On World Environment Day this year Swiss apparel industry leaders will come together to sign and launch the Kerenzerberg Charter on Sustainable Textiles. The charter provides guiding principles to businesses in Switzerland and abroad who seek to make the industry, and their role in, it more socially and environmentally sustainable.
The Charter provides 11 guiding principles calling upon business leaders to ask questions about their raw materials, insist upon transparency along the value chain, and continuously seek improvement in sustainability. It asks companies to take responsibility for how workers are cared for from safe working conditions to fair wages and worker development. And it calls on businesses to take responsibility for protecting the environment: to seek ways to combat water and air pollution, avoid toxic chemicals, strive for raw material diversity, and care for animal welfare.
Collaborators include Tobias Meier from Ecos, an environmental consultancy, and board member of MaxTex, an international association of companies active in the textile industry; Martin Klötli from Glärnisch Textil; Andrea Gerber from Nahwerk IDM; Philipp Scheidinger from Swiss Fair Trade; Susanne Rudolf from Fashion Revolution Switzerland; and Jeannette Bucher, CEO of Lola studio.
“Switzerland is world leader in the consumption of organic and fair trade food per inhabitant. Switzerland should also take the lead in sustainable textiles, not only in consumption per inhabitant, but also in the change of the textile and clothing industry to sustainability. The Kerenzerberg Charta can guide us to this way in collaboration with many actors,” says Tobias Meier, of ecos and MaxTex Switzerland.
"The visible beauty of fashion, disguises the invisible impact the industry has on the air we breathe. From sourcing onwards, we have tools today that can help us redesign our processes to minimize our footprint," adds Coty Jeronimus, of Tasklab.org.
Learn more about the Swiss Charter for Sustainable Textiles or download the charter and its 11 guiding principles.

Photo by: Timmy Memeti