
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Commitments Are Up, But Emissions Are Too
Here’s the paradox. More companies than ever have adopted formal science based targets. Approvals or commitments rose from around 100 at the end of 2021 to over 700 by June 2025. That’s genuine momentum on the governance side.
Yet emissions keep climbing.
The gap between targets and outcomes reflects the structural difficulty of decarbonising a fragmented, globalised industry. Most fashion emissions sit in the supply chain, not in corporate headquarters. Factories, dye houses, finishing plants, and logistics networks operate across dozens of countries, each with different energy grids, regulatory environments, and economic pressures.
Setting a target is relatively straightforward. Rewiring a supply chain to meet it is not.
Brands can switch to renewable energy in their own operations, but the real carbon sits with suppliers who often lack capital, technical capacity, or commercial incentive to invest in cleaner production. Without coordinated financing mechanisms and shared investment in infrastructure, targets remain aspirational.
What Supplier Decarbonisation Actually Looks Like
Inside a typical textile facility, the emissions sources are visible. Industrial dyeing and drying machines, steam pipes running overhead, synthetic yarn spooling through automated lines. Technicians in protective clothing move between stations, monitoring processes that consume enormous amounts of energy and water.
Decarbonising these operations means replacing coal fired boilers with cleaner alternatives, upgrading insulation, optimising heat recovery, and in some cases electrifying processes that have run on fossil fuels for decades. It means training staff, retrofitting equipment, and sometimes rebuilding entire production lines.
The costs are substantial. The returns are long term. For suppliers operating on thin margins with short order cycles, the incentive to invest is weak unless buyers commit to longer contracts, shared capital, or premium pricing.
Some brands have started moving in this direction. Collaborative programmes that pool resources across competitors, blended finance mechanisms that de risk supplier investments, and transparency initiatives that reward cleaner production are all gaining traction. But scale remains the challenge. The industry needs thousands of facilities to decarbonise, not dozens.
The Road From Here
None of this is hopeless. The tools exist. The business case is increasingly clear. And regulatory pressure is only going to intensify.
But the data from the Apparel Impact Institute should land as a corrective. The industry is not on track. Voluntary commitments have not been enough. And the financial risks of continued inaction are no longer theoretical.
Polyester isn’t going away. Fast fashion isn’t going away. The question is whether the industry can reconfigure itself quickly enough to decouple growth from emissions, or whether it will continue drifting toward a reckoning it could have avoided.
The answer will be written in supply chains, not sustainability reports.
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