Blockchain technology applications: Enhancing fashion supply chain sustainability

Abstract

The fashion industry is considered unsustainable as products are made and disposed quickly causing damage to the environment due to huge amounts of water consumption, pollution, and large carbon emissions. To fight this growing problem, more and more companies in the fashion industry are required to show proof of sustainability which can be a very difficult task as this industry needs global supply chains for their activities, and these are very fragmented and have serious transparency and traceability issues. Thus, there is very poor data quality control, disruptions are hard to communicate and searching for data is very difficult as it often gets lost. A potential solution to these issues is the application of an emerging technology known as Blockchain. Blockchain is a distributed shared ledger technology where all data can be stored in the same network in a secure and immutable way and be accessed by every stakeholder in the supply chain. This article seeks to explore how Blockchain technology can be implemented to improve the sustainability of the production processes of the fashion industry's supply chain.