The apparel sector has complex, global value chains that heavily impact and depend on natural capital. This Guide builds on the Natural Capital Protocol to provide sector-specific guidance for apparel businesses conducting natural capital assessments.

The apparel sector encompasses a wide range of sub-sectors spanning different tiers of production, international trade agreements and complex, widely distributed supply chains. It is an extremely fragmented industry with no individual dominant companies and is experiencing rapid growth in Asia and emerging markets.

Apparel can be produced from synthetic, cellulosic (plant-based), animal-based, or hybrid materials, often blended to include more than one of these. 

The apparel industry heavily depends on natural capital to provide inputs including raw materials and fibers, energy and water used in manufacturing, and ecosystem services such as climate regulation. This dependency directly affects operations in agriculture and production and indirectly affects all operations through the value chain.

The sector also has significant impacts on natural capital, including the “wet processing” stages which require the use of large quantities of chemicals, and raw 

material stages that can require significant resource extraction and land use. Not only do these impacts threaten ecosystems on which apparel companies depend, they can also represent significant costs for wider society if business activities are not responsibly managed.

The Apparel Sector Guidance builds on the Natural Capital Protocol and uses a capitals approach to help apparel businesses understand their impacts and dependencies on the environment.  

Though exact processes vary depending on raw material inputs, vertical integration and processing, the basic stages of apparel manufacturing are represented in this Sector Guide.

Apparel can include any item of adornment but for the purposes of this Sector Guide, it is used to refer specifically to clothing – excluding footwear and accessories.