WWF and Google announce fashion sustainability platform
Google has partnered with WWF Sweden to create a data platform that aims for more responsible sourcing decisions in the fashion industry.
At the 2019 Copenhagen Fashion Summit, Google Cloud announced a pilot in collaboration with Stella McCartney to use its technology to provide a more comprehensive view into raw materials of clothing manufacturers’ supply chains.
Stella McCartney’s team have been pivotal in shaping the concept of the aforementioned platform. It will also be the first fashion brand to test it out. WWF Sweden and long-term partner Ikea created a similar tool in 2018, focused on analysing the risk and impact of various textiles raw materials
Google and WWF Sweden will now collaborate on an updated platform leveraging all of these data types, aiming to further increase the accuracy and relevance of raw materials assessments. This will also move beyond cotton and viscose as first announced, to include numerous additional raw materials based on WWF data and knowledge.
WWF and Google say that they are in consultation with a large number of other fashion, luxury, denim, and athletic brands and retailers. "It's our ambition to create a data-enriched decision-making platform that enables analysis of the supply chain in a way that has not been possible before at this scale," comments Ian Pattison, Head of Customer Engineering, Retail, Google UK/ IE.
"Partnering with WWF brings together Google Cloud’s technical capacity, including Big Data analysis and machine learning, and WWF’s deep knowledge of assessing raw materials. Together, we can make supply chain data visible and accessible to decision makers, and drive more responsible and sustainable decisions."
"WWF’s partnership work with companies has always been motivated by the need to drive real transformation at the largest possible scale,” says Håkan Wirtén, CEO at WWF Sweden.
“This project is an excellent example of how we can take valuable work with a long-term partner like Ikea, collaborate with another strong WWF partner like Google to make that work even more powerful, and make it open source so that hopefully it can help with the transformation of a whole industry.”