The UK Textiles Pact’s fourth Annual Progress Update provides an overview of the actions taken, progress made, and challenges faced by signatories, between 2024 and 2025.
The sector's race to 2030
As the halfway point of the UK Textiles Pact approaches, the Pact’s fourth-year results reveal a sector pulling in two directions.
Sustainability teams are driving real progress to reduce impacts by improving products, materials, and processes – yet production continues to climb as many brands and retailers pursue familiar models of growth. In an increasingly volatile global textiles marketplace, these models are still treated as the default for competitiveness and commercial survival.
Ambitious targets
The Pact has two ambitious targets that will drive transformation of the textiles sector by 2030.
50% reduction in the overall carbon footprint of new textile products placed on the UK market
30% reduction in the overall water footprint of new textile products placed on the UK market
Headline results for year 4
For the fourth consecutive year, signatories delivered action under the Pact and made products better: shifting to less impactful fibres, increasing recycled content, and adopting more sustainable manufacturing processes. These efforts are paying off. Impacts per tonne of textiles have fallen, with carbon down 6% and water down 9% compared to 2019*.
Combined with the efforts of our reuse and recycling signatories, who displaced 1.12 million tCO₂e in 2024 alone, this represents marked progress.
However, these gains are being cancelled out by volume growth. In 2024, brands and retailers placed 17% more textiles on the market than in 2019, leading to a 10% rise in total carbon emissions and a 7% increase in water use.
Put simply: product impacts are decreasing, but they are being produced in such vast quantities that the overall footprint continues to grow.
Learn more about the methodology and data that powers the Pact ↗
Where progress is visible
- 100% of signatories are continuing to make improvements to reduce their products’ environmental impacts
- 62% of textiles being put on the market by signatories have reduced environmental impacts, up from 25% in 2019
- 16% of fibres used by signatories are now recycled, up from 2% in 2021 – outperforming the global average of 7.6%
- reuse and recycling organisations handled 210,000 tonnes of used textiles in 2024 – a 27% increase since 2019
- the volume of products collected by brands and retailers for reuse and recycling has nearly tripled since 2019, capturing items that might otherwise have ended up in household waste
- circular business models continue to gain traction. While they currently account for a modest 0.02% of total tonnages sold/ put on the market, business adoption is rising year-on-year, and 13% of used textiles reported by reuse and recycling signatories were sold through peer-to-peer platforms in 2024.
A Roadmap for the critical years
With just five years to go – and total footprints now higher than when the Pact began – a new approach is essential.
To meet this challenge, WRAP is launching the second edition of the UK Textiles Pact Roadmap: a plan for the climate-critical years to 2030. It calls for sharper focus, stronger alignment, and a decisive shift away from business as usual.
Building on the early groundwork laid by signatories, the Roadmap identifies where the greatest impacts lie through the introduction of a suite of indicators, while offering flexibility for each business to tailor its own pathway to the Pact’s shared targets, recognising the differences in business operations and strategies across the value chain.
“Our Roadmap is more than a plan. It’s a rallying point. It builds on progress to date, while recognising the scale of the challenge still ahead. We know what works. We know where to focus. And we know that collaboration delivers results. The next five years will define our success. Together, we can ensure that we meet our targets and show the world what’s possible.”