NICHOLAS MAZZEI swapped a career in the British Army for a life in sustainability at the sharp end of the fashion industry. Now working in logistics, BRETT MATHEWS caught up with him to talk about fashion supply chains, the impact of logistics on carbon emissions … and Brave New World.
LONDON – I’m not sure how I got chatting about Brave New World with Nicholas Mazzei, vice president, sustainability Europe, DP World. This 1931 novel, written by English author Aldous Huxley in 1931, is one of those books I know I really ought to have read.
Consumerism is a central theme of the book, with all New World citizens conditioned to consume. I looked up a couple of quotes up after interviewing Nicholas. “Ending is better than mending,” and “more stitches, the less riches,” are two of the best known.
Sound familiar? As a description of fast fashion, both phrases are apt, and certainly far more accurate than some of the misleading language which passes for marketing in our industry. Mazzei refers to it regularly when he talks about the fashion industry, reflecting the insights Huxley saw almost 100 years ago. “The way we consume fashion now is quite a shift from where we were only 30 years ago. The idea of buying something to wear once and then throw it out would be seen as incredibly wasteful, but now it’s become a normal part of our consumer experience”.
I first met Mazzei when he headed the corporate citizenship and environmental sustainability team at Zalando, the German eCommerce fashion giant. We’ve spoken over the years about various industry issues, such as emissions, greenwashing and rapid growth, and his forthright views on fashion have often contributed to the debate among apparel sustainability professionals.
When he left fashion to take up a post at the logistics giant DP World, it felt like a loss to the industry, as Mazzei was always open about the challenges of addressing sustainability. It seemed like an opportune time to catch up with him.
Mazzei has taken an unconventional career route, starting in the British Army. “My first real job was as a British Army education officer for nine years. I focused on the training and development of soldiers and officers, but also served as a media relations officer in Afghanistan and Kosovo. I even had a stint liaising with the Northern Ireland Office on security and policy issues.”
He adds: “Private security or finance are the typical paths for ex-military personnel, but I was more excited to explore something different and hopped to into sustainability and fashion.”
After leaving the Army in 2014, Mazzei spent five years at BT and then with bankers Rothschild & Co in the sustainability team, before moving to Berlin to join Zalando as the head of corporate citizenship and environmental responsibility.
He describes Zalando, a company that while not large in the UK is a household name in mainland Europe, and has enjoyed up to 30 per cent growth for more than a decade. He says it is a fascinating company because of the way it revolutionised ecommerce in Europe and uses its technology to rapidly change and grow.
The days of a mainstream fashion brand hitting those kind of growth figures are at an end, the exception being Shein which has experienced major growth at the cost of more establishment ecommerce companies.
Factors that ended the growth era include the end of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and subsequent increases in energy prices causing inflation, which has particularly affected retail. In 2020 due to the pandemic, carbon emissions from the fashion industry fell for the only time in the past decade. Since then, emissions are up around 7 per cent.
On the issue of Scope 3 – supply chain emissions – Mazzei thinks “companies really need to start addressing these. We’re doing quite well on scope 1 and 2, but scope 3 is the vast majority that need to be reduced”. Such emissions can be as high as 99.9 per cent of the fashion industry’s carbon footprint and are therefore the elephant in the room for just about every major fashion brand.
Most have set Science Based Targets around reducing them but it’s highly questionable as to whether these targets will be met. Many brands are already moving targets forwards and there is a growing discussion on the issue of brands delaying their environmental goals.
What was Zalando doing on this? Mazzei says: “We were assessing whether we could make a net-zero commitment. At that time, we had scope 1 and 2 emission reduction goals but no scope 3 target, which accounted for about 90.6 per cent of our emissions. It was crucial to address this, but our leadership knew it would be tough. They wisely resisted making a blind commitment without a plan on how to deliver. As yet, they remain uncommitted to net zero.”
This seems sensible. Why make a commitment you have no obvious means of achieving?
And yet so many fashion brands appear to be doing precisely that. Net zero commitments have become the norm in the industry. Hundreds of fashion retailers have now signed up to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
Mazzei says: “Sustainability professionals often make a net zero commitment without first thinking how they will change their operations and then the reductions don’t materialise. Most apparel companies with net-zero targets are struggling to achieve them, and it’s usually because the fundamental business model hasn’t adjusted to meet the challenge.”
He adds: “They need to be thinking about manufacturing locations and developing circular business models. Companies have done well working with organisations like the Apparel Impact Institute to invest in renewable energy sources in manufacturing. Many are also now considering reshoring and investing in local, sustainable production, but they’ll need move faster to meet the 2030 targets.”
It’s hard to envisage any kind of shift towards large-scale nearshoring in the fast fashion industry. Many companies tried to expand using Leicester’s garment district but struggled to make it work, with companies such as Boohoo relocating production to Pakistan in recent years.
