In direct response to industry need, Mindful Fashion has today launched the Mindful Fashion New Zealand Climate Action Toolkit – a series of guides and tools to support the local industry on its decarbonisation journey.

With the New Zealand clothing and textile industry predominantly made up of SMEs, Mindful Fashion has designed its toolkit to address common barriers to action these businesses typically face.

Developed using insight gained from its pilot Climate Action programme run in 2022 with ten New Zealand clothing and textile industry businesses, Mindful Fashion’s Toolkit provides industry specific guidance and tools to educate and enable businesses to measure their organisational emissions and develop reduction strategies.

A key takeaway from the pilot programme was the need for accessible education and useful resources to kickstart action. Jacinta FitzGerald, Mindful Fashion Chief Executive says, “There is huge desire from the industry to address emissions, the challenge is building internal capability within businesses so that climate impact can be factored into decision making."

“Our pilot programme proved the case when we saw businesses taking immediate action to change policy and behaviour once they understood where their emissions were being generated. The Toolkit we’ve developed will be useful for businesses across the entire fashion and textiles industry to kick start their carbon reduction journey. It's no longer a nice to have, it's a necessity.”

Emissions from the pilot programme businesses were aggregated and benchmarked to provide a snapshot of the most significant emissions-generating activities in the local industry, and is a useful tool for any business to use to identify areas for improvement.

The benchmark shows that freight emissions are by far the most significant at over 70%, followed by company vehicles and electricity. The findings from this pilot have motivated Mindful Fashion to establish a working group to collectively address challenges around common impact areas like freight and waste emissions.

Ruby was one business that took part. Emily Miller-Sharma, General Manager of Ruby says, "Going through this process with Mindful Fashion has helped us find great clarity about where we need to focus our attention, both as a company and an industry. We now have clear goals for the year ahead and know we are holding what matters most front and centre as opposed to getting lost in the micro."

Jacinta adds, “Knowledge is definitely power when it comes to climate action, we've seen this first hand with our pilot programme. Now is the time for all businesses to step up their action to address climate change, and we urge all members of the industry to join us on this mission. It's imperative the industry starts to tackle this challenge.”

Find out more

• Pilot Programme Report
• Learn about the Toolkit here.
• Members can access the full Toolkit here.
• Non-members can view the Toolkit here.

Check out our case studies and more about the toolkit here.

Participant Emissions Benchmark