Tech-Driven Sustainable Fashion

Google and Stella McCartney Reduce Fashion's Ecological Footprint

Environmentalist and fashion guru, Stella McCartney has partnered with tech giant Google to understand fashion's ecological footprint. The project will consolidate data from diverse sources and use Google's machine-learning algorithms to analyze the information. The focus of the project is to understand the environmental impact of cotton and viscose.

The project will explore granular links in order to best quantify issues in the fashion supply chain. "This topic hadn’t come up in our collective consciousness until a couple of years ago really, so no one was thinking to be able to track emissions down the value chain," said Eliza Niemtzow, managing director of BSR. Fashion's ecological footprint currently lacks relevant and reliable data with which to scrutinize the industry. To overcome this, the project will rely on McCartney's vast experience in the industry to give brands a clear understanding of the impact of their chain of production.