The Embassy of India, Paris in collaboration with Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) organised a webinar on ‘India-France: Market Opportunities and Areas of Cooperation for a Sustainable Textile and Fashion’.
The webinar dwelled on issues like environmental sustainability especially with regard to water usage, energy consumption, chemical loads, air emission, carbon emission, solid waste, and landfill, to circularity and social sustainability issues such as inclusivity, skilling, labour reforms and women empowerment.
Notably, importance of blockchain and traceability was also discussed.
Dr. Praphulla chandra Sharma, DCM, Embassy of India, Paris, gave the opening remarks, while Shubhra, Trade Advisor, Ministry of Textiles talked on policy and sustainability targets and ambitions related to Indian textile industry and sustainability.
She also emphasised on the fact that the Indian Government is employing different policies to improve productivity and reduce environmental pollution.
“Initiatives like PM-MITRA, which is establishing seven mega textile parks across the country, would enable embedding sustainability in the value chain and would make the industry future ready giving it a competitive edge globally,” she said.
Narendra Goenka, Chairman, AEPC said, “Indian apparel industry is very well aware of the alarming fact that without sustainable supply chains, the fashion industry will become less and less viable. Sustainability is now counted as one of the major pillars of apparel export business and a growth tool.
He further added that India offers to the world a complete value chain solution from farm to fashion giving us a competitive edge towards efficient implementation and monitoring of the sustainability throughout the supply chain through triple bottom line (TBL) approach involving three pillars of sustainability that are economic, social and environmental.
