Nobody should die for fashion. Yet apparel supply chains continue to make headlines for their shocking treatment of staff. Reports suggest that workers for global brand suppliers have been locked in factories, sexually harassed by managers and, in the case of Jayasre Kathirvel, murdered.
Mending the fragmented structure of fashion’s multi-tiered production networks requires unilateral thinking across all stakeholder groups. How can organisations strive to improve the environmental and social conditions of their suppliers’ facilities, if they lack even the basic knowledge of where these factories are located?
Cue open-source data – the solution that gives impetus for information sharing. Freely accessible, shareable information is becoming an essential part of the data landscape, especially when it comes to mapping sustainable supply chains. A new group of organisations and non-profits are championing the power of open-source data in the pursuit of transparency and traceability.
Legislators call for supply chain transparency
The global market potential for open data could be as high as $5 trillion, according to McKinsey and the Open Data Institute. Unlocking this economic value is not limited to the apparel industry alone but also extends to oil and gas, electricity, health, and transportation sectors.
In addition to market demand, policy makers have introduced regulatory obligations on supply chains and procurement risks. Heightened policing on labour conditions means that transparency and traceability will no longer be optional ‘nice to haves’. Similarly, flagrant disregard for systemic human rights abuses across manufacturing now has considerable repercussions. This is highlighted by the US ban on all imports of cotton and tomatoes from Xinjiang, China, following the widespread forced labour of the Uighurs. In Europe, the new draft of the German Supply Chain Act and United Kingdom’s Government proposal to strengthen the 2015 Modern Slavery Act has amassed further calls for mandatory due diligence, which can be enabled by open-source data.
