essay on sustainable fashion

News from the Columbia Climate School

Why Fashion Needs to Be More Sustainable

The pandemic slowed fast fashion to a standstill. Now as the world opens up and we are socializing and going places, we want to dress up again. But after living a confined and simpler life during COVID, this is a good time to take stock of the implications of how we dress. Fashion, and especially fast fashion, has enormous environmental impacts on our planet, as well as social ones.

Since the 2000s, fashion production has doubled and it will likely triple by 2050, according to the American Chemical Society. The production of polyester, used for much cheap fast fashion, as well as athleisure wear, has increased nine-fold in the last 50 years. Because clothing has gotten so cheap, it is easily discarded after being worn only a few times. One survey found that 20 percent of clothing in the US is never worn; in the UK, it is 50 percent. Online shopping, available day and night, has made impulse buying and returning items easier.

According to McKinsey, average consumers buy 60 percent more than they did in 2000, and keep it half as long. And in 2017, it was estimated that 41 percent of young women felt the need to wear something different whenever they left the house. In response, there are companies that send consumers a box of new clothes every month.

Fashion’s environmental impacts

Fashion is responsible for 10 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and 20 percent of global wastewater, and uses more energy than the aviation and shipping sectors combined.

Impacts on water

Global fashion also consumes 93 billion metric tons of clean water each year, about half of what Americans drink annually.

Cotton is an especially thirsty crop. For example, one kilogram of cotton used to produce a pair of jeans can consume 7,500 to 10,000 liters of water—the amount a person would drink over 10 years. Cotton production also requires pesticides and insecticides, which pollute the soil; runoff from fertilized cotton fields carry the excess nutrients to water bodies, causing eutrophication and algal blooms.

The dyeing process for fabrics, which uses toxic chemicals, is responsible for 17 to 20 percent of global industrial water pollution.

Seventy-two toxic chemicals have been found in the water used in textile dyeing.

Contributions to climate change

To feed the fashion industry’s need for wood pulp to make fabrics like rayon, viscose and other fabrics, 70 million tons of trees are cut down each year. That number is expected to double by 2034, speeding deforestation in some of the world’s endangered forests.

The fashion industry produces 1.2 million metric tons of CO2 each year, according to a MacArthur Foundation study. In 2018, it resulted in more greenhouse gas emissions than the carbon produced by France, Germany and the UK all together. Polyester, which is actually plastic made from fossil fuels, is used for about 65 percent of all clothing, and consumes 70 million barrels of oil each year. In addition, the fashion industry uses large amounts of fossil fuel-based plastic for packaging and hangers.

Less than one percent of clothing is recycled to make new clothes. The fibers in clothing are polymers, long chains of chemically linked molecules. Washing and wearing clothing shorten and weaken these polymers, so by the time a garment is discarded, the polymers are too short to turn into a strong new fabric. In addition, most of today’s textile-to-textile recycling technologies cannot separate out dyes, contaminants, or even a combination of fabrics such as polyester and cotton.

As a result, 53 million metric tons of discarded clothing are incinerated or go to landfills each year. In 2017, Burberry burned $37 million worth of unsold bags, clothes and perfume. If sent to a landfill, clothes made from natural fabrics like cotton and linen may degrade in weeks to months, but synthetic fabrics can take up to 200 years to break down. And as they do, they produce methane, a powerful global warming greenhouse gas.

Microplastic pollution

Many people have lived solely in athleisure wear during the pandemic, but the problem with this is that the stretch and breathability in most athleisure comes from the use of synthetic plastic fibers like polyester, nylon, acrylic, spandex and others, which are made of plastic.

When clothes made from synthetics are washed, microplastics from their fibers are shed into the wastewater. Some of it is filtered out at wastewater treatment plants along with human waste and the resulting sludge is used as fertilizer for agriculture. Microplastics then enter the soil and become part of the food chain. The microplastics that elude the treatment plant end up in rivers and oceans, and in the atmosphere when seawater droplets carry them into the air. It’s estimated that 35 percent of the microplastics in the ocean come from the fashion industry. While some brands use “recycled polyester” from PET bottles, which emits 50 to 25 percent fewer emissions than virgin polyester, effective polyester recycling is limited, so after use, these garments still usually end up in the landfill where they can shed microfibers.

Microplastics harm marine life, as well as birds and turtles. They have already been found in our food, water and air—one study found that Americans eat 74,000 microplastic particles each year. And while there is growing concern about this, the risks to human health are still not well understood.

Fashion’s social impacts

Because it must be cheap, fast fashion is dependent on the exploited labor force in developing countries where regulations are lax. Workers are underpaid, overworked, and exposed to dangerous conditions or health hazards; many are underage.

Of the 75 million factory workers around the world, it’s estimated that only two percent earn a living wage. To keep brands from moving to another country or region with lower costs, factories limit wages and are disinclined to spend money to improve working conditions. Moreover, workers often live in areas with waterways polluted by the chemicals from textile dyeing.

How can fashion be more sustainable?

As opposed to our current linear model of fashion production with environmental impacts at every stage, where resources are consumed, turned into a product, then discarded, sustainable fashion minimizes its environmental impact, and even aims to benefit the environment. The goal is a circular fashion industry where waste and pollution are eliminated, and materials are used for as long as possible, then reused for new products to avoid the need to exploit virgin resources.

Many designers, brands, and scientists — including students in Columbia University’s Environmental Science and Policy program — are exploring ways to make fashion more sustainable and circular.

Since 80 to 90 percent of the sustainability of a clothing item is determined by decisions made during its design stage, new strategies can do away with waste from the get-go.

To eliminate the 15 percent of a fabric that usually ends up on the cutting room floor in the making of a garment, zero waste pattern cutting is used to arrange pattern pieces on fabric like a Tetris puzzle.

Designer YeohLee is known as a zero waste pioneer, employing geometric concepts in order to use every inch of fabric; she also creates garments with the leftovers of other pieces. Draping and knitting are also methods of designing without waste.

3D virtual sampling can eliminate the need for physical samples of material. A finished garment can sometimes require up to 20 samples. The Fabricant , a digital fashion house, replaces actual garments with digital samples in the design and development stage and claims this can reduce a brand’s carbon footprint by 30 percent.

Some clothing can be designed to be taken apart at the end of its life; designing for disassembly makes it easier for the parts to be recycled or upcycled into another garment. To be multifunctional, other garments are reversible, or designed so that parts can be subtracted or added. London-based brand Petit Pli makes children’s clothing from a single recycled fabric, making it easier to recycle; and the garments incorporate pleats that stretch so that kids can continue to wear them as they grow.

3D printing can be used to work out details digitally before production, minimizing trial and error; and because it can produce custom-fit garments on demand, it reduces waste. In addition, recycled materials such as plastic and metal can be 3D printed.

Sustainable designer Iris Ven Herpen is known for her fabulous 3D printed creations, some using upcycled marine debris; she is also currently working with scientists to develop sustainable textiles.

DyeCoo , a Dutch company, has developed a dyeing technique that uses waste CO2 in place of water and chemicals. The technology pressurizes CO2 so that it becomes supercritical and allows dye to readily dissolve, so it can enter easily into fabrics. Since the process uses no water, it produces no wastewater, and requires no drying time because the dyed fabric comes out dry. Ninety-five percent of the CO2 is recaptured and reused, so the process is a closed-loop system.

Heuritech , a French startup, is using artificial intelligence to analyze product images from Instagram and Weibo and predict trends. Adidas, Lee, Wrangler and other brands have used it to anticipate future demand and plan their production accordingly to reduce waste.

Mobile body scanning can help brands produce garments that fit a variety of body types instead of using standard sizes. 3D technology is also being used for virtual dressing, which will enable consumers to see how a garment looks on them before they purchase it. These innovations could lead to fewer returns of clothing.

