Most fashion and footwear brands now hold more supplier environmental data than ever, from Higg Facility Environmental Module (Higg FEM) verifications to Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) programmes, supplier surveys and Scope 3 inventories. Yet emissions on the factory floor are not falling in proportion. On Tuesday 24 November 2026, LRQA and RESET Carbon, an LRQA company, will host a free 60-minute webinar on how to turn that data into improvements that are designed, funded and verified.
Across LRQA’s sustainable chemistry, assurance and supply chain work, we see the same pattern: brands have the information, but struggle to move from knowing where the problems are to fixing them at scale. This session is designed to close that gap.
Date and time: Tuesday 24 November 2026 · 9:00 a.m. ET / 2:00 p.m. GMT / 3:00 p.m. CET
Format: 60 minutes · Online (Microsoft Teams) · Free to attend
Register for the webinar
What you will learn
- Why environmental performance is now a question of business resilience
- How water scarcity, extreme heat, energy price swings and material disruption are reshaping supplier costs and sourcing
- Why more data has not translated into proportionate emissions reductions
- How to identify the suppliers where environmental and business risk overlap most
- What an integrated carbon, water, wastewater and chemistry approach looks like in practice, from benchmark to verified outcome
Speakers
- Dr. Siva Pariti, Business Director, Sustainable Chemistry and Materials, LRQA. Over two decades advising textile, footwear and leather brands and suppliers on chemical management, wastewater, circularity, traceability and integrated environmental risk.
- Liam Salter, Founder and CEO, RESET Carbon, an LRQA company. Works with global brands, manufacturers, financial institutions and industry initiatives to move supply chain decarbonization from commitments to implementation.
- Jothi Kanayalal (moderator), Principal Consultant, RESET Carbon.
Who should attend: sustainability and ESG leaders, sourcing and procurement teams, strategy and transformation teams, compliance and reporting specialists, and operations leaders at brands and retailers. Suppliers and manufacturers are welcome too; the Q&A will cover factory-side questions, such as how to respond when several brands request similar data in different formats.
Background: why supplier data isn’t cutting emissions
The gap is not ambition or data volume. It is the step between knowing where the problems are and getting improvements designed, funded and verified. Four forces are widening it.
Factories are drowning in questionnaires. A typical facility now responds to more than 24 overlapping schemes covering emissions, water, wastewater and chemistry, and between 60% and 75% of the data points requested repeat across those templates. Every hour spent re-entering the same figures is an hour not spent on a boiler upgrade or a wastewater fix. Innovation Forum’s 2026 sector brief on apparel and textiles likewise names data interoperability and weak data quality beyond tier 1 as the main brake on scaling supply chain programmes.
Regulators now want evidence of progress. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and the coming Digital Product Passport all push towards more transparency on value chain impacts. Disclosure alone will not be enough; brands need credible transition plans and supplier-level results they can demonstrate.
Issues are managed in silos. Carbon, water, wastewater and chemicals often sit in separate programmes, each with its own assessment, budget and owner, even though the same equipment and processes drive all four. Meanwhile, physical climate risks such as water stress, heat and volatile energy prices are already affecting production and sourcing choices.
Prioritising and paying for the fix is hard. Across hundreds of facilities, deciding where combined environmental and commercial risk is greatest is a serious analytical task. And once an opportunity is identified, securing capital and agreeing how brands and suppliers share the cost is where many projects stall.
Treating carbon, water and chemistry as one system
A dyehouse that upgrades its heat recovery also changes its water temperature profile, its chemical dosing and its wastewater load. Managing these as separate projects multiplies assessments and misses the combined benefit.
That is the logic behind NEXUS, an integrated environmental management programme for apparel and footwear supply chains developed by RESET Carbon. NEXUS combines carbon, water, wastewater and chemistry in a single process: onsite assessment and benchmarking against the ZDHC Water Benchmark, ZDHC Wastewater Guidelines and ZDHC Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL); facility-specific action plans tracked on the Made2Flow platform; and implementation and measurement so that improvements can be verified and linked to funding decisions. Learn more about NEXUS.
The webinar will show how this works in practice. Register now. It’s free and open to brands, retailers and suppliers.
How LRQA can help
Together, LRQA and RESET Carbon help brands, retailers and suppliers move from environmental data to verified improvement, including:
- Integrated environmental management through NEXUS
- Scope 3 inventories and hotspot analysis and target setting and roadmaps
- Supplier decarbonization assessments and supply chain decarbonization programs
- Supplier renewable energy programs for Asian manufacturing bases
- Sustainable chemistry and materials services
Contact our team to discuss your supply chain.
This article was originally developed by RESET Carbon. Read the original announcement on resetcarbon.com