(Image courtesy of Texintel)
By Shivam Gusain, Founder of Decypher
Every year, the fashion industry releases a fresh cycle of sustainability reports, and every year the numbers continue to rise.
The latest one is from Patagonia, and once again the reactions are predictable. Some people respond with despair and say that if a company with Patagonia’s reputation cannot reduce emissions, then what hope should we even have for the others. Others conclude that the problem is not the effort but the system. Some applaud the honesty and urge the sector to keep going.
Yet almost no one pauses to ask the simplest and most important question of all: What work was actually done, and what work was not?
Because behind every glossy report, behind every carefully crafted narrative about progress and setbacks, there is a reality the industry still refuses to confront. How many genuine supply chain decarbonization projects were carried out by the brands publishing these reports. How many real interventions took place in the places where the majority of emissions actually live? The answer is barely any.
Now compare that with the list of other initiatives that absorbed their time, money, and attention. How many new fancy materials were chased? How many experimental business models were celebrated? How many marketing campaigns were designed to convince consumers that a label, a color, or a new slogan could somehow fix a thermodynamics problem? How many pilot projects were launched for the sake of movement rather than impact? The answer to all of those is way too many.
And all of this was done while fully knowing that the bulk of the emissions sit inside the basic machinery of the supply chain.
The heat, the steam, the chemicals, the water, the kilowatt hours that drive the mills. So ask again: How many boilers were cleaned up? How much renewable energy was genuinely procured? How much heat was recovered instead of wasted? How much water was recycled? How much high-performance chemistry was adopted at scale? How much overproduction was actually controlled rather than endlessly justified? The answer is vanishingly small.
People keep saying the system is broken. The only thing that is actually broken is our refusal to shake hands with reality. If you continue to chase stupidity you will get stupidity. If you direct resources to the wrong places you will get the wrong outcomes. If you invest in things that are easy, fun, shiny or fashionable, you should not be surprised when the physics do not care.
And then there is the comfort phrase that keeps circulating in sustainability circles. We have all heard the line that you should shoot for the moon because even if you miss you will land among the stars. That sounds inspiring, but it is absolute nonsense. If your goal is to land on the moon but you miss, ending up among the stars is not a romantic consolation. It is a poetic disguise for failure. It is the industry’s feel-good patch, a way of celebrating outcomes that have nothing to do with the original objective. If you set targets, hit them. If you do not hit them, do not pretend the miss was a cosmic blessing. In fact, I would like to coin a more accurate version of the quote for our sector:
“Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will land in the marketing department which has never let reality get in the way of a good story.”
People also love repeating the line that progress matters more than perfection. It sounds humble and wise; but in sustainability, it has become a convenient excuse for chasing the very things that are extremely difficult to get right in the first place.
When you focus on solutions that are inherently complex, experimental, or unpredictable, you will only ever be able to claim progress because perfection is structurally out of reach. Yet there are entire categories of interventions that can be executed with precision, reliability, and full confidence in the outcome. The issue is not the tension between progress and perfection. The issue is that we choose work where perfection is out of reach, so progress becomes the only thing we ever celebrate.
The truth is simple.
Brands need to do the work that actually reduces emissions rather than the work they find interesting, exciting, or convenient. Do the work that matters. Fix the processes that carry the load. Touch the machinery you have spent years avoiding.
And here is my offer. If the industry truly focuses on the interventions that hold real weight and the emissions still do not move in the next few years, I will gladly apologize to everyone. But today, the numbers do not reflect a broken system. They reflect a refusal to fix the right parts of it.
Until that changes, we will keep getting the same results.
Shivam Gusain, founder of Decypher, helps organizations reduce risk and move with clarity in complex sustainability and innovation landscapes. His work focuses on cutting through noise, identifying blockers, and building the right capabilities to drive impact. If you’re navigating uncertainty or making decisions with long-term consequences, he can help you move forward with confidence.