Another way to reduce waste is to eliminate inventory. On-demand product fulfillment companies like Printful enable designers to sync their custom designs to the company’s clothing products. Garments are not created until an order comes in.

For Days, a closed-loop system, gives swap credits for every article of clothing you buy; customers can use swap credits to get new clothing items, all made from organic cotton or recycled materials. The swap credits encourage consumers to send in unwanted For Days clothes, keep them out of the landfill, and allow them to be made into new materials. Customers can also earn swap credits by filling one of the company’s Take Back bags with any old clothes, in any condition, and sending it in; these are then resold if salvageable or recycled as rags.

But perhaps the least wasteful strategy enables consumers not to buy any clothes at all. If they are mainly concerned about their image on social media, they can use digital clothing that is superimposed over their image. The Fabricant , which creates these digital garments, aims to make “self expression through digital clothing a sustainable way to explore personal identity.”

Better materials

Many brands are using textiles made from natural materials such as hemp, ramie or bamboo instead of cotton. Bamboo has been touted as a sustainable fabric because it is fast-growing and doesn’t require much water or pesticides; however, some old growth forests are being cut down to make way for bamboo plantations. Moreover, to make most bamboo fabrics soft, they are subjected to chemical processing whose toxins can harm the environment and human health.

Because of this processing, the Global Organic Textile Standard says that almost all bamboo fiber can “not be considered as natural or even organic fibre, even if the bamboo plant was certified organic on the field.”

Some designers are turning to organic cotton, which is grown without toxic chemicals. But because organic cotton yields are 30 percent less than conventional cotton, they need 30 percent more water and land to produce the same amount as conventional cotton. Other brands, such as North Face and Patagonia, are creating clothing made from regenerative cotton—cotton grown without pesticides, fertilizers, weed pulling or tilling, and with cover crops and diverse plants to enhance the soil.

Textiles are also being made with fibers from agriculture waste, such as leaves and rinds. Orange Fiber, an Italian company, is using nanotechnology to make a sustainable silky material by processing the cellulose of oranges. H&M is using cupro, a material made from cotton waste. Flocus makes fully biodegradable and recyclable yarns and fabrics from the fibers of kapok tree pods through a process that doesn’t harm the trees. Kapok trees can grow in poor soils without much need for water or pesticides.

In 2016, Theanne Schiros, a principal investigator at Columbia University’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), mentored a group of FIT students who created a bio-design award-winning material from algae. Kelp, its main ingredient, is fast growing, absorbs CO2 and nitrogen from agricultural runoff, and helps increase biodiversity. With the help of Columbia University’s Helen Lu, a biomedical engineer, the team created a bio-yarn they called AlgiKnit . Having received over $2 million in initial seed funding, the start-up, based in Brooklyn, is scaling up for market entry.

Schiros and Lu also developed a microbial bioleather. The compostable material consists of a nanocellulose mesh made through a fermentation process using a culture of bacteria and yeast. Schiros explained that these bacteria produce cellulose nanofibers as part of their metabolism; the bacteria were used in the fermentation of kombucha as early as 220 BC in what was Manchuria and in vinegar fermentation as early as 5,000 BC in Egypt. Biofabrication of the material is 10,000 times less toxic to humans than chrome-tanned leather, with an 88 to 97 percent smaller carbon footprint than synthetic (polyurethane) leather or other plastic-based leather alternatives. The fabrication process also drew on ancient textile techniques for tanning and dyeing. Schiros worked with the designers of Public School NY on Slow Factory’s One x One Conscious Design Initiative challenge to create zero-waste, naturally dyed sneakers from the material.

Schiros is also co-founder and CEO of the startup Werewool , another collaboration with Lu, and with Allie Obermeyer of Columbia University Chemical Engineering. Werewool, which was recognized by the 2020 Global Change Award, creates biodegradable textiles with color and other attributes found in nature using synthetic biology . “Nature has evolved a genetic code to make proteins that do things like have bright color, stretch, moisture management, wicking, UV protection—all the things that you really want for performance textiles, but that currently come at a really high environmental cost,” said Schiros. “But nature accomplishes all this and that’s attributed to microscopic protein structures.”

Werewool engineers proteins inspired by those found in coral, jellyfish, oysters, and cow milk that result in color, moisture management or stretch. The DNA code for those proteins is inserted into bacteria, which ferment and mass-produce the protein that then becomes the basis for a fiber. The company will eventually provide its technology and fibers to other companies throughout the supply chain and will likely begin with limited edition designer brands.

Better working conditions

There are companies now intent on improving working conditions for textile workers. Dorsu in Cambodia creates clothing from fabric discarded by garment factories. Workers are paid a living wage, have contracts, are given breaks, and also get bonuses, overtime pay, insurance and paid leave for sickness and holidays.

Mayamiko is a 100 percent PETA-certified vegan brand that advocates for labor rights and created the Mayamiko Trust to train disadvantaged women.

Workers who make Ethcs ’ PETA-certified vegan garments are protected under the Fair Wear Foundation , which ensures a fair living wage, safe working conditions and legal labor contracts for workers. The Fair Wear Foundation website lists 128 brands it works with.

Beyond sustainability

Schiros maintains that making materials in collaboration with traditional artisans and Indigenous communities can produce results that address environmental, social and economic facets of sustainability. She led a series of natural dye workshops with women tie dyers in Kindia, Guinea, and artisans in Grand-Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire, and collaborated with New York designers to make a zero-waste collection from the fabrics created. The project connected FIT faculty and students to over 300 artisans in West Africa to create models for inclusive, sustainable development through textile arts, education, and entrepreneurship.

Partnering with frontline communities that are protecting, for example, the Amazon rainforest, does more than simply sustain—it protects biodiversity and areas that are sequestering carbon. “So with high value products that incorporate fair trade and clear partnerships into the supply chain, you not only have natural, biodegradable materials, but you have the added bonus of all that biodiversity that those communities are protecting,” she said. “Indigenous communities are five percent of the global population, and they’re protecting 80 percent of the biodiversity in the world…Integrating how we make our materials, our systems and the communities that are sequestering carbon while protecting biodiversity is critically important.”

The need for transparency

In order to ensure fashion’s sustainability and achieve a circular fashion industry, it must be possible to track all the elements of a product from the materials used, chemicals added, production practices, and product use, to the end of life, as well as the social and environmental conditions under which it was made.

Blockchain technology can do this by recording each phase of a garment’s life in a decentralized tamper-proof common ledger. Designer Martine Jarlgaard partnered with blockchain tech company Provenance to create QR codes that, when scanned, show the garment’s whole history. The software platform Eon has also developed a way to give each garment its own digital fingerprint called Circular ID. It uses a digital identifier embedded in the clothing that enables it to be traced for its whole lifecycle.

Transparency is also important because it enables consumers to identify greenwashing when they encounter it. Greenwashing is when companies intentionally deceive consumers or oversell their efforts to be sustainable.

Amendi , a sustainable fashion brand focusing on transparency and traceability, co-founded by Columbia University alumnus Corey Spencer, has begun a campaign to get the Federal Trade Commission to update its Green Guides, which outline the principles for the use of green claims. When the most recent versions of the Green Guides were released in 2012, they did not scrutinize the use of “sustainability” and “organic” in marketing. The use of these terms has exploded since then and unless regulated, could become meaningless or misleading.

What consumers can do

The key to making fashion sustainable is the consumer. If we want the fashion industry to adopt more sustainable practices, then as shoppers, we need to care about how clothing is made and where it comes from, and demonstrate these concerns through what we buy. The market will then respond.

We can also reduce waste through how we care for our clothing and how we discard it.

