Sustainable Markets Initiative: Worldly CEO Scott Raskin Speaks About Redefining Fashion with Data

Sustainable Markets Initiative: Worldly CEO Scott Raskin Speaks About Redefining Fashion with Data

Article key points: 

• Worldly CEO Scott Raskin was invited to join the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) Terra Carta Roundtables & Exhibition in March 2025.
• The SMI was founded by King Charles III to drive private sector innovation toward addressing climate change.
• Raskin joined the panel “Artisan to High Street – Redefining Fashion” and discussed the current state of social and environmental sustainability in the fashion industry, along with challenges and opportunities to address them guided by data and insights.
• Looking ahead, Raskin emphasized the value of shared sustainability reporting frameworks and supply chain transparency to improve the industry’s impact and protect businesses against hidden risk.

Marking five years of the Sustainable Markets Initiative

Five years ago, His Majesty King Charles III, then The Prince of Wales, founded the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) to bring global private sector business leaders together to accelerate the transition to sustainable markets and combat climate change through industry transformation and innovative solutions.

In March of 2025, 400 CEOs from companies across the globe, along with scientific innovators and political leaders, gathered at Hampton Court Palace, near London, for the Terra Carta Roundtables & Exhibition to exchange ideas and inspiration. 

Worldly CEO Scott Raskin was honored to be among those invited to speak at the event. He joined the panel “Artisan to High Street – Redefining Fashion” joined by Sarah Woodcock, CEO, The Anti-slavery Collective, Caroline Rush, CEO, British Fashion Council, and Andrew Xeni, CEO & Founder, Fabacus and Founder & Chairman, Nobody’s Child, all fellow visionaries committed to transforming the fashion industry through sustainable practices.

Takeaways from the panel

During the 90-minute discussion moderated by Omoyemi Akerele, Founder & Executive Director of Style House Files and CEO of Lagos Fashion Week, Raskin delivered a compelling message about the fashion industry’s urgent need for transformation.

“There’s no economic prosperity on a dying planet,” Raskin emphasized, referencing an insight from a Worldly customer. This sentiment is central to the idea that protecting the planet and its people cannot be afterthoughts for any industry that wants to remain profitable into the future. 

Raskin then shared critical data points demonstrating both progress and challenges in the industry’s sustainability journey. On the positive side, the fashion industry has moved incredibly fast to find common measurement tools and standards towards social and environmental progress, Raskin said. The Higg Index, hosted and delivered by Worldly in partnership with the nonprofit alliance Cascale (formerly the Sustainable Apparel Coalition), quickly became a standardized framework to measure social and environmental impact of global supply chains.

Now, Worldly, the exclusive software solution for the Higg Index, has collected over 75 million data points from over 150,000 assessments from the fashion industry. This unprecedented amount of data and transparency into the apparel industry’s environmental impact reveals both encouraging progress and sobering realities, including these points:

• From 2019-2023, industry emissions rose six percent, but to stay in line with the industry’s decarbonization goals, they should have decreased by 16 percent. In other words, the fashion industry’s emissions in 2023 exceeded its carbon budget by 200 million metric tons.
• In 2023, virgin polyester alone accounted for half of industry emissions and material usage. 
• In the past five years, use of recycled materials has grown by only two percent; Only seven percent of fashion textiles are from recycled materials. Whereas, the industry needs to use 50 percent recycled materials and sustainable natural alternatives by 2050 if it wants to reach net zero emissions. 

Looking forward to 2030 and beyond

As members of the Sustainable Markets Initiative and its fashion industry players work toward their 2030 goals, Raskin left attendees with an important reminder: “Sustainability does not have an ‘on-off’ switch; it’s an iterative continuous improvement practice.” He also emphasized that the industry needs to shift its mindset from brands reporting generic impact figures from a small percentage of their suppliers to engaging with all their suppliers and making the most of primary data to find opportunities to collaborate for the greatest level of change and improvements in their overall practices. 

With eyes on the future, Raskin provided his perspective on how SMI members and others can move beyond small-scale, niche, artisan initiatives to create industry-wide adoption of ethical sourcing and craftsmanship, calling for: 

• Establishing shared sustainability reporting frameworks that track artisanal production’s environmental and social impact
• Securing cross-border agreements that incentivize ethical sourcing with trade and policy advantages
• Prioritizing the use of better materials to bridge the significant gap between current recycled material usage (seven percent) and the 50 percent target needed by 2050

“Fashion’s transformation won’t come from ambition alone. It requires data, transparency, and collaboration,” concluded Raskin. “The SMI and Commonwealth of Nations can be global leaders in proving, learning from, and scaling the impact of sustainable artisanal practices and innovation.”