That strategy seems to have paid off: revenue has grown 45% since 2019, according to Mads Twomey-Madsen, Pandora’s senior vice president of communications and sustainability. In that same period, he says, Pandora has cut emissions by 17% across the board.

“We can grow and become more sustainable at the same time,” he says. Adopting sustainable practices was a natural next step in Pandora becoming “future-proof,” he adds. “It’s not something that we did as a marketing play. We’re quite aware that many consumers are very interested in sustainable options . . . but it’s more something that we did to stand strong as a brand overall.”

Whatever the reason, the moves make Pandora stand out. And they have helped earn it the number two spot in the Corporate Knights Global 100 ranking, all the way up from 48 in 2025.

The fashion industry contributes up to 8% of global emissions, but a minority of brands are committed to incorporating circular processes. According to the 2022 S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment, which surveyed 70 brands in the textile, apparel and luxury goods industry, 44% of brands had at least one circular fashion program in place.

Pandora isn’t alone in its sustainability ethos. Some of the biggest brands in fashion have launched recycling initiatives in recent years. The German athletic apparel giant Puma, for instance, now uses polyester textile waste saved from factory off-cuts, faulty goods and used clothes to make new garments under the brand’s Re:Fibre program. On average, about 25% of Puma’s products contain recycled materials.

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

Inditex Corp., the parent company of Zara, aims to use only textiles that have a low environmental impact by 2030. The brand claims to have used 39% recycled fibres in 2024. It is also working to scale up purchases of recycled materials – such as fibre made from cotton-rich textile waste and polyester made from textile waste – through offtake commitments. The brand also has several eco-certifications, including the Recycled Claim Standard.

Kering S.A., the holding company that owns some of the largest luxury brands, including Gucci, also carries a Recycled Claim Standard certification. The company works with Econyl, a brand-name nylon made from waste products, and partners with start-ups such as Worn Again, which has developed the technology to create fabric from non-reusable textiles.

A steep hill to climb

Despite these types of initiatives – several of which are still in their infancy – the overwhelming majority of textile waste ends up in landfills. According to Boston Consulting Group, only 12% of global textile waste is reused, with less than 1% recycled into new fibres. When it comes to jewellery, recycled gold makes up a larger percentage of the overall supply than recycled silver but these metals are still being mined extensively.

Pandora mostly deals with silver, which makes up about 67% of the brand’s product volume. “The world is not very good at recycling silver,” Twomey-Madsen says, adding that the metal often ends up in the landfill through electronic waste.

Pandora’s big bet on sustainability pays off

It took four years for the brand to completely transition into recycled metals. The process required Pandora to convince its suppliers – 40 total – to source recycled metal certified by the Responsible Jewellery Council Chain of Custody standard. The transition will add an additional US$10 million to annual operating costs, which includes investing in new equipment for suppliers to establish a separate recycled-metal process from their non-recycled metals.

That’s a cost of doing sustainable business that Pandora is willing to pay, Twomey-Madsen says. The added benefit, he says, is that Pandora’s suppliers can now offer recycled metals to other brands, too. “It’s available now for other companies that want to do the same. And I think that’s something that you encounter in these circularity changes,” he says. “These value streams aren’t really established yet. So when you go first, you need to invest in making that happen.”

Ayesha Habib is a Vancouver-based journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve and Chatelaine.

The post These big retail brands are rallying around circular fashion appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The bill is the first such law to directly sanction fast-fashion companies for the consequences of their business models, which produce a non-stop conveyor belt of ephemeral clothing items destined for landfills. Globally, about 92 million tons of textile waste are produced each year. The fashion industry is the second-largest water consumer after agriculture and is responsible for about 10% of global emissions.  

France’s bill is a definitive sign of tides shifting, at least on the legislative stage. Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the country’s minister for ecological transition, described the bill to journalists as “a strong signal sent to businesses and to consumers.” 

The law creates a better environment for alternatives to fast fashion, but halting the flow of cheap clothing into landfills still necessitates a mindset shift on the part of consumers, says Alyssa Gauk, a communications lead with the activist movement Fashion Revolution. “Competing with fast fashion will require us to reshape our relationship with clothing and consumption altogether,” she says in an email. That means buying far less than we do now, making what we do own last, and supporting local makers, she says.  

For big clothing brands, there is a business case for producing more sustainably. A 2024 study from Simon-Kucher, a global business consulting firm, found that about 85% of buyers care about sustainability when making purchases, with 54% of those willing to pay more for a sustainable product.  

But even if many people want to buy sustainably made clothing, most of what’s available is too expensive for average consumers. Until that gap closes, fast fashion can be too tempting to give up. 

The meaning of sustainability in fashion can be hard to pin down, too. Gauk says that we should be suspicious of brands that use terms like “eco-friendly” without being transparent about what they mean. Even using recycled materials isn’t always a better choice for the environment. “A brand may use organic cotton or recycled textiles, but if the production process runs on fossil fuels or energy-intensive methods, the overall impact remains unsustainable,” Gauk says. “And when an industry as massive as fashion relies on these energy-intensive systems, the environmental impact is amplified on a global scale.” 

While there are eco-certifications to look for that can provide some ease of mind when shopping, such as Oeko-Tex, GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) or Fair Trade, experts suggest that if we stopped producing new clothes today, we’d have enough product to last decades. 

So what can we do with the clothes that exist now? France’s new bill is a legislative attempt to spur the necessary mindset shift among consumers while fostering a more competitive atmosphere to give smaller local clothing brands a leg up. The revenue from the added tax on ultra-fast fashion brands will go toward funding sustainable French brands. A blanket ban on ultra-fast fashion advertising includes promotions from influencers, who could face fines. Brands will be required to provide environmental data, such as carbon emissions and recyclability of products, to receive an eco-score. Those with poorer eco-scores will be taxed higher. 

Whether the bill will make a significant impact is yet to be determined, but its passing could make room for new ways to approach how we buy clothes. 

Ayesha Habib is a Vancouver-based journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve and Chatelaine. 

The post Here is how France is trying to fix fast fashion appeared first on Corporate Knights.