Here are some tips on how to be a responsible consumer:

Buy only what you need
Look for sustainable certification from the Fairtrade Foundation , Global Organic Textiles Standard , Soil Association , and Fair Wear Foundation
Check the Fashion Transparency Index to see how a company ranks in transparency.
Learn how to shop for quality and invest in higher-quality clothing
Choose natural fibers and single fiber garments
Wear clothing for longer
Take care of clothing: wash items less often, repair them so they last. Patagonia operates Worn Wear , a recycling and repair program.
Upcycle your unwanted clothes into something new
Buy secondhand or vintage; sell your old clothes at Thred Up, Poshmark, or the Real Real.
When discarding, pass clothing on to someone who will wear it, or to a thrift shop
Rent clothing from Rent the Runway , Armoire or Nuuly

“I think the best piece of clothing is the one that already exists. The best fabric is the fabric that already exists,” said Schiros. “Keeping things in the supply chain in as many loops and cycles as you can is really, really important.”

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Columbia Climate School has once again been selected as university partner for Climate Week NYC, an annual convening of climate leaders to drive the transition, speed up progress and champion change. Join us for events and follow our coverage .

I’ve been buying second hand and or making my own clothes my whole life and I’m 72. It makes sense, it’s cost effective and that way you can buy more clothes or fabric. Win win.

So r u saying it is more cheap this way?

yes it does im the youngest of 7 so i get hand me downs it way more ecofrindly to

This is an excellent article! I am writing a paper on sustainable fashion and find this article to be an informative and eloquent resource in my research! Thank you!

What has Fast Fashion done to the labor practices, working conditions and wages of workers in Asian countries and what can be done to promote more sustainable and fair practices in the industry?

Making your own garments from natural, and ideally organic, fabrics is one of the best ways to both love your wardrobe (because the color, fit and design is something that works for you, specifically) and you can incorporate Construction techniques that prolong the life of the seams and the garment overall. just make sure you shrink it first!

Fabric scraps can be saved and repurposed, as solid pieces or patch worked together. A scrunchie. A cloth bag. Menstrual pads. Potholders. Tiny cloth plant pots. Little travel bags to protect shoes, hairdryer, toiletries, to separate socks and underwear. There are high end men’s shirts that incorporate interesting prints inside the collar and cuffs, for example. Then there is the ministry of making quilts. Quilts can be sent to refugees who Use them for warmth at night and for walls by day. they don’t have to be elaborate or elegant, but using a little bit of love and creativity, you can create something attractive. Torn sheets and worn out clothes can be repurposed and using them as fabric to instruct young sewers And how to handle different types of fabric is another worthy use. Imperfect attempts could be useful if the learner turns out a dog bed cover, or little sweaters for those dogs that get cold all the time. Animal shelters are usually very happy to receive these kinds of things.

Sewers can meet together for fabric swaps in the same way that people sometimes get together to do wardrobe swaps. That might be that someone else is done with the exact fabric that would be awesome to mix with something that you have left over.

very interesting. please share with us

Best post. Good to see content like this.

your information is very helpfull.

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Fashion for the Earth

What is sustainable fashion.

Fast fashion has completely revolutionized the apparel industry, but not for the better. Behind every piece of clothing in a store, there is an industry stripping the Earth of its limited resources and exploiting the labor force that works in its garment factories. Tremendous waste characterizes this industry as it depletes healthy soil, contaminates fresh water sources, pollutes the air we breathe, defiles our oceans, destroys forests and damages eco-systems and the health of their biodiversity.

Sustainable fashion refers to a clothing supply chain that is ecologically and socially responsible. It aims to reorient the industry and consumers away from the fast fashion model and toward sustainable practices in sourcing, production, distribution, marketing, and consumption.

GET THE FACTS

The fashion industry produces 100 billion garments a year and 87% ( 40 million tons ) end up in a landfill where they smolder and pollute the air or an incinerator.
Only 1% of all discarded clothing is actually recycled .
The average person today buys 60 percent more items of clothing than they did 15 years ago, but keep them for only half as long . The average garment may be worn as few as ten times before disposal .
The apparel industry is responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions – the same as the countries of Germany, France and the U.K. combined. Unchecked, fashion production would account for 26% of all carbon emissions by 2050.
Fashion is one of the most polluting of all industries. Clothing is manufactured with highly toxic dyes and heavy metals that are flushed into clean water streams, rivers and aquifers where they sicken people and animals, harm ecosystems, and cause biodiversity loss .
The industry razes 150 million trees for cellulosic fabrics . Cattle grazing has contributed to deforestation in the Amazon and the leather produced from that region has been traced to global fashion brands’ shoes and bags.
Non-organic cotton farming heavily depletes and degrades soil. It is one of the world’s most pesticide intensive crops . These affect the health of farmers and populations nearby. The toxic farm runoff contaminates fresh waters, wetlands and aquifers and threatens biodiversity and eco-systems.
69% of all clothing is made partially or entirely of synthetic fibers such as polyester which is a crude oil derivative. Petroleum is a non-renewable resource with significant negative impacts on the earth .
Up to 40% of fashion’s carbon emissions are from the production of polyester and polyester production is expected to grow by 47% over the next 10 years.
Washing our synthetic clothing accounts for 35% of all microplastics in the ocean making them the largest source of microplastic pollution in the world’s oceans. Microplastics infiltrate the food chain and, in a study in the Netherlands in March 2022, microplastics were found in the blood of 80% of those tested, half of which were PET (polyethylene terephthalate), the plastic material found in clothing.
Clothing production has doubled since 2000 and with a shifting population and consumption patterns, the fast fashion industry is expected to continue to grow . By 2030 , one estimate suggests that clothing consumption will grow 63% along with a rise since 2015 of 2.4 billion people into the global middle class, and a recent report estimated the world is on track to triple clothing production by 2050.
The true cost of fast fashion’s cheap clothing is extracted from the industry’s factory garment workers. Workers are paid less than the minimum wage in countries in the global south which does not nearly constitute a “living” wage.
In order for true recycling to take place, clothing must be collected, sorted and distributed to recyclers. These systems are in their infancy . Sorting is still done by hand . And while there are innovative technologies that can break down the fabric of used garments to make new clothing, many await business investment to scale their systems to the colossal size necessary. Fully scaled, however, these technologies could drive 80% circularity in the fashion industry.
Most major industries are highly regulated. But the fashion industry, one of the largest manufacturing industries on the planet, is almost entirely unregulated .

(credit: https://www.bycurated.com/)

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Consumers have the power to change the trajectory of fast fashion. Here are a few important things you can do:

Educate yourself about sustainable clothing.
Buy less and shop for quality over quantity.
Choose natural materials – organic cotton, linen, or hemp.
Buy 100% recycled fabrics – 100% recycled polyester, viscose (rayon), etc.
Research brands to identify those that are ethical and practice transparency and sustainability.
Post a picture of yourself wearing a sustainable garment, explaining its attributes and why you like it. Tag us on social media !
Choose brands that are manufactured in their own community and connected to the place, people behind them, local economy, and environment.
Buy secondhand clothing.
Swap clothes with a clothes swap group or start a swap yourself.
Learn how to repair your clothes yourself. The longer clothes are kept, the lower their emissions footprint.

How To Swap For The Earth

How To Sustainably Shop for Your Clothes

How to Care for Your Clothes

How to Create a Capsule Collection

MY PLANET, MY CLOSET

‘My Planet, My Closet’ is a project designed to create a dialogue around sustainable fashion and change the prevailing mindset around shopping. ‘My Planet, My Closet’ is a play on the typical fast fashion hauls circulating on social media — but with a twist.

EARTHDAY.ORG invites you to inspire others by sending us a video about your sustainable clothing that we will showcase across our platforms. Read below how to answer our collective call to action!

Find Some Inspiration

FASHION FOR THE EARTH AMBASSADORS

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Responsible Fashion

Redefining ‘Sustainable Fashion’

At its heart, the term, which can leave us feeling as if we’re chasing an impossible ideal, is a contradiction.

