Abstract
Fashion is characterised by rapidly changing trends and consumption patterns which have led to complexities and dynamism of the fashion supply chain (SC). Excessive generation of wastes highlights the need for innovative ways to address unsustainable practices by feeding the waste back into the supply chain system. This paper reviews the extant literature on sustainability within the fashion industry’s supply chain to establish available sustainability practices to manage post-consumer textile waste (PCTW) at garment end of lifecycle. Four sustainable practices emerged from the review—education and engagement, recovery and redistribution, reuse, and recycling—and are central to a framework that shows the interaction of garment end of lifecycle practices and could the achievement of strategic competitive advantage. Our findings emphasise the importance for interaction and collaboration between consumers and retailers and further involvement of the entire supply chain. In addition, sustainability paradoxes were evident across the sustainable practices. To avoid this, for retailers are urged to shift towards cradle to cradle (closed loop) lifecycle supply chains. Furthermore, retailers should evaluate the practices they adopt by questioning their aim in the achievement of sustainability. We suggest that firms should consider the entire supply chain when adopting a sustainable practice and each agent’s role in achieving the overall outcome of sustained competitive advantage.
Highlights
Published: 9 March 2021At its core, the fashion industry’s supply chain (SC) is “based on the notion of continual consumption of the ‘new’ and the discard of the ‘old’” [1]
To address how firms can attain sustained competitive advantage, this paper builds on the work of Jia, Yin [38], that the natural resource-based view (NRBV) is an appropriate theory for understanding closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) practices
This paper uniquely focuses on sustainable practices at garment end of lifecycle and how these could result in sustained competitive advantage through the application of the NRBV theory
Summary
The fashion industry’s supply chain (SC) is “based on the notion of continual consumption of the ‘new’ and the discard of the ‘old’” [1]. This paper reviews extant literature on sustainability within the fashion industry’s supply chain to establish available sustainability practices to manage PCTW at garment end of lifecycle with the aim for firms to attain sustained competitive advantage. To address how firms can attain sustained competitive advantage, this paper builds on the work of Jia, Yin [38], that the natural resource-based view (NRBV) is an appropriate theory for understanding closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) practices. Sustainable development presents a higher level capability strategy to pollution prevention and product stewardship as it looks at how competitive advantage could be maintained and sustained indefinitely [42] In understanding these capabilities, there is increasing concern with the limited study of the PCTW at garment end of lifecycle and how it could point firms towards sustained competitive advantage within the fashion CLSC.
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