Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition: Amazon launches sustainable initiative with Stella McCartney, Canopy, and World Economic Forum

Key takeaways

The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition is a cross-industry initiative to scale next-generation materials and technologies.
It is co-founded by Amazon, Stella McCartney, and Canopy with convening support from the World Economic Forum.
The coalition supports more than 60 brands, innovators, manufacturers, and retailers, working to reach net-zero carbon by 2040.

Today, Amazon, Stella McCartney, and Canopy announced the launch of The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition, a cross-industry initiative designed to scale more sustainable materials and reduce environmental effects across fashion supply chains, with convening support from the World Economic Forum.

The coalition supports more than 60 Climate Pledge signatories—including fashion brands, innovators, manufacturers, and retailers—in their work to reach net-zero carbon by 2040. By combining collective demand with new financing models and tools like the Fashion Coalition Lever Library, the coalition aims to help more sustainable materials and processes scale across the industry, bringing more sustainable fashion choices to customers at every price point.

“Fashion has no shortage of ambition on sustainability. People are already looking for more sustainable options when they shop, and now the industry needs to deliver at scale,” said Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon. “Through The Climate Pledge, we're bringing together more than 60 fashion and retail brands, manufacturers, and innovators to help make that happen.”

Why does fashion need a climate coalition?

The fashion industry is estimated to generate 2–8% of global carbon emissions, consume around 79 trillion liters of water, and produce more than 92 million tons of textile waste each year. The materials and processes that could significantly reduce fashion's environmental footprint exist—right now, they're too expensive, too scarce, or too fragmented to compete at scale.

The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition is designed to change that dynamic. Rather than focusing solely on end-of-life solutions, the coalition targets innovation earlier in the product life cycle—supporting the development and adoption of materials and processes with measurably lower environmental footprints. That includes recycled and next-generation fibers made from waste feedstocks, as well as manufacturing technologies that reduce water use, chemical inputs, and emissions.

How does The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition work?

The coalition gives signatories practical tools and structured pathways to help scale next-generation materials, technologies, and lower-carbon supply chains:

Structuring financing to encourage investment: The coalition aligns demand across signatories at every stage of the supply chain, not just at the brand level. In collaboration with the World Economic Forum, it's building blended financing mechanisms that pair development finance institution de-risking with private capital. The result: When innovators can count on committed volume over a sustained period, they can price closer to mainstream levels from the start—helping more sustainable materials move from pilot projects to commercial scale faster.
Connecting signatories with solutions: The Fashion Coalition Lever Library was developed with input from more than 30 brands and suppliers to help companies pinpoint the highest-impact interventions for their specific supply chains. It includes more than 100 proven and emerging solutions, fiber-by-fiber guidance, and a directory of innovators working on next-generation materials. The coalition also draws on Next Gen Now, a Canopy-led initiative with years of experience vetting next-generation fibers, to connect signatories with materials and technologies that are ready for commercial adoption.
Informing policy: When production-stage innovation can be shown to work at scale, it gives policymakers real-world evidence to shape smarter environmental policy.

Who is part of The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition?

Fashion-focused Climate Pledge signatories include Anna Sui, Another Tomorrow, Bananatex, BioFluff, Brooks Running, Christopher Esber, Circ, Ciucani, Collina Strada, DL1961, E.L.V Denim, Faherty, Mother Denim, Pure.Tech, Selfridges, unspun, and Vestiaire Collective.

“For over two decades, I've worked alongside innovators proving that fashion can be made differently,” said Stella McCartney, founder and creative director of Stella McCartney. “The solutions already exist. What's been missing is the industry-wide commitment to help them scale. The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition is about turning innovation into infrastructure, creating real demand for the next generation of materials, and giving the pioneers a pathway from breakthrough to industry standard.”

“Making sustainable materials the default rather than the premium choice requires entire value chains to move together,“ said Clemence Schmid, head of Circular Economy Transformation and director of Global Plastic Action Partnership at World Economic Forum. “The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition is designed to enable that alignment to ultimately increase the confidence that can unlock investment to scale. This is how we can accelerate adoption today, not a decade from now.”

“Transitions of this scale don't happen brand by brand—they happen when an industry moves together,” said Nicole Rycroft, founder and executive director of Canopy. “By diversifying fashion's fiber basket with emerging next-generation materials, this coalition builds more resilient supply chains, reduces sourcing risk, and keeps vital forests standing.”

How does the coalition build on The Climate Pledge?

Bags of garments and textile feedstock at Circ's Danville, Virginia facility, staged ahead of the company's hydrothermal recycling process, which separates polycotton blends into new polyester and cellulosic fibers for reuse.Photo by Circ

Co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019, The Climate Pledge is a commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040. The pledge has grown to include more than 700 signatories across more than 60 industries.

Fashion's supply chains cut across many of those industries, and that cross-sector network is what makes The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition different. It builds on a proven model of collaboration—including joint action projects in sectors like shipping, aviation, and concrete—and applies it to one of the world's most complex and resource-intensive industries.

Will sustainable fashion cost more for customers?

The coalition's goal is to make more sustainable materials and processes the new industry standard. Today, more sustainable materials are often pricier simply because they haven't reached scale. By bringing brands together to aggregate demand and pairing that with blended financing models, the coalition gives manufacturers and innovators the confidence to invest in more sustainable manufacturing practices and materials—a combination designed to drive costs down over time, for brands and ultimately for customers.

Learn more about The Climate Pledge and Amazon’s commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040.