By Vanessa Friedman

In 2009, the Danish Fashion Institute held one of the first sustainable fashion summits in Copenhagen, just around the time of the United Nations’ COP15 summit. This was back when everyone thought it was funny to make jokes about green being the new black, and most people thought “eco” and “vegan” and “organic” all meant kind of the same thing, and if any major fashion companies even had chief sustainability officers, they were based in tiny rooms many floors and winding corridors away from the heart of the C-suite.

How things have changed.

Now pretty much all fashion brands, from the mass market to luxury, swear that they put sustainability at the heart of their strategic plans. On almost all of their websites are E.S.G. (environmental, social and governance) reports the size of small books. Chief executives are clamoring to talk about how they are evolving their businesses to combat climate change. Pledges to reach carbon neutrality abound.

In 2018, the U.N.F.C.C.C. (the U.N. climate change body) unveiled the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate action, with its science-based targets for the fashion industry, including reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Last year, at COP26 in Glasgow , the group updated it to reflect a need to halve emissions by 2030; currently, about 150 brands and supporting organizations have signed on .

It is similar in aim but unrelated to the Fashion Pact, created in 2019 by Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, and François-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of Kering, which is itself sort of related to the “C.E.O. Carbon Neutral Challenge” issued the same year by Marco Bizzarri, the chief executive of Gucci (which is owned by Kering).

Then there’s the Fashion Taskforce , chaired by the former YOOX Net-a-Porter chief executive Federico Marchetti and part of the Sustainable Markets Initiative created by Prince Charles. Just last month, the group issued a “Regenerative Fashion Manifesto,” along with plans for a program in the Himalayas to create a regenerative farm for silk, cotton and cashmere.

Yet for every development suggesting a serious commitment by industry and government to at least come up with a plan for systemic change (and a time frame for it), there’s another that makes real sustainability, when it comes to fashion, seem as far away as ever. “Greenwashing” is still an ever-present issue, so much so the European Union is about to address it, with its “Initiative on Substantiating Green Claims,” which will be published later this year and essentially requires companies to back up such claims as “green” and “eco-friendly” with recognized third-party methodology.

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What Needs to Happen to Tackle Fashion’s Climate Impact

Millions of pieces of clothing lying in the middle of the desert are burned and turned into ash.

O n Sept. 17, on the heels of New York Fashion Week, Climate Week saw more than 70,000 people marched in the streets of Manhattan demanding the end of fossil fuel industries and climate justice at scale. This was in stark contrast to the shows on the runway, where collections were presented without the slightest acknowledgement of the increasing signs of our ongoing climate emergency— some as recent as a week before Fashion Week began, with the floods in Libya killing thousands of people and displacing hundreds of thousands.

Despite Fashion Week’s dreadful silence regarding one of today’s most pressing existential issues, shows, including luxury fashion brand Coach , were interrupted by climate protests and signs calling for the end of animal exploitation (also implicated in greenhouse gas emissions). This resulted in protestors being violently snatched by men in black and kicked out of venues.

Is fashion a reflection of a larger denial of and apathy towards the reality of the climate crisis, or is the industry, as fashion critic Cathy Horyn writes in The Cut , “halted into a paralysis?”

The consensus seems to be that fashion executives aren’t visibly addressing the climate crisis. When speaking with creative directors, designers, and fashion industry professionals, there seems to be a shared fear amongst them: A fear of “getting canceled” for not doing the right thing—or for not doing enough when it comes to addressing climate issues. But visibly or not, the question remains: Are they anxious enough about the scientific consensus that in less than six years , without a massive reduction in carbon emissions, our world will begin to tip into a chain of ecosystem collapse?

As a climate activist, I have worked since the early aughts to provide access to crucial information regarding climate justice in the fashion industry and beyond through my organization Slow Factory. Through our work, we have observed that there is an undeniable collective anxiety that seems to exist only on the surface of the fashion industry. And while the fashion industry is filled with promises and good intentions, with a few exceptions, the overall trajectory of fashion is one of business as usual.

Read More: You Might Want to Think Twice About Clothing Brands That Push Rental, Resale, and Recycling

On the one hand, lack of transparency and lack of clear data remain an issue. But more fundamentally there seems to be a lack of perspective in the fashion industry as a whole: stakeholders operate in narrow tunnel vision goal-oriented frameworks that aren’t broad enough to perceive the entire system in question. The industry is made up of complex decentralized systems that have a plethora of human rights issues and environmental impacts particularly around chemical dyes and textile waste. Businesses, however, have a hard time making decisions that would impact the overall system because they don’t have a clear overview of it. Instead, decisions are made with laser-focused precision on certain parts of the industry, but limited impact to the whole. Currently, bridging the gap between intention and action relies on adjacent non-profits and institutions such as Fashion for Good, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), and the Apparel Impact Institute—all three of which are not collaborating closely enough to problem solve and have competing agendas. The proposed Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act (also known as the Fashion Act) also makes many promises to reduce emissions, but that depends not only on brands and their C-Suite’s endorsement. It also relies on a plethora of other actors (producers, manufacturers, marketers, and other executive decision makers) that need to work together towards shared goals and establish clear milestones.

How can the fashion industry, known for its fierce competitiveness, reach a collective agreement, share knowledge and data, and have enough incentive to collaborate in order to reduce carbon emissions? Especially when the general reaction on social media tends to lean into despair and doubt that these harmful systems of overproduction and exploitation of human labor can’t be transformed at scale in time.

Like any good relationship, we need to start communicating. The fashion industry is large, complex, and touches on so many global systems—from agriculture, animal husbandry, metals, and mining to global transportation, supply chains, pulp and paper, manufacturing, plastics and fossil fuels, retail and consumer goods—that it creates a microcosm of the entire global economy. Some of these industries are working in tandem with each other—and some are not aware that they must be. Companies and even departments continue to operate in silos, and although the issues and solutions are systemic, brands seldom meet to discuss shared climate goals unless they are on stage at conferences, making promises to appease their customer base with often dubious follow-through.

Ignorance, then, becomes a sinister bliss, and downplaying sustainability seems to be the norm in fashion—as though the elephant in the room was not big enough, loud enough, interrupting pristine fashion shows enough. But in this vast system of complexity where the long-term negative effects will be felt by all (and the offenders are only concerned with short-term profit), who will be shouldering and fronting the financial commitment required to fund systemic change? And better yet, how can we measure impact within the fashion industry when most of the data points aren’t traceable and can’t seem to agree on sustainable standards?

A 2018 report co-authored by Fashion for Good and Apparel Impact Institute estimates that the systemic change within the fashion industry required to address the climate emergency will cost $1 trillion. This will require the biggest offenders and players in the industry to collaborate and invest in solutions.

Solutions are starting to get underway. Measuring impact and decarbonization solutions that move beyond clean tech and towards processes within the industry has recently inspired multiple players to raise funds to support necessary innovation in the industry. This includes replacing fossil fuel-based ones such as polyester, acrylic with new materials such as fiber derived from recycled plastic bottles. There are also initiatives and frameworks in fashion embracing a total carbon reduction across the supply chain, such as the UNFCCC Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action , and the Fashion Pact launched in 2019 as a mission given to Kering Chairman and CEO, François-Henri Pinault by French President, Emmanuel Macron, with dozens of global fashion signatories.

Read More: Stella McCartney Is Changing Fashion From Within

But overall the industry is far away from meeting any science-based emissions targets, so further efforts are necessary. The Fashion Act, for instance, would require fashion companies to be responsible for their entire supply chains. Slow Factory has also developed its own context-specific framework called the Sustainable Standard, which would force fashion brands to consider the emissions and human rights effects of their operations and their waste, reusing their deadstock materials including unwanted and unsold goods.

