The U.K. fashion industry launched the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan (SCAP) at the beginning of London Fashion Week, setting out pledges to reduce the environmental impact of fashion through better material choice, reusing clothes and more.

The plan, announced by the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been agreed to by some 300 stakeholders, including retailers, charities and fashion labels.

The Action Plan includes a series of pledges that will evolve and go under constant review. The four focus areas include improving the environmental impact of the entire fashion supply chain, increasing awareness and education of sustainability in clothes, promoting markets for sustainable clothing and improving traceability along the supply chain.

Many of the participants have already set and started pledges. Oxfarm, the Association of Charity Shops, Salvation Army Trading and Texile Recycling Association will all increase the infrastructure for recovering unwanted clothing and open more boutiques that focus on high quality used clothing and new clothing made from recycled or repurposed items.

Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s plan to increase their Fairtrade clothing offerings, with the Fairtrade Foundation hoping for at least 10 percent of cotton clothing in the U.K. to be Fairtrade by 2012.

Those three retailers also plan to increase their ranges of organic clothes, increase take-back programs and support materials that lend themselves to clothing recycling.

Tesco is extended its supply chain tracing program to weed out cotton from countries that use child labor. Adili and Continental Clothing have also looked at their supply chain in order to measure and reduce the carbon footprint of products, and they will be promoting carbon labeling of clothes.

The SCAP pledges will be reviewed periodically starting next February.

Runway photo – CC license by Looking Glass