Practices For Environmental Sustainability In The Italian Fashion Clothing and Leather Sectors: Outcomes Of An Empirical Research

The fashion supply chain, even if represents one of the most important economies of the European industry, is one of the most polluting industries in the world, being a huge consumer of water, electricity and chemicals, and discharging massive quantities of wastes to land. Despite this fact, only few contributions have offered an analysis of the practices adopted by fashion companies to reduce its environmental impact. This paper present an empirical study on the sustainability practices adoption of Italian companies in the fashion Clothing, Leather industries. The research has been conducted through an online survey submitted to a sample of 192 Italian companies, having respectively the 14 and 15 ATECO 2007 code in the AIDA database, with a response rate of 13%. The results have been analyzed through the statistical software SPSS, in order to conduct a cluster analysis and 6 different clusters have been identified. Companies belong to cluster 1 do not apply any sustainability practices, even if they are coherent with what they declare on their website. Companies of cluster 2 adopt some practices, but sustainability is not integrated into their culture. Cluster 3 is composed by companies that declare a high interest to the environment, mainly for marketing reason. This way, companies of this group represent the ones more misaligned and not consistent from the practices declared on their website and the one really implemented. Cluster 5 is composed by companies endorsing environmental sustainability as a part of the company values and a high level of practices implemented is reported. Last, companies belonging to Cluster 6 have the environmental sustainability as a strategic objective and implements sustainability practices in a consistent and coordinated way.