The clothing and textile industry is responsible for more than 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the world: according to the United Nations, we need more than 3,200 liters of water to produce a single shirt, which places a massive burden on the environment. For us to achieve net zero carbon, we cannot continue to produce clothes as we do today. 

Eric Dorchies, CEO at CIEL Textile is taking his company on a journey to reduce the industry’s impact on the environment while improving the lives of its workers and bettering communities. 

“Our purpose is for a world we feel proud of. The mission is to improve fashion every day. It means that we have to improve the way we work. There has been a lot of positive impact of what we’ve done over the last decades that we’ve come to a stage where we need to make a change.”

Much of this change falls within the remit of Quentin Thorel, Group Head of Sustainability at CIEL Textile. He says that individual efforts are important, but any successful solution must go one step further:

“Sustainability has always been part of our DNA at CIEL Textile. We take care of our employees, we take care of the community around our factories and we take care of the environment. We know that sustainability is a long journey and we cannot achieve everything alone. We need to create partnerships to drive the change.”

CIEL Textile has also formed strong partnerships and memberships with organizations around the global such as the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which has created a standardized value chain measurement for all industry participants such as the HIGG INDEX. CIEL Textile also works with the United Nations Fashion Climate Change Convention and Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals to further sustainability in the industry.

There is an appetite for change in the textile industry which has a reputation for harming the planet and exploiting its workers. Sarbajit Ghose, Asia Executive Directory at CIEL Textile explains the measures that the company is taking:

“We provide free lunch. We have a doctor on call. We have a crèche. So we do things which other manufacturers don’t do. Another interesting thing, which we do is we operate a five day week. We work one Saturday every month. This is to ensure that workers are automatically able to have a better work life balance, which is unheard of in the garment industry. People get to see how other companies in the group are performing. They benchmark their practices with them. So there’s a lot of learning.”

CIEL Textile invests deeply in people development, providing both soft and hard skills training through a certified and professional in-house Academy. 

The CIEL Textile approach is one that has drawn interest from major brands such as ASOS which are keen to give their customers access to fast fashion without the downsides. Simon Platts, Responsible Sourcing Director at ASOS says that CIEL Textile have been long-term 

“I’ve worked with CIEL Textile for over 25 years in my career through various different retailers. And I’ve known that CIEL Textile have always been at the very front and top of the game, when it comes to being responsible, whether that be from a social or environmental point of view, as well as innovative technologies that they’ve developed on the different products that they work on.”

We’ve worked closely with CIEL Textile on improving the way that we design our products from the very beginning, so we can design it for a long life, but we can also design it to be easily recycled, put back into the loop and go again.” CIEL Textile is able today to propose a large offer of sustainable materials and products such as organic cotton and recycled polyester.”

CIEL Textile has also embarked on other initiatives, such as an internal ECO Index labeling system which provides the retailers buyers the opportunity to see the environmental impact of each garment. By developing circularity programs, CIEL Textile is actively engaging with its key customers to achieve 0 raw material waste.

Eric Dorchies says that the scale of the problem is massive – but so is the company’s response, which is to engage with the workers to create a better working environment

“At CIEL Textile, we have nearly 20,000 talents across multiple countries. Each and every of them should come to work with the heart and the brain and give the best of who they are.” 

Dorchies says that this approach is vital to securing partnerships with companies that need to sell to consumers with increasing awareness of the issues of poor working conditions and environmental harm. His company, he says, must lead, not follow:

“If we don’t make a move quickly, the planet is at risk. When it comes to our industry,  we have to make a change. What we want to achieve at CIEL Textile is to do it before we are being told to change.”