So far, a few funds have emerged focusing on financing climate-informed solutions in the fashion industry. For example, the Slow Factory Fund for Systemic Change is now raising 0.01% of these required funds—$100 million—to invest in socially responsible climate justice solutions. It is the only fund unifying goals of emissions reduction, human rights, and waste circularity. Apparel Impact Institute’s $250 million Fashion Climate Fund aims for incremental change across the fashion supply chain to reduce emissions. Both of these funds are examples of initiatives that represent clear investments in a shared future, leveraging philanthropic and venture funding sources to accelerate climate innovation.

If fashion executives care and can act fast enough to invest in solutions, we can achieve true traceability, work across departments, measure impact, and reflect the times the industry exists in.

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Essay on Sustainable Fashion

Students are often asked to write an essay on Sustainable Fashion in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Sustainable Fashion

What is sustainable fashion.

Sustainable fashion means making clothes in a way that is good for the environment and people. It’s about using materials that don’t harm the earth and making sure workers are treated fairly. This kind of fashion tries to reduce waste and pollution from making and throwing away clothes.

Why is it Important?

It’s important because the fashion industry creates a lot of pollution and waste. By choosing sustainable fashion, we help protect our planet. It also ensures that people making our clothes work in safe conditions and get fair pay.

How to Support Sustainable Fashion

You can support sustainable fashion by buying less and choosing better quality items that last longer. Look for brands that care about the environment and their workers. Also, recycling and donating old clothes instead of throwing them away helps reduce waste.

250 Words Essay on Sustainable Fashion

Sustainable fashion is about making clothes in a way that is good for the environment and people. It means using materials that do not harm the earth and making sure the people who make the clothes are treated fairly and work in safe conditions.

Fashion is a big industry that can harm our planet. It uses a lot of water, creates waste, and sometimes uses chemicals that are bad for the earth. Sustainable fashion tries to fix these problems by being more careful about how clothes are made and what they are made of.

Materials Matter

Sustainable fashion uses materials that are better for the environment. This includes organic cotton, which doesn’t use harmful pesticides, and recycled materials, which help reduce waste. These materials are kinder to our planet and help keep it healthy.

Helping People Too

Sustainable fashion also looks after the people making the clothes. It makes sure they have safe places to work and are paid fairly. This is important because everyone deserves to be treated well at their job.

How You Can Help

You can help by choosing to buy clothes from companies that care about sustainable fashion. Look for clothes made from eco-friendly materials and companies that treat their workers well. By making these choices, you can help our planet and the people on it.

500 Words Essay on Sustainable Fashion

Sustainable fashion is about making clothes in a way that is kind to our planet and the people who live on it. It means creating clothing that uses less water, less energy, and fewer resources. It also means treating the people who make our clothes fairly, giving them good working conditions and fair pay. Sustainable fashion is important because the way we make and use clothes right now is causing a lot of harm to our world.

Why is Sustainable Fashion Important?

The fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters in the world. It uses a lot of water and chemicals to make clothes, which can hurt our rivers, lakes, and oceans. The industry also produces a lot of waste. When we throw away clothes that we don’t want anymore, they often end up in landfills where they can take hundreds of years to break down. By choosing sustainable fashion, we can help reduce pollution and waste.

How to Choose Sustainable Fashion

Choosing sustainable fashion can be as simple as looking for clothes made from natural or recycled materials. Materials like organic cotton, bamboo, and recycled polyester are better for the environment because they use less water and chemicals to produce. You can also look for brands that are committed to fair labor practices, meaning they ensure good working conditions and fair wages for their workers.

Another way to be more sustainable with fashion is to buy less but choose better quality items that will last longer. This means you won’t need to replace your clothes as often, which reduces waste.

Reusing and Recycling Clothes

One of the easiest ways to practice sustainable fashion is by reusing and recycling clothes. Instead of throwing away clothes you no longer want, you can donate them to someone in need or sell them to someone else who can use them. This gives the clothes a new life and reduces waste. You can also look for second-hand clothes when you need something new to wear. Buying second-hand is a great way to get unique items and save resources.

The Future of Sustainable Fashion

The future of sustainable fashion looks promising. More and more people are becoming aware of the problems with the current fashion industry and are looking for ways to make a change. Designers and brands are also starting to focus on creating more sustainable clothing. This includes using new technologies to make fabrics that are better for the environment and finding new ways to reduce waste.

In conclusion, sustainable fashion is about making choices that are better for our planet and for the people who live on it. By choosing to buy sustainable clothing, reusing and recycling clothes, and supporting fair labor practices, we can all make a difference. The future of fashion is sustainable, and by making these choices, we can help create a better world for everyone.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

Happy studying!

The Myth of Sustainable Fashion

Kenneth P. Pucker

Despite high-profile attempts at innovation, the industry has failed to reduce its environmental impact so far.

Few industries tout their sustainability credentials more forcefully than the fashion industry. But the sad truth is that despite high-profile attempts at innovation, it’s failed to reduce its planetary impact in the past 25 years. Most items are still produced using non-biodegradable petroleum-based synthetics and end up in a landfill. So what can be done? New ESG strategies such as the use of bio-based materials, recycling, and “rent-the-runway” concepts have failed. Instead, we must stop thinking about sustainability as existing on a spectrum. Less unstainable is not sustainable. And governments need to step in to force companies to pay for their negative impact on the planet. The idea of “win-win” and market-based solutions has failed even in one of the most “progressive” industries.

Few industries tout their sustainability credentials more forcefully than the fashion industry. Products ranging from swimsuits to wedding dresses are marketed as carbon positive, organic, or vegan while yoga mats made from mushrooms and sneakers from sugar cane dot retail shelves. New business models including recycling, resale, rental, reuse, and repair are sold as environmental life savers.

Kenneth P. Pucker is a professor of practice at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and was formerly the chief operating officer of Timberland. kpucker31

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16 September 2022

How fast fashion can cut its staggering environmental impact

You have full access to this article via your institution.

A retail employee organises jeans displayed for sale on a table

Fast fashion results in new lines being added every week — instead of four times a year — most of which goes to landfill. Credit: Eve Edelheit/Bloomberg/Getty

Clothes were once used until they fell apart — repaired and patched to be re-used, ending their lives as dishcloths and oil rags. Not today. In high-income countries in particular, clothing, footwear and upholstered furniture are increasingly frequently bought, discarded and replaced with new fashions, which are themselves soon discarded and replaced.

The proof is there in the data. In 1995, the textiles industry produced 7.6 kilograms of fibre per person on the planet. By 2018, this had nearly doubled to 13.8 kilograms per person — during which time the world’s population also increased, from 5.7 billion to 7.6 billion people. More than 60 million tonnes of clothing is now bought every year, a figure that is expected to rise still further, to around 100 million tonnes, by 2030.

‘Fast fashion’ is so called partly because the fashion industry now releases new lines every week, when historically this happened four times a year. Today, fashion brands produce almost twice the amount of clothing that they did in 2000, most of it made in China and other middle-income countries such as Turkey, Vietnam and Bangladesh. Worldwide, 300 million people are employed by the industry.

But incredibly, more than 50 billion garments are discarded within a year of being made, according to a report from an expert workshop convened by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), published in May.

Landmark treaty on plastic pollution must put scientific evidence front and centre

Textiles fit into two broad categories: natural and synthetic. The production of those such as cotton and wool, which are made from plant and animal sources, is largely stable, albeit slowly increasing. By contrast, the production of polymer-based fibres, particularly polyester, raced ahead from about 25 million tonnes a year in 2000 to some 65 million tonnes in 2018, according to the NIST workshop report. Taken together, these trends are having a staggering environmental impact.

