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Introduction
The textile and apparel (T/A) industry, as a US$2.4tn industry employing approximately 75 million people worldwide, is responsible for 8–10% of the world's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 20% of industrial wastewater pollution worldwide and the loss of US$500bn value every year due to clothing underutilization and lack of recycling (United Nations Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, 2020). These issues through the T/A supply chain have attracted consumers' increasing concerns and demands for sustainable products made under environmentally and socially sustainable practices (Hill and Lee, 2012; McNeill and Moore, 2015). Hence, it is critical for the industry to thoroughly address the issues throughout the supply chain and achieve sustainability (Oelze, 2017).
More and more companies commit to reducing their negative environmental and social impacts (Turker and Altuntas, 2014). However, the issues are too complicated (Köksal et al., 2017), and the nature of stakeholders, especially consumers' requirements for sustainability, is dynamic (Chowdhury et al., 2020). It is challenging for this industry to engineer a thoroughly sustainable supply chain and receive consumers' supports in the short term (Shen, 2014). Moreover, in a recent report, the State of Fashion 2020, the lack of meaningfully sustainable actions was emphasized (The Business of Fashion and McKinsey Company, 2020).
For the aim of better understanding the sustainability implementation process, researchers have conducted a considerable number of studies exploring the latest sustainable issues and investigating sustainability topic trends in this industry (Da Giau et al., 2016; Karaosman et al., 2017; Shen, 2014; Shen et al., 2017). Nevertheless, the literature fragmentally focuses on parts of the supply chain (i.e. apparel manufacturing, product disposal) or sustainability (i.e. the environmental dimension). There is still a lack of relevant research focusing on the whole supply chain and all three dimensions (environment, society, economy) of sustainability.
The issues in the T/A industry are interactional and complicated. It is essential to consider all issues regarding the three dimensions of sustainability throughout the supply chain when developing a sustainable T/A industry. For example, the use of hazardous chemicals (environmental dimension, textile production process) can damage workers' health (social dimension, textile production process), further reduce production efficiency (economic dimension, textile production process), damage brand reputation (economic dimension, distribution and sales process) and finally shave profit. Therefore,...