Pathway: See What Works

What changes when sustainability moves beyond a specialist function and becomes part of sourcing, procurement, and business operations? This session explores how organizations are redesigning internal structures, aligning incentives, and embedding sustainability into decision-making. The operational bridge. How leading brands are restructuring internally—re-aligning traditional procurement KPIs (margin, speed) with sustainability metrics so that buying teams and sustainability teams stop working at cross-purposes.

Bringing business alignment to life. A real-world blueprint showing exactly how they co-designed internal incentive structures so procurement teams, buying metrics (lead times, margin), and factory floors stay perfectly aligned on long-term climate and social goals.

Attendees will gain:

• Examples of organizational transformation in practice
• Strategies for aligning procurement and sustainability teams
• Insights into embedding sustainability into core business functions

Pathway: See What Works

When margins tighten and priorities compete, how do companies decide what still gets funded? This conversation explores how organizations are evaluating sustainability investments during periods of uncertainty, and what arguments are proving most effective internally.

Attendees will gain:

• Insights into investment decision-making processes
• Examples of successful business cases
• Practical approaches to securing internal support

Join Worldly, lead sponsor of the Cascale Annual Meeting 2026, for a brief welcome and introduction to the conversations ahead on the Worldly Stage.

Format: Panel
Pathway: See What Works

Explore what a genuinely comprehensive supply chain picture looks like across carbon, water, chemicals, waste, and social dimensions.

Format: Panel
Pathway: Lead What Changes Next

Dismantle the myth that supply chain data isn’t good enough for disclosure — with evidence from CSRD submitters and assurance teams.

Use live Insights Hub data to diagnose visibility gaps and social and environmental risk across every supplier.

Format: Interactive Session
Pathway: Lead What Comes Next

As environmental expectations continue to evolve, so too must the tools used to measure performance.

This interactive session explores the future of the Higg FEM and how environmental performance measurement is adapting to meet the needs of facilities, brands, regulators, and other stakeholders. Participants will gain insight into emerging priorities, provide feedback, and help shape the next generation of environmental measurement.

Attendees will gain:

• Visibility into the future direction of Higg FEM
• Insights into emerging industry expectations
• Opportunities to influence future development
• A better understanding of where environmental measurement is headed

Format: Human Library
Pathway: See What Works

Round 1: 11:20am – 12:05pm
Round 2: 12:10pm – 1pm

Transformation challenges rarely have one-size-fits-all solutions.

In this interactive Human Library, attendees will select the implementation challenges most relevant to their organization—from securing investment and building supplier engagement to gaining executive buy-in, aligning commercial incentives, and demonstrating ROI.

Participants will then “check out” industry experts and practitioners who have successfully navigated those same challenges. Through small-group conversations, attendees will hear real-world stories, explore lessons learned, and ask questions directly to the people who have turned ambition into action.

Designed to move beyond theory, this session focuses on practical experiences, honest reflections, and proven approaches that attendees can adapt within their own organizations.

Attendees will gain:

• Direct access to practitioners who have overcome similar challenges
• Real-world examples of implementation in action
• Practical ideas and lessons learned from across the value chain
• Opportunities to discuss their own challenges with peers and experts
• New approaches for accelerating progress within their organizations

Hosted by Lenzing & Policy Hub

As the EU moves toward defining new ecodesign requirements for textiles under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), decisions being made now could have significant implications across the global textile value chain.

Hosted by Lenzing and the Policy Hub, this interactive roundtable will bring together manufacturers, brands, retailers, recyclers, service providers, and other industry stakeholders to examine the latest proposals from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC).

Participants will explore the practical feasibility and implications of potential requirements related to durability, recyclability, recycled content, and environmental and carbon footprint reporting, considering impacts on product design, manufacturing processes, data systems, costs, and implementation.

Through small-group discussions and shared reflection, participants will identify practical challenges, opportunities, and considerations that can help inform the evolving policy discussion and support industry preparation for future mandatory requirements.

Participation is limited and requires advance registration – declare your interest here.

This roundtable brings together brands, manufacturers, and solution providers to address one of fashion’s most significant environmental hurdles: unlocking investments for energy, water, and chemical improvements in wet processing. Our goals for this session are structured to guide the audience’s understanding, emotional engagement, and ultimate action.

