As Good On You turns 10 years old, our team of sustainability experts shares what they’ve learned in a decade of rating more than 6,000 brands across fashion and beauty.
Has sustainable fashion and beauty improved in the last decade?
Sustainable fashion and beauty looked a whole lot different in 2015 when Good On You began.
Most brands had only just woken up to the need for greater responsibility over their actions following the Rana Plaza factory collapse two years earlier. And back then, you’d rarely find details about a brand’s supply chain beyond a country of origin label. But in 2025, more brands are adopting Digital Product Passports, sharing details of their suppliers and how often they’re visited for an audit, and valuing sustainability as necessary, rather than voluntary. And as for beauty, well, the industry’s sustainability is even further behind fashion, as our landmark report detailed back in 2024. But across both industries the tide is turning, albeit slowly.
Good On You’s team of analysts echoed this sentiment when we asked them what they’ve learned from rating 6,000 brands over the last 10 years. They’ve read countless sustainability reports, dived deep into third-party data to find brands’ inputs, and continually developed our ratings methodology to stay updated with best practices and the issues that matter most. So, amidst all that, what trends have they noticed? What are the most surprising things about brands’ actions today? And how much have things improved, really? Here are the 10 things you should know.
Not enough brands are addressing all aspects of sustainability
Kate Hobson-Lloyd, fashion ratings manager: “It’s not always understood how multi-faceted sustainability actually is. It’s very common for brands to focus heavily on one single aspect of sustainability, like planetary impacts, for example, and be less proactive on other things. I am, however, really encouraged by the numbers of brands who engage with their Good On You ratings and are working to adopt a more holistic approach to sustainability, improving in areas where they were previously lacking.”
Kristian Hardiman, head of ratings: “Many brands have been focusing more on materials and circularity in their sustainability efforts, so water in the supply chain is still poorly understood and managed, and chemical management is still as much of an issue as it was a decade ago. That’s because there is more help available for materials and circularity matters, and in some ways they are easier to address as they’re within a brand’s control. For instance, if you want to use organic cotton, then you just use it. If you want to use mono-materials, then you integrate them into your design process. Same for deciding to make things of a high quality. Whereas an issue like water management requires brands to work directly with suppliers, who may not always be collaborative, or the solutions could be really expensive.”
Small brands are at the fore of innovation
Noriko Kakue, sustainability analyst: “Brands are finding creative ways to bring a positive impact to the world. Not just by using lower impact materials and certifications, but also by partnering with other businesses, like Armedangels collaborating with a repair service provider. Or by adding new value to waste, like small brand Swedish Stockings collaborating with artists to turn tights into art.”
Becca Willcox, beauty ratings manager: “The use of upcycled ingredients in beauty is a cool innovation that we’re seeing more brands doing. It involves taking by-products, surplus, or waste from agriculture, food processing, or manufacturing and transforming them into ingredients for beauty products. The Upcycled Beauty Company, for instance, uses ingredients upcycled entirely from plant-based leftovers, such as blueberries, olives, and rice.”
Independent artisans are often missed out of sustainability efforts
Jess Ouano, sustainability analyst: “Handcrafted products created by independent artisans or artisan communities in an informal setting, which could be either at home or in community centres rather than in factories, are an important part of the global fashion supply chain. But the informal nature of these communities makes it harder for some brands to conduct social audits the same way they would in a typical factory setting.”
It takes a really long time to implement changes in supply chains (but there’s an easier way)
Kate Hobson-Lloyd: “Unless a brand has a high level of ownership over its supply chain, it can be very difficult to single-handedly implement meaningful change—particularly on issues such as labour rights in the supply chain. This has highlighted the importance of brands and other organisations working together to bring change.”
Trust and transparency are big challenges for the beauty industry
Becca Willcox: “Beauty brands face difficulties in identifying trusted sources for sustainability information, which can be contradictory, and knowing which topics to focus on first, ie materiality and impact—especially in areas where scientific consensus is still emerging, for instance in microplastics and ecotoxicity.
“It’s also much more complicated for brands to trace the ingredients in their beauty products [than materials in fashion], which often come from multi-tier, global supply chains. A single beauty product might have 20 to 40 ingredients and some are processed and blended so their origin is even harder to trace. Nevertheless, many brands are making good progress, especially for key high-risk commodities such as palm oil and mica.”
Packaging from beauty products is more of a problem than you realise
Becca Willcox: “The impact of packaging in beauty is proportionally greater than in fashion due to small, heavily packaged items—think multiple layers of packaging and often a mix of materials that are not easily recycled, like glass mirrors, pumps, plastic, and metal. Because it’s such an issue, there is lots of innovation happening, such as Tropic’s refillable Innerbottle—a medical-grade silicone balloon that can be sent back to the brand for recycling once the product inside is finished.”
Sustainability buzzwords mean nothing without concrete action
Kristian Hardiman: “Sustainability professionals have a saying: If you don’t measure, you can’t manage. I think sometimes there has been too much focus on baselining and targets and not enough on actual action. There are still many brands that set targets and goals, such as a science-based target, but do not disclose the progress they’re making to meet them.”
Jess Ouano: “Regenerative is the new buzzword in sustainability. There is a growing number of brands that talk about having initiated regenerative agriculture projects in their supply chain, but this often covers a very small percentage of the brand’s supply chain.”
Labour rights improvements are happening—slowly
Kristian Hardiman: “From a health and safety perspective, labour conditions in Bangladesh have improved, and that’s a positive. But countries including Pakistan are still a concern. The introduction of the International Accord will help assist that, and it shows that collective action from brands can make a difference. However, areas such as worker empowerment and living wages remain static. And there has been a slight uptick in gender empowerment, but these initiatives are still mostly in pilot stages. Brands are showing some interest at least, but it is still not enough.”
Jess Ouano: “Over the years, I have seen more brands claim that they pay living wages, but there are still very few that share their definition of a living wage or how they determined what a living wage should be for workers across their supply chain.”
More brands are tracing their supply chains, but there’s a catch
Kate Hobson-Lloyd: “The topic of traceability has been consistent during my years of rating brands, and it’s now more important than ever. Brands can’t manage or measure what they don’t know. I’m encouraged to see more brands aiming to trace their supply chains beyond the cut-make-trim (CMT) stage, and to be transparent about this. Traceability has definitely improved over the last few years, but there is still a long way to go.”
Certifications have changed the animal welfare landscape
Kristian Hardiman: “I’ve observed good progress with brands discontinuing fur and exotic animal skins. And the emergence of animal welfare certifications like responsible alpaca, cashmere, and mohair standards is positive. That said, leather remains a significant issue.”