Take water. The fashion industry, one of the world’s largest users of water, consumes anywhere from 20 trillion to 200 trillion litres every year. Then there are microplastics. Plastic fibres are released when we wash polyester and other polymer-based textiles, and make up between 20% and 35% of the microplastics choking the oceans. Added to this are specific chemicals, such as those used to make fabrics stain resistant and the pesticides required to protect crops such as cotton.

Change is sorely needed, but will require the fashion industry to work harder to embrace more of what is known as the circular economy. That will involve at least two things: refocusing on making things that last, and so encouraging reuse; and more rapidly expanding the technologies for sustainable manufacturing processes, especially recycling. There’s a big role for research — both academic and industrial — in achieving these and other ambitions.

Researchers could begin by helping to provide more accurate estimates of water use. It must surely be possible to narrow the range between 20 trillion and 200 trillion litres of water. There is also work to be done on improving and expanding textiles recycling. Overwhelmingly, used textiles go to landfill (in the United States, the proportion is around 85%), in part because there are relatively few systems (at scale) that collect, recycle and reuse materials. Such recycling requires the manual separation of fibres, as well as buttons and zips. Different fibres are not easy to identify by eye, and overall such manual processes are time-consuming. Machinery is being developed that can help. Technologies also exist to recycle used fibres chemically and to create high-quality fibres that can be reused in clothing. But these are nowhere near the scale needed.

Another challenge for researchers is to work out how to get consumers and manufacturers to change their behaviour. This is already an active area of study in the social and behavioural sciences. For example, Verena Tiefenbeck at Bonn University in Germany and her colleagues found that when hotel guests were shown real-time feedback on the energy used in taking a shower, it cut down energy consumption from showering by 11.4% 1 . Other research questions include finding ways to encourage people to purchase durable goods; exploring how to satisfy cravings for something new while reducing environmental impact; and understanding why certain interventions can be successfully scaled up whereas others fail.

The environmental price of fast fashion

Industry and academia could also collaborate to establish a system to track textile microplastics. This could be done digitally, for example. It would require an agreed definition of what constitutes textile microplastics, such as their material composition and dimensions. Companies, universities, campaigners and governments also need to consider how to make their technologies more accessible. Doing so would accelerate development and testing, and (eventually) adoption at scale.

There are also schemes in other fields that could be a source of ideas. The World Health Organization has considerable experience where accessibility is concerned, for example, in its Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator . Through this, companies and governments agree the principles of sharing key technologies in diagnostics and drug development. And in the early 2000s, the Rockefeller Foundation, under its then-president Gordon Conway, an ecologist now at Imperial College London, made a big push to encourage companies to share technologies in agricultural biotechnology, by establishing the African Agricultural Technology Foundation . These schemes are not perfect and are continually evolving, but offer ideas and lessons that should be studied and considered.

In the meantime, campaign groups are doing much of the heavy lifting with industry. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a UK-based charity that promotes circular-economy solutions, is in the second iteration of a campaign called the Jeans Redesign, which challenges clothing manufacturers to come up with circular solutions to that stalwart of every wardrobe. Some manufacturers have made their jeans-production process more circular by using organic cotton, and by inserting zips in a way that allows them to be easily removed when clothes are recycled. Others are using reinforced stitching to make their products last longer. These are important proofs of principle, but such techniques need to become mainstream.

These actions come at a cost and challenge the idea of fast fashion, because they could make items less affordable to consumers looking to keep up with latest trends. Brands and retailers take a serious view on risks to their bottom line (and might choose to delay action on sustainability as a result). This is why government action is key.

Policies need precision and teeth, which current ones do not always have, and should, ideally, be coordinated. A recommendation from the European Union for member states, for example, says that by 2030 there need to be “mandatory minimums for the inclusion of recycled fibers in textiles, making them longer-lasting, and easier to repair and recycle”. This is too vague. Without more specific targets it will be very difficult to track for compliance purposes. China, the world’s largest textiles producer, also has a five-year circular-economy plan for the industry. Considering fast fashion’s interconnectedness, China and the EU, together with the United States and others, must try harder to coordinate their efforts.

Small steps are good, but big changes are needed. There’s no time to waste when it comes to changing textiles manufacture and design. The shameful environmental cost of a whizzy new wardrobe needs to be tackled immediately, at scale, with style and panache.

Nature 609 , 653-654 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02914-2

Tiefenbeck, V., Wörner, A., Schöb, S., Fleisch, E. & Staake, T. Nature Energ . 4 , 35–41 (2019).

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The Fashion Industry’s Environmental Impact: Everything You Need To Know

by Sarah Tancredi | Nov 18, 2023 | Sustainability

The fashion industry’s environmental impact, a critical concern, reaches across the globe, impacting climate change , resource depletion, and pollution. This article delves into the far-reaching consequences of the fashion industry’s environmental footprint, encompassing carbon emissions, water usage, and chemical pollution. It also explores the challenges of fast fashion and unethical labour practices while showcasing sustainable solutions and the circular fashion economy concept. With an ever-growing environmental consciousness, consumers, brands, and governments are fostering a transformation towards a more sustainable, eco-friendly fashion landscape.

What is the Fashion Industry’s Environmental Impact?

The fashion industry’s environmental impact is profound, encompassing carbon emissions, resource depletion, and water pollution . Its practices contribute to climate change and waste generation, making sustainability a critical concern.

1. Carbon Emissions

The carbon emissions result from the energy-intensive processes across the fashion industry’s supply chain. Carbon emissions are substantial from the cultivation of raw materials, like cotton, to manufacturing and global transportation. Sustainable fashion initiatives aim to address this by prioritizing energy-efficient production techniques, renewable energy sources, and conscientious logistics, which include minimizing emissions and streamlining transportation routes.

2. Water Usage

The fashion industry’s high water consumption impacts resource availability and water quality. Cotton cultivation, in particular, is notorious for its water requirements. Additionally, dyeing processes often involve releasing harmful chemicals into water bodies, leading to pollution. Sustainable fashion solutions include adopting water-saving technologies in production, promoting organic cotton, and responsible water management practices to minimize environmental impact.

3. Resource Depletion

The fashion industry relies on finite resources like petroleum for synthetic fibres and minerals for dyes and accessories. Sustainable fashion aims to reduce resource depletion by shifting toward more efficient, sustainable production processes and using recycled materials. This approach reduces the environmental strain caused by resource extraction.

4. Chemical Pollution

Harmful chemicals used in textile dyeing and finishing processes can result in water pollution and pose health risks to workers in the industry and nearby communities. Sustainable fashion initiatives emphasize green chemistry, advocating for replacing toxic chemicals with eco-friendly alternatives and responsible chemical management throughout the production cycle.

5. Fast Fashion

Fast fashion’s disposable culture promotes rapid clothing turnover, leading to an alarming increase in textile waste. Sustainable fashion principles encourage waste reduction by creating durable, high-quality items meant to last longer and discourage the rapid cycle of buying and discarding clothing. This shift aims to address the environmental impact of this throwaway culture.

6. Textile Waste

The fashion industry generates an enormous volume of textile waste due to pre-consumer waste in manufacturing and post-consumer waste when consumers discard clothing. The complexity of fabric blends and finishes makes textile recycling challenging. Sustainable fashion embraces the circular economy, promoting recycling, upcycling, and prolonging the life of garments. This approach seeks to minimize waste and create a more sustainable fashion ecosystem.

7. Labor Practices

In certain regions, unethical labour practices prevail, with workers enduring low wages and poor treatment. Sustainable fashion advocates for ethical labour standards, ensuring fair wages, safe working conditions, and the humane treatment of workers. This shift addresses the social and environmental dimensions of the fashion industry’s impact.

8. Sustainable Alternatives

Sustainable fashion relies on eco-friendly materials like organic cotton and hemp and cleaner production methods that reduce environmental footprints. Transparency in the supply chain enables consumers to make informed choices, empowering them to support brands that align with their values and reduce the negative impact of their clothing choices.