Declare your interest in participating in this roundtable.

Attendees will gain:

• A proven framework for environmental performance: Discover how operational efficiency via the Better Mill Initiative (BMI) and chemical and water stewardship via ZDHC complement and reinforce one another, helping factories move systematically up the environmental investment journey
• Actionable insights on the factory investment curve: Gain clear visibility into the environmental impact, CapEx requirements, and ROI of wet-processing upgrades, ranging from low-cost “quick wins” (such as heat recovery, process optimization, and steam leak fixes) to complex, transformative investments
• Collaborative, cross-industry problem solving: Engage in structured, mixed-stakeholder breakout tables with brands, manufacturers, and solution providers to actively co-design practical risk-sharing financing mechanisms and propose realistic reforms to restrictive buying practices
• A concrete 12-month action plan: Walk away with an immediate pathway to collaborative implementation, including the opportunity to join the next joint ZDHC/BMI cohort and establish a clear, achievable 12-month commitment for your organization

Format: Open Seat Debate
Pathway: Shared Action

Session under Chatham House Rule.

The industry broadly agrees that decarbonization must accelerate. The challenge is determining how costs, risks, and benefits should be shared across the value chain.

This highly interactive debate moves beyond traditional panel discussions by inviting attendees directly into the conversation. Rather than observing from the audience, participants will have the opportunity to take the stage, challenge assumptions, share perspectives, and contribute their own experiences.

Throughout the session leaders will debate the realities of financing decarbonization, from supplier investments and commercial incentives to shared accountability and return on investment. Audience participants will be invited to join the discussion, make their case, and introduce new perspectives that shape the direction of the conversation.

The session will conclude by identifying practical actions and principles that organizations can begin implementing immediately to create more effective and equitable approaches to financing transformation.

Attendees will gain:

• Perspectives from brands, manufacturers, and other value chain partners
• Examples of emerging financing and cost-sharing approaches
• Opportunities to actively contribute to the discussion
• Shared recommendations for accelerating decarbonization through stronger engagement models

Pathway: See What Works

Organizations across the value chain are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that sustainability investments deliver more than compliance. But where are investments in safer workplaces, decarbonization, operational efficiency, and supplier resilience actually creating measurable business value?

This session examines real-world examples of sustainability investments that have produced tangible results — from stronger sourcing relationships and increased business opportunities to operational improvements and reduced risk.

Drawing on perspectives from manufacturers and industry initiatives, speakers will explore what made these investments work, how value can be measured beyond traditional ROI, and the role that brands, suppliers, and collaborative initiatives play in creating the conditions for investment.

Attendees will gain:

• Evidence of where sustainability investments are generating measurable business and operational value
• Perspectives on how manufacturers evaluate the return on sustainability investments
• Examples of how brand commitments and financing mechanisms can enable supplier investment
• Lessons on the conditions needed to scale successful approaches across the industry

Format: Interactive Session
Pathway: Shared Action

A passing social audit isn’t the same as a safe supply chain, and the gap between the two is where your real social risk lives.

Format: Fireside Chat

Collecting data is only half the job, the other half is putting insights to work. James Schaffer and Kurt Kipka discuss how Worldly and Aii are closing that loop, from powering Aii’s Benchmark program with the Facility Data Model to delivering Aii-based recommendations facilities can actually use.

Format: Interactive Session
Pathway: See What Works

Move from Scope 3 target-setting to supplier-level emissions engagement — with real data, real customers, and a clear path forward.

Format: Workshop

Pathway: Lead What Comes Next

This participatory workshop will introduce Cascale’s systems mapping and strategy refresh and invite members to contribute their experience, perspectives, and knowledge of the industry system.

Ying McGuire, Cascale leadership representatives, and the project facilitators will set the context by explaining the purpose of the refreshed system map, the relationship between the map and Cascale’s future strategy, and how input gathered during the Annual Meeting will be used.Participants will then work in facilitated groups, with each table examining a specific part of the system. Topics may include key actors, structural barriers, incentives, mindsets, gaps, opportunities, and potential levers for change. Each group will identify its most important insights and share a concise readout with the room.

