Google has revealed that it will partner with WWF Sweden to help generate an environmental data platform that will allow responsible sourcing decisions in the fashion industry.

According to Google, the fashion industry itself accounts for 20 per cent of wastewater and 2 -8 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions globally, with the potential to rise by as much as 50 per cent by 2030.

The duo says the new platform will use all data types in order to increase the accuracy and relevance of raw materials assessments. The platform will include a variety of raw materials, that will expand beyond the range of cotton and viscose of previous versions.

“It’s our ambition to create a data-enriched decision-making platform that enables analysis of the supply chain in a way that has not been possible before at this scale,” said Ian Pattison, Head of Customer Engineering, Retail, Google UK/ IE. “Partnering with WWF brings together Google Cloud’s technical capacity, including big-data analysis and machine learning, and WWF’s deep knowledge of assessing raw materials. Together, we can make supply chain data visible and accessible to decision makers, and drive more responsible and sustainable decisions.”

“Sustainability is a challenge that crosses industry boundaries, and we firmly believe that solutions require strong partnerships and collaboration,” said Kate Brandt, Google Sustainability Officer. “Our ambition is to fill fundamental data gaps by bringing greater accuracy to environmental reporting—ultimately moving toward more sustainable processes. By combining our technology, and with data inputs from many key industry brands and retailers, we believe we can significantly magnify this work together.”

“WWF’s partnership work with companies has always been motivated by the need to drive real transformation at the largest possible scale,” said Håkan Wirtén, CEO of WWF Sweden. “This project is an excellent example of how we can take valuable work with a long term partner like IKEA, collaborate with another strong WWF partner like Google to make that work even more powerful, and make it open source so that hopefully it can help with the transformation of a whole industry.”