NEW YORK — Already, activations, climate salons, soirées and panels are plenty as fashion and wonder businesses inch further into Climate Week.

On Monday, Aesop held a climate salon at Brooklyn Navy Yard in partnership with the Urban Design Forum exploring design, architecture and the longer term of sustainable cities. Also that night, the Green Carpet Fashion Awards hosted a cocktail hour at 1 Hotel Central Park convening activists, models and alter makers, amongst them Cameron Russel and Livia Firth.

Apparel and textile nonprofits from the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Textile Exchange and Apparel Impact Institute announced recent strides Tuesday.

The Sustainable Apparel Coalition introduced an evolution to its strategy, which can move the organization from solely a tools-based technique to all-encompassing programs, aligned with industry peers.

“We stand at a crossroads. We are able to either remain passive participants or develop into catalysts for profound, industry-wide change,” Amina Razvi, chief executive officer of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, said in a press statement. “This isn’t just the SAC’s journey; it’s a collective endeavor. Your involvement is the accelerator for our shared impact. We’re not merely ticking boxes; we’re drafting the blueprint for sustainable industries worldwide.” Razvi was a part of a panel at The Nest Climate Campus held on the Javits Center.

Three pillars underpin the organization’s next chapter and mirror the changing tides in a world gripped by the climate crisis, including “combating climate change,” “decent work for all” and a “nature-positive future.” In all, the SAC’s membership spans greater than 280 fashion members including brands, retailers, manufacturers, suppliers, NGOs, academia and more.

The SAC also manages the Higg Index suite of tools and can reveal the newest update to its Higg Facility Environmental Module (Higg FEM 4.0) in November. Users can anticipate improved data precision, alignment with Greenhouse Gas Protocol and Zero Discharge Hazardous Chemicals and science-based reporting, expanded scope of environmental issues, and more user-centric design and audit efficiency, per the organization. The latter update is alleged to significantly reduce the necessity for data redundancy, meaning suppliers don’t must duplicate audits across brand partners.

Also on Tuesday, Textile Exchange revealed the latest version of its Preferred Fiber and Materials Matrix. Publicly available for the primary time, the matrix encloses updated human rights, chemical management and initiative integrity content for attire players to evaluate their sustainability performance across materials.

In a webinar held earlier this fall, Beth Jensen, the director of Textile Exchange’s Climate+ Strategy said the matrix takes a “broader view of holistic impact beyond what will be measured from life cycle assessment today,” in a nod to qualitative data additions.

Textile Exchange adopted the PFMM in 2020, which was originally conceived by Gap Inc. for its internal designers and product teams. The lifecycle assessment data uses Higg Materials Sustainability Index as one piece of information. Greater than 80 indicators were included amongst them qualitative human rights indicators, ZDHC and the Global Organic Textiles Standard.

“This tool just isn’t designed for any public-facing regulatory claims,” Jensen underscored within the webinar.

Meanwhile, Apparel Impact institute announced the primary grantees for its $250 million grant program supported by H&M Foundation, H&M Group, Lululemon and PVH, amongst others.

Grant winners stood out from a pool of 150 applicants and included BluWin (supplier carbon reduction initiative), GIZ (solar), Made2Flow (supply chain software), Precision Development (efficiency tool for cotton growers) and consulting firm PwC. The innovations are listed on Apparel Impact Institute’s Climate Solutions Portfolio which bookmarks credible emissions-reducing solutions within the space.