Attendees will gain:

• An introduction to Cascale’s refreshed industry system map.
• An opportunity to influence how the industry ecosystem is understood.
• Greater insight into the incentives, relationships, and mindsets sustaining current outcomes.
• Visibility into the strategy process and opportunities for continued engagement.

Format: Workshop
Pathway: Lead What Comes Next

This participatory workshop will introduce Cascale’s systems mapping and strategy refresh and invite members to contribute their experience, perspectives, and knowledge of the industry system.

Ying McGuire, Cascale leadership representatives, and the project facilitators will set the context by explaining the purpose of the refreshed system map, the relationship between the map and Cascale’s future strategy, and how input gathered during the Annual Meeting will be used.Participants will then work in facilitated groups, with each table examining a specific part of the system. Topics may include key actors, structural barriers, incentives, mindsets, gaps, opportunities, and potential levers for change. Each group will identify its most important insights and share a concise readout with the room.

Attendees will gain:

• An introduction to Cascale’s refreshed industry system map.
• An opportunity to influence how the industry ecosystem is understood.
• Greater insight into the incentives, relationships, and mindsets sustaining current outcomes.
• Visibility into the strategy process and opportunities for continued engagement.

Format: Interactive Session
Pathway: Capabilities Building

Fashion’s sustainability challenges are not only technical or financial. Progress often stalls because the actors who control demand, capital, production, raw materials and implementation face different incentives, constraints and time horizons.

In this interactive workshop, participants will take on value-chain roles within one of three real-world challenges: redesigning supply-chain operations, financing manufacturing decarbonization, or enabling farm-level raw-material transition. Working from the perspectives and constraints of their assigned actors, they will attempt to develop a commercially workable response to the case.

Participants will examine who is expected to pay, who carries risk, who benefits, and why individually rational decisions can prevent collective progress. They will then identify what would need to change—in business practices, incentives, commercial relationships, financial structures or wider system conditions—to enable a viable and equitable transition.

Attendees will:

• Diagnose how cost, risk, influence, and benefit are distributed across a value chain.
• Distinguish between a technical solution and a commercially workable implementation model.
• Identify the business changes required to unlock action: contracts, capital, demand commitments, data, claims, governance, or policy.
• Articulate a solution in terms of who pays, who benefits, who bears risk, and what changes.
• Recognize where bilateral action is sufficient and where collective or institutional action is necessary.

Sponsored by: TAL Apparel

Format: Decision Making Simulation Workshop
Pathway: Capacility Building

When margins tighten, what decisions actually change?

Through practical scenarios and facilitated discussion, sourcing, procurement, and sustainability leaders explore how organizations can maintain responsible purchasing practices during periods of commercial pressure — without sacrificing supplier trust, resilience, or long-term performance.

As trade disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, industrial policy, and shifting market-access rules reshape global sourcing, companies face growing pressure to build supply chains that are both more resilient and more responsible.This closed-door executive roundtable brings together senior leaders from across the value chain to examine how businesses can protect environmental and social progress while navigating rising costs, supplier diversification, and regulatory fragmentation. The conversation will explore how visibility, traceability, and consistent measurement strengthen resilience; where the industry is underprepared for emerging requirements; and what collective action is needed from business, industry organizations, and policymakers.

The session also marks the launch of Cascale’s new trade policy deep dive, and will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

Traceability has moved from ambition to implementation, but adoption of true traceability remains slower than many expected across the industry.

As the industry moves beyond pilots, it’s becoming clear that delivering traceability at scale requires fundamental changes to systems and ways of working across the value chain. Expectations of traceability continue to expand; from regulatory compliance and risk management, to sustainability claims, impact measurement, business intelligence and better outcomes for farmers.

As BCI looks to the next evolution of its platform (BCP 2.0), this presents an opportunity to step back and ask a more fundamental question: what can we expect from traceability, and what should come next?

The session will explore where traceability creates the greatest value, where complementary tools and approaches are needed, and identify priorities that should shape the next phase for cotton traceability.

