Danger to leather from “zombie data”
London-based analytics firm Planet Tracker, which specialises in providing financial decision-makers with data to help them make choices that will help the world “avoid ecological collapse”, has levelled harsh criticism at the fashion industry in a new report.
It published Zombie Data: Fashionably Fake Facts at the start of February, and said fashion brands and companies are (sometimes unintentionally) using information that is false, unverifiable or lacking in credibility when communicating with investors and consumers. It calls this information “zombie data”.
Planet Tracker said that the growing market for green products presents an attractive opportunity for the industry, promising substantial gains for those with strong sustainability credentials. But it warned that the risk to investors arises when a brand or company bases environmental decisions on “zombie data”.
One example it offered was a recent report from the Transformers Foundation about misinformation regarding cotton’s environmental footprint. This found that many commonly cited claims regarding cotton production were “too sweeping, unsubstantiated or oversimplified”.
Sometimes the original source of the data has long been removed from the internet, or is incorrectly referenced (if it existed at all), Planet Tracker said, but articles and reports referencing it remain and retain the veneer of being authoritative.
In conclusion, Planet Tracker said zombie data can lead to poor financial decision-making and significant losses for shareholders. To combat this, it advocated “a continued focus on full supply chain traceability and transparency to help generate the robust data necessary to finally put the zombies to rest”.
Reacting to the report, the secretary of the International Council of Tanners, Dr Kerry Senior, said the leather industry had “its own zombies” to slay and examples he gave were inaccurate references to hides having 3.6% of the value of the animal and to 17,000 litres of water being required to make one square-metre of leather.
Dr Senior warned that these misconceptions had found a home in high-profile sustainability metrics and there often seemed to him to be little interest in “killing them off”. He urged the leather industry to continue its efforts to compile “more and better data that we can use to stop these zombies harming our material”.