9. Consumer Awareness

Informed consumers play a vital role in promoting sustainable fashion. Consumers can actively reduce the fashion industry’s environmental impact by supporting eco-friendly and ethical brands, making mindful purchasing decisions, and maintaining clothing through care and repair.

10. Policy and Regulation

Governments and international organizations increasingly regulate the fashion industry to enforce eco-friendly practices. It includes emissions reduction targets, restrictions on harmful chemicals, and labour standards. These regulations are essential for pushing the industry towards more sustainable and environmentally responsible practices while addressing the fashion industry’s environmental impact.

Sustainable practices, responsible consumer choices, and government regulations are pivotal to addressing the fashion industry’s environmental impact. A shift toward eco-friendly materials, ethical labour practices, and circular fashion economies is essential for a more environmentally responsible future in the fashion industry.

How Do You Address The Fashion Industry’s Environmental Impact?

Mitigating the fashion industry’s environmental impact is a global imperative. Addressing this challenge requires a multi-pronged approach encompassing sustainable materials, ethical production, and circular fashion practices.

Sustainable Materials : Opt for clothing made from sustainable materials like organic cotton, which reduces harmful chemicals and excessive water use. Recycled materials also help lessen the demand for new resources, mitigating the environmental impact.
Ethical Production: Support brands prioritizing ethical labour practices, ensuring fair wages and safe working conditions. This choice promotes a more equitable and socially responsible fashion industry, addressing labour exploitation concerns.
Circular Fashion : Embrace a circular economy by reusing and repairing clothing and recycling old garments. Extending the lifespan of your clothing reduces the amount of textile waste, conserves resources, and minimizes the industry’s environmental footprint.
Consumer Awareness: Make conscious buying decisions, favouring high-quality, durable clothing over disposable fashion. It reduces the demand for fast fashion and contributes to a more sustainable, environmentally friendly fashion industry.
Advocate for Regulation: Support and promote government and international regulations that enforce eco-friendly fashion practices, including emissions reduction targets, chemical restrictions, and labour standards. These regulations create a framework for a more environmentally responsible fashion industry, addressing the fashion industry’s environmental impact on a broader scale.
Upcycling : Embrace upcycling by giving old clothing new life through creative alterations and design. Transforming existing garments reduces the need for further production and minimizes waste, contributing to a more sustainable and unique fashion approach.
Reduced Consumption: Practice mindful consumption by buying fewer items and maximizing what you have. Easing unnecessary purchases curbs demand for fast fashion and lessens the industry’s environmental burden while encouraging a more sustainable and minimalist wardrobe.

We can collectively reduce the fashion industry’s environmental footprint by championing sustainable choices, ethical standards, and circular fashion principles. This path leads to a more eco-conscious and responsible future for the fashion industry.

The Future of Sustainable Fashion

The future of sustainable fashion is a dynamic landscape marked by a shift towards eco-conscious practices, ethical standards, and innovative technologies. This evolving industry aims to minimize its environmental footprint, embrace circularity, and prioritize social responsibility, guided by consumers’ growing awareness and preferences and the imperative to protect the planet.

The future of sustainable fashion is a transition toward a more responsible, eco-friendly, and ethical industry driven by consumer demand, innovation, and global awareness of environmental and social issues.

The fashion industry’s environmental impact is pressing, but the winds of change are blowing stronger. An increasingly eco-conscious audience drives the shift towards sustainable practices, ethical labour standards, and mindful consumption. Fashion brands respond by adopting eco-friendly materials, promoting recycling, and implementing cleaner production processes. The fashion industry is evolving towards a circular economy emphasizing reuse and waste reduction. Governments and global organizations are regulating to enforce greener practices. By making informed choices, supporting eco-friendly brands, and advocating responsible manufacturing, we collectively steer the fashion industry toward a more environmentally responsible future, addressing the fashion industry’s environmental impact.

Also Read: What Is The Future Of Sustainable Fashion In The US?

Sarah Tancredi is an experienced journalist and news reporter specializing in environmental and climate crisis issues. With a deep passion for the planet and a commitment to raising awareness about pressing environmental challenges, Sarah has dedicated her career to informing the public and promoting sustainable solutions. She strives to inspire individuals, communities, and policymakers to take action to safeguard our planet for future generations.

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Making Fashion Sustainable: Waste and Collective Responsibility

Debbie moorhouse.

1 Department of Fashion & Textiles, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK

Fashion is a growing industry, but the demand for cheap, fast fashion has a high environmental footprint. Some brands lead the way by innovating to reduce waste, improve recycling, and encourage upcycling. But if we are to make fashion more sustainable, consumers and industry must work together.

As the demand for apparel and shoes has increased worldwide, the fashion industry has experienced substantial growth. In the last 15 years, clothing production has doubled, accounting for 60% of all textile production. 1 One particular trend driving this increase is the emergence of fast fashion. The newest trends in celebrity culture and bespoke fashion shows rapidly become available from affordable retailers. In recent years, a designer’s fashion calendar can consist of up to five collections per year, and in the mass-produced market, new stock is being produced every 2 weeks. As with many commodities today, mass production and consumption are often accompanied by mass wastage, and fashion is no different.

In fashion, trends rapidly change, and a drive to buy the latest style can leave many items with a short lifespan and consigned to the waste bin. Given that 73% of clothing ends up in landfills and less than 1% is recycled into new clothing, there are significant costs with regard to not only irreplaceable resources but also the economy via landfilling clothing. At present, it is estimated that £140 million worth of clothing is sent to landfills in the UK each year. 2 Although a significant proportion of recycled fibers are downgraded into insulation materials, industrial wipes, and stuffing, they still constitute only 12% of total discarded material.

The world is increasingly worried about the environmental and social costs of fashion, particularly items that have short lifespans. Mass-produced fashion is often manufactured where labor is cheap, but working conditions can be poor. Sweatshops can even be found in countries with stricter regulations. The transport of products from places of manufacture to points of sale contributes to the textile industry’s rising carbon footprint; 1.2 billion metric tons of CO 2 were reportedly emitted in 2015. 1 Textile dyeing and finishing are thought to contribute to 20% of the world’s water pollution, 3 and microfiber emission during washing amounts to half a million metric tons of plastic pollution annually. 4 Fashion’s water footprint is particularly problematic. Water is used throughout clothing production, including in the growth of crops such as cotton and in the weaving, manufacturing, washing, and dyeing processes. The production of denim apparel alone uses over 5,000 L of water 5 for a single pair of jeans. When you add this to consumer overuse of water, chemicals, and energy in the laundry process and the ultimate discard to landfills or incineration, the environmental impact becomes extremely high.

As demand for fast fashion continues to grow, so too does the industry’s environmental footprint. Negative impacts are starkly evidenced throughout the entire supply chain—from the growth of raw materials to the disposal of scarcely used garments. As awareness of the darker side of fashion grows, so too does demand for change—not just from regulatory bodies and global action groups but also from individual consumers. People want ethical garments. Sustainability and style. But achieving this is complicated.

Demand for Sustainable Fashion

Historically, sustainable brands were sought by a smaller consumer base and were typically part of the stereotype “hippy” style. But in recent years, sustainable fashion has become more mainstream among both designers and consumers, and the aesthetic appeal has evolved to become more desirable to a wider audience. As a result, the consumer need not only buy into the ethics of the brand but also purchase a desirable, contemporary garment.

But the difficulty for the fashion industry lies in addressing all sustainability and ethical issues while remaining economically sustainable and future facing. Sustainable and ethical brands must take into account fairer wages, better working conditions, more sustainably produced materials, and a construction quality that is built for longevity, all of which ultimately increase the cost of the final product. The consumer often wrestles with many different considerations when making a purchase; some of these conflict with each other and can lead the consumer to prioritize the monetary cost.