Attendees will:

• Explore what the industry can realistically expect from traceability as adoption moves beyond pilots and towards scale.
• Hear perspectives from brands, suppliers and technology providers on where traceability creates the greatest value and where it falls short.
• Connect with other key stakeholders across the value chain to discuss the next evolution of cotton traceability and generate actionable ideas and insights.

Format: Panel
Pathway: Lead What Comes Next

For years, supply chains have struggled with a fundamental challenge: how do we reward good performance at scale?

As artificial intelligence transforms how organizations collect, analyze, and act on information, entirely new approaches to transparency, verification, supplier engagement, and decision-making are emerging.

This discussion explores how AI could help organizations move beyond compliance and reporting toward systems that actively incentivize better environmental and social outcomes.

Attendees will gain:

• Practical examples of AI applications across supply chains
• Insights into how AI could reshape incentives and accountability
• Perspectives on emerging opportunities and risksConsiderations for responsible implementation

The systems map introduced at the beginning of the Annual Meeting illustrates how climate risk, workforce wellbeing, commercial pressures, investment decisions, and buyer–supplier relationships are interconnected. This session brings those connections to life through the experience of one manufacturing business.

In this factory-led case study, Epic Group will share how it translates emerging challenges into practical decisions across its operations. Beginning with its work to address heat stress, Epic will examine how it identifies risks, establishes priorities, tests solutions, invests in improvement, and applies lessons across its factories.

The conversation will then look beyond any single initiative to explore what sustained resilience requires from manufacturing leaders—and how decisions made elsewhere in the system can either enable or constrain factory-level progress.

Rather than presenting transformation as a finished achievement, this is a candid story about the relentless pursuit of better and the leadership, investment, customer commitment, and value-chain collaboration required to keep moving forward.

Attendees will gain:

• A real-world illustration of how the pressures identified in the systems map intersect at the factory level
• A practical example of how Epic is addressing heat stressInsight into how emerging risks become operational and investment decisions
• Lessons on using experimentation and continuous improvement to strengthen factory operations
• A clearer understanding of how brands and other partners can help manufacturers scale progress

Pathway: See What Works

Unpack the most significant patterns from this year’s Higg FEM cycle and benchmark your own facilities against sector performance. We’ll also offer guidance to help you get started with the 2026 Higg FEM cycle.

Format: Interactive Session
Pathway: See What Works

The case for an integrated view of environmental, social, and chemistry data — and what it means for compliance and your supply chain’s future.

Format: Interactive Session
Pathway: Build Capability

Executives rarely make decisions based on sustainability data alone. They make decisions based on risk, opportunity, cost, resilience, growth, and competitive advantage.

This session explores how sustainability teams can better translate environmental performance data, Higg Index insights, and supply chain information into language that resonates with senior decision-makers. Through practical examples, attendees will learn how leading organizations are using sustainability data to support investment decisions, strengthen business cases, and influence strategy.

Attendees will gain:

• Techniques for communicating sustainability performance to executive audiences
• Examples of how organizations connect environmental data to business priorities
• Strategies for building stronger internal business cases
• Greater confidence discussing sustainability in commercial and financial terms

Format: Interactive Session
Pathway: Shared Action

Higg FEM data doesn’t stop at the assessment; brands rely on it to calculate their own environmental impacts. This session shares how Cascale is shifting from a reactive approach to data quality toward a proactive one: what’s already been done, where the gaps still are, and what we’re working to achieve next. Rather than a status update, this is a working conversation: starting with context and concrete progress, followed by a moderated discussion with brand and retail members on what would make this most useful to them, and an open floor for questions.

Format: Human Library
Pathway: Shared Action

Round 1: 11:10am – 11:55pm
Round 2: 12:00pm – 12:45pm

Policy expectations are evolving rapidly, leaving many organizations to determine what matters most, what to prioritize, and how different regulations connect.

In this interactive Human Library, attendees can “check out” one policy expert as a living book and join a small-group conversation on a specific regulatory or implementation challenge. Participants can ask questions, compare perspectives, and explore the practical implications for their organizations.

Take on a live investment challenge and decide how to deploy €1 million into the infrastructure and enabling ecosystem around cotton production.

Discover how strategically targeted brand capital can unlock far greater impact to create a multiplier effect for climate, nature, communities and supply-chain resilience.