The mantra of many major fashion brands is that they can decouple growth from carbon emissions by investing in renewable energy in supply chains. This has always felt overly optimistic, especially given brands are unwilling to financially support this transition; often, the domestic grid is simply not yet geared up for renewable energy.
Is there an alternative way to manage carbon emissions? What about no-growth or slow fashion?
On this issue, Mazzei makes some interesting points about luxury brands which he suggests, have lost their way by focusing on growth at the expense of all else.
“Many luxury brands are struggling because they’ve shifted their focus to mass-market appeal. There’s only so much money people can spend on luxury clothing, which means if you really want to grow, you target a different market,” he says.
The other point, of course, is that by chasing revenues, a luxury brand needs to sell more and more products. This dilutes the luxury nature of the brand, reducing its exclusivity.
“It can diminish your brand value if you go too cheap,” he says. “We’ve seen this happen with fashion brands that aggressively discount, eventually the customer begins to ask why they were paying so much previously. Growth is possible for luxury brands, but slower fashion is a fantastic way to be successful without chasing volume.”
What about scope 3 emissions and reducing them? It comes as a surprise to some when they find out that logistics falls under scope three emissions.
In fashion, there was some controversy over this issue recently when it came to light that US outdoor brand Patagonia was using airfreight to deliver products.
Other brands such as China-based Shein use lots of air freight and it’s the biggest emitter as a shipping mode.
Mazzei says that, for major fashion brands, up to one-third of scope 3 emissions are logistics. This suggest there must surely be low hanging fruit here for brands.
He tells me: “Air freight has its place in the supply chain, and we have air freight as a part of our E2E customer offer. But to cut your emissions, switching air to sea freight reduces emissions about 90 per cent. Ships emit around 10-40 grams of CO₂ per km, while air freight produces about 500 grams per metric ton per km. Road is more intensive than rail, so the method of transport is the first thing you can do to make significant reductions.
“Our port in Southampton has a modal shift programme designed to encourage customers to get their road freight onto rail. Over the first six months we prevented around 6,300 tonnes of CO2e and took 2 million HGV miles off the road”
But what about speed? Airfreight costs much more than sea freight but fashion brands use it in some cases because it’s faster, and customers want speed, right?
Mazzei suggests companies get carried away with the speed issue at times. He says: “It’s not always about speed, it’s about delivering when you say you will. You can reduce your emissions by 80 per cent in the last mile by delivering to a hub like a Post Office. Sometimes that’s even preferred, because the customer might not be at home.
“I had some resistance around this at the time. People said, ‘our thing is next day delivery, customers want next day delivery’. But we know it isn’t about next day delivery. Shein doesn’t do next day delivery, it takes about seven days.
“Customers want you to deliver it by the date you say you will, it’s about meeting the expectation, and if we offer flexibility on delivery date, we can make it far more sustainable. When it’s needed next day by air freight, we still do that. It’s not about eliminating air freight completely; it’s about making the European supply chain more sustainable from end to end.”
Mazzei also believes companies can be more creative about how they package premium delivery options. They could be investing in bicycle couriers and electric delivery vehicle fleets. “There’s lots of options within the logistics aspects that actually are not that difficult or not that expensive,” he says.
What about his new role outside the fashion industry? At DP World, Nicholas says he is focused on ambitious sustainability goals. “We have a new Science-Based Target of a 42 per cent reduction in our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. In Europe, we have a target for a 50 per cent reduction by 2030.
“We are working on introducing electric and hydrogen fuel cell HGVs, with our first EV HGV on the way, and our first Hydrogen Fuel Cell trucks coming in late 2026. We’re exploring how we can move our whole own European road fleet to EV or fuel cell by 2030, which is an exciting challenge, needing a change in the way we operate along with new vehicles and infrastructure.”
He adds: “We are sourcing renewable energy through the grid and investing in renewables directly through power purchase agreements and solar panels for our warehouses and ports. I also want to make use of low carbon concrete and steel for construction, but because our ports are long term, strategic investments, the life cycle analysis of embedded CO2e for concrete means that low carbon concrete isn’t always better for lifecycle emissions. It is important we take that into consideration. “
We discussed the trend for greenwashing in fashion and the number of environmental claims which don’t stack up.
I share his enthusiasm for regulatory change on environmental claims such as the EU Green Claims directive and the guidelines instituted by the UK Advertising Standards Agency, which, if nothing else, will create a more even playing field.
In his current role, he says: “Sustainability claims in Europe must go through me, be based on strong data and it’s crucial that our goals are authentic. There’s no space for greenwashing. This is something reflected across all the regions and the Group, and we take the topic of green claims very seriously.”
Towards the end of our conversation, Mazzei touched on the future of logistics. He said: “I’m fascinated by the supply chain. Being part of the end-to-end process, from manufacturing to customer delivery, and making that journey more sustainable, is incredibly rewarding.”
