What happened to the fight for living wages? Consumers and 'behavioural elasticity'; Circulose updates us; are journalists unfair to Shein?

Fashion loves to celebrate its “progress.” It parades recycled fabrics, AI-driven design, and sustainability slogans. But when it comes to the most basic form of justice, paying the people who make our clothes enough to live, the industry has gone increasingly quiet in recent years.

It’s summer 2025, more than a decade since H&M publicly pledged to pay living wages to garment workers. This was a promise it quickly abandoned, and no other brand seems willing to take up the cause.

Perhaps it’s naïve to expect fashion brands to fight for living wages, given that the main reason they produce their clothing in the likes of Bangladesh, Cambodia and Pakistan is because wages there are so low.

But what of unions? Less discussed, but with striking parallels to H&M’s living wage pledge, is that IndustriALL Global Union also once made a grand pledge to deliver living wages through its much-hyped ACT (Action, Collaboration, Transformation) initiative.

Launched in 2017, ACT was hailed by IndustriALL as, “a ground-breaking agreement between global brands, retailers and trade unions to transform the garment and textile industry and achieve living wages for workers through industry-wide collective bargaining linked to purchasing practices.”

Fast forward to today and there is little evidence of progress. In Cambodia, the flagship pilot country for ACT,  garment workers still earn a minimum wage of just US$208 per month in 2025. This is not the transformative outcome promised eight years ago.

Now, IndustriALL claims it has secured another “ground-breaking agreement [our bold] … to support collective bargaining for Cambodian garment workers, a powerful step toward better wages, safer factories, and real brand accountability.”

IndustriALL has also publicly criticised Inditex and Next for refusing to support an initiative they apparently helped to shape. But what exactly does “support” mean here? Does it mean funding, and if so, how much? We put this question directly to IndustriALL. So far, the response has been silence.

The Clean Clothes Campaign is equally unconvinced. A spokesperson told us: “Just like you, we have many questions. The ACT agreement was never published and therefore many questions about the strength of this agreement remain unclear for those on the outside. It is absolutely vital that wages of garment workers in Cambodia and elsewhere increase, because on the current minimum wage levels the worker cannot feed their family.”

What is worrying is that ACT appears to benefit everyone except garment workers. Brands get positive PR, global unions gain influence (and fees) but where are the tangible gains for garment workers themselves?

None of this sits right with us, and it feels eerily similar to the fashion industry’s countless environmental pledges where grand announcements and PR spin create little more than an illusion of progress.

It’s 2025. Garment workers in Bangladesh are still earning as little as US$113 a month, a wage no person should be expected to live on. This should trouble any of us who rely on the fashion industry for a living (and yes, that includes journalists). The troubling question is this: if major global unions aren’t going into bat for them, who is?

Why push sustainable options consumers have no interest in?

 A major new study from PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency challenges a (misplaced) assumption that consumers will change just because a more sustainable option exists.

The study introduces the concept of behavioural plasticity. Drawing on economic theory, this refers to the realistic proportion of consumers willing to adopt a given behaviour if it’s made easy and affordable.

And when you apply this lens, the findings are striking. The study found, for instance, the theoretical emissions savings from more sustainable fashion were very high.

However, realistic savings once behaviour is factored in were up to 69% lower.

That’s because many headline-grabbing behaviours, such as clothing rental, repairs, or even buying second-hand have low adoption potential.

For example:

• Just 4% of Dutch consumers said they’d be willing to rent clothes
• Just 23% are open to buying second-hand (this seems very low to us!)
• Clothes repair also saw extremely low willingness

In contrast, the biggest realistic wins come from:

• Buying fewer clothes
• Choosing recycled materials
• Opting for more durable garments

These are the behaviours with both environmental impact and behavioural elasticity (they are likely to happen).

The theory behind all this is best understood in the visual below

The paper suggests we should stop assuming consumer behaviour is infinitely malleable. It also suggests we need to 

• Prioritise high-impact behaviours people are willing to adopt
• Design systems and policies that nudge those behaviours, not just market the “right” ones.

It's well worth a read: 🔗 Koch et al. (2025), “Reducing environmental pressure through a more circular consumption of clothes” – Sustainable Production & Consumption

Circulose: an update

In our last newsletter we wrote about Circulose, the company formed from the ashes of Renewcell (which filed for bankruptcy in February 2024) which announced two new brand partnerships, with Spanish label Mango and fast fashion giant H&M.

Circulose was stonewalling our questions but they have since come forward with some answers. The company confirmed to Apparel Insider that its commercial-scale plant remains “in hibernation mode,” with no new production expected until the second half of 2026.

In the meantime, brands are being supplied from existing inventory left over from Renewcell’s final runs. It’s a rather odd state of affairs.

We asked about Circulose’s new strategy which is a licensing-based commercial model. They told us that rather than simply selling fibre on a transactional basis, Circulose now requires brands to sign multi-year agreements, paying a license fee to access Circulose.

The company explained: “Brands now need a license agreement with [us] to access fibre made with Circulose. The new licensing structure is best understood as a service fee model … The license fee covers use of our brand, our services in supply-chain integration … and helps bridge the early-stage cost gap until we reach full-scale production.”

Is it just us or does this seem an awfully complicated way of selling products?

They went on: "Circulose acknowledges the challenge: “It’s true that this model requires more strategic engagement than a standard transactional relationship. But that’s precisely what circularity demands: a shift from short-term purchasing to long-term partnership."

So far, Mango and H&M are the first companies to sign on as ‘Scaling Partners’ under this model, with multi-year agreements to integrate Circulose starting in 2026. But no details have been released about the precise nature and scale of their commitments.

Circulose also said something quite striking: “Our current view is that we will deliver new pulp during the second half of 2026. However, reaching that milestone requires that more brands step up - as H&M Group and Mango have done - to help us bridge the scale-up gap and make circular textiles at-scale a reality.”

This is quite a statement, and fair play to Circulose for being so open.

But it raises the obvious question of what if other brands don’t step up? And what does this reveal about the fragile, stop-start state of textile-to-textile recycling right now? 

Do journalists pick on Shein?

Do journalists target Shein unfairly? Do they give Shein a harder time than, say, European fast fashion brands? Marwa Zamaray wrote an excellent post about this issue recently.

She said: “So sick of the constant finger-pointing at SHEIN and now Princess Polly, while the giants in our own backyard get a free pass. Let’s not kid ourselves - the West invented fast fashion. Now they’re just mad someone’s doing it faster …

“Let’s stop pretending this is about sustainability. It’s hypocrisy, it’s discrimination.”

I think there’s a lot of truth to this. It’s arguable that without H&M (or Zara, for that matter) there would be no Shein. And yet it’s the latter which seems to draw a disproportionate amount of attention from journalists and regulators these days.

Is there hypocrisy and discrimination involved? Maybe the former, I’m not so sure about the latter.

The reason I say this is because while Shein does cop more flack than other fast fashion players, that’s just the way things go when you’re the new kid on the block. Scrutiny follows novelty.

Shein’s explosive rise has made it a lightning rod for criticism, not always fairly, but inevitably.

Would H&M take the constant criticism and media scrutiny if it also came with Shein’s sales and growth trajectory? I suspect so.