UNEP has identified textiles as a high-impact sector, not only due to its significant environmental and social impacts but because it exemplifies many common challenges for other sectors on value chain visibility, overconsumption and overproduction, and circularity. UNEP uses the term ‘textiles’ as it includes the use of all textile products, including ‘fashion’ (focusing on trends), ‘garment and footwear’ (clothing and apparel), ‘home textiles’ (bedding and upholstery), and ‘technical textiles’ (used in medical, transport or construction industries).
The One UNEP Textile Initiative provides strategic leadership and encourages sector-wide collaboration to accelerate a just transition towards a sustainable and circular textile value chain. It has outlined the imperative for the fashion sector to become radically and rapidly transformed to become circular and encapsulates and aligns all UNEP work on textiles to do so.