Many buyers who place sustainability over fashion but cannot afford the higher cost of sustainable garments will often forsake the latest styles and trends to buy second hand. However, fashion and second-hand clothing need not be mutually exclusive, as can be seen by the growing trend of acquiring luxury vintage pieces. Vintage clothing is in direct contrast to the whole idea of “fast fashion” and is sought after as a way to express individuality with the added value of saving something precious from landfills. Where vintage might have once been purchased at an exclusive auction, now many online sources trade in vintage pieces. Celebrities, fashion influencers, and designers have all bought into this vintage trend, making it a very desirable pre-owned, pre-loved purchase. 6 In effect, the consumer mindset is changing such that vintage clothing (as a timeless, more considered purchase) is more desirable than new products because of its uniqueness, a virtue that stands against the standardization of mass-market production.

Making Fashion Circular

In an ideal system, the life cycle of a garment would be a series of circles such that the garment would continually move to the next life—redesigned, reinvented, and never discarded—eliminating the concept of waste. Although vintage is growing in popularity, this is only one component of a circular fashion industry, and the reality is that the linear system of “take, make, dispose,” with all its ethical and environmental problems, continues to persist.

Achieving sustainability in the production of garments represents a huge and complex challenge. It is often quoted that “more than 80% of the environmental impact of a product is determined at the design stage,” 7 meaning that designers are now being looked upon to solve the problem. But the responsibility should not solely lie with the designer; it should involve all stakeholders along the supply chain. Designers develop the concept, but the fashion industry also involves pattern cutters and garment technologists, as well as the manufacturers: both producers of textiles and factories where garment construction takes place. And finally, the consumer should not only dispose, reuse, or upcycle garments appropriately but also wash and care for the garment in a way that both is sustainable and ensures longevity of the item. These stakeholders must all work together to achieve a more sustainable supply chain.

The challenge of sustainability is particularly pertinent to denim, which, as already mentioned, is one of the more problematic fashion items. Traditionally an expression of individualism and freedom, denim jeans are produced globally at 1.7 billion pairs per year 8 through mass-market channels and mid-tier and premium designer levels, and this is set to rise. In the face of growing demand, some denim specialists are looking for ways to make their products more sustainable.

Reuse and recycling can play a role here, and designers and brands such as Levi Strauss & Co. and Mud Jeans are taking responsibility for the future life of their garments. They are offering take-back services, mending services, and possibilities for recycling to new fibers at end of life. Many brands have likewise embraced vintage fashion. Levi’s “Authorized Vintage” line, which includes upcycled, pre-worn vintage pieces, not only exemplifies conscious consumption but also makes this vintage trend more sought after by the consumer because of its iconic status. All material is sourced from the company’s own archive, and all redesigns “are a chance to relive our treasured history.” 9

Mud Jeans in particular is working toward a circular business model by taking a more considered, “seasonless” approach to their collections by instead focusing on longevity and pieces that transcend seasons. In addition, they offer a lease service where jeans can be returned for a different style and a return service at end of life for recycling into new fiber. The different elements that make up a garment, such as the base fabrics (denim in the case of Mud jeans) and fastenings, are limited so the company can avoid overstocking and reduce deadstock. 10 This model of keeping base materials to a minimum has been adopted by brands that don’t specialize in denim, such as Adidas’s production of a recyclable trainer made from virgin thermoplastic polyurethane. 11 The challenge with garments, as with footwear, is that they are made up of many different materials that are difficult to separate and sort for recycling. These business models have a long way to go to be truly circular, but some companies are paving the way forward, and their transparency is highly valuable to other companies that wish to follow suit.

Once a product is purchased, its future is in the hands of the consumer, and not all are aware of the recycling options available to them or that how they care for their garments can have environmental impacts. Companies are helping to inform them. In 2009, Levi Strauss & Co. introduced “Care Tag for Our Planet,” which gives straightforward washing instructions to save water and energy and guidance on how to donate the garment when it is no longer needed. Mud Jeans follows a similar process by highlighting the need to break the habit of regular unnecessary washing and even suggesting “air washing.” 10

At the same time, designers are moving away from the traditional seasonal production cycle and into a more seasonless calendar. In light of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Gucci’s creative director, Alessandro Michele, has announced (May 2020) that the Italian brand will end the traditional five fashion shows per year and will “hold shows just twice a year instead to reduce waste.” 12 This is a brave decision because it goes against the practice whereby designers were pressured for decades to produce more collections per year, but the hope is that it will be quickly followed by more brands and designers.

Transparency

The discussion around sustainable fashion practices has led to a growing demand from consumers for transparency in the supply chain and life cycle of fashion garments. Consumers want to be informed. They are skeptical of media hype and “greenwashing” by fast-fashion companies wanting to make their brand appear responsible. They want to know the origin of the product and its environmental and social impact.

Some companies are responding by seeking a better understanding of the environmental impacts of their products. In 2015, denim specializer Levi Strauss & Co. extensively analyzed the garment life cycle to consider the environmental impact of a core set of products from its range. The areas highlighted for greatest water usage and negative environmental impact were textile production and consumer laundry care; the consumer phase alone consumed 37% of energy, 13 fiber and textile production accounted for 36% of energy usage, and the remaining 27% was spent on garment production, transport, logistics, and packaging. 14 This life-cycle analysis has led to innovation in waterless finishing processes that use 96% less water than traditional fabric finishing. 15 As noted previously, transparency here also inspires the wider industry to do likewise. Other companies have also introduced dyeing processes that need much less water, and much work is focused on improving textile recycling.

But this discussion does not just apply to production. Some high-street brands are using a “take back” scheme whereby customers are invited to bring back unwanted clothing either for a discount on future purchases or as a way to offload unwanted items of clothing. Not only might this encourage consumers to buy more without feeling guilty, but the ultimate destination of these returned garments can also be unclear. Without further transparency, a consumer cannot make fully informed decisions about the end-of-life fate of their garments.

Collective Responsibility

The buck should not be passed when it comes to sustainability; it is about collective responsibility. Professionals in the fashion industry often feel that it is in the hands of the consumer—they have the buying power, and their choices determine how the industry reacts. One train of thought is that the consumer needs to buy less and that the fashion retail industry can’t be asked to sell less. However, if a sustainable life cycle is to be achieved, stakeholders within the cycle must also be accountable, and there are growing demands for the fashion industry to be regulated.

With the global demand for new clothing, there is an urgent need to discover new materials and to find new markets for used clothing. At present, garments that last longer reduce production and processing impacts, and designers and brands can make efforts in the reuse and recycling of clothing. But environmental impact will remain high if large quantities of new clothing continue to be bought.

If we want a future sustainable fashion industry, both consumers and industry professionals must engage. Although greater transparency and sustainability are being pursued and certain brands are leading the way, the overconsumption of clothing is so established in society that it is difficult to say how this can be reversed or slowed. Moreover, millions of livelihoods depend on this constant cycle of fashion production. Methods in the recycling, upcycling, reuse, and remanufacture of apparel and textiles are short-term gains, and the real impact will come from creating new circular business models that account for the life cycle of a garment and design in the initial concept. If we want to maximize the value from each item of clothing, giving them second, third, and fourth lives is essential.

Acknowledgments

Thank you for support, in writing this Commentary, to Dr. Rina Arya, Professor of Visual Culture and Theory at the School of Art, Design, and Architecture of the University of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK.

Declaration of Interests

The author is the co-founder of the International Society for Sustainable Fashion.

Fast Fashion and Sustainability Essay

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Fast Fashion and Its Environmental Footprint

Shifts in public opinion and growing role of csr, governmental effort and its relevance, interventions needed, barriers to implementation and steps to undertake.

Finding a balance between development and sustainability has been an objective many people find difficult to attain. The use of resources has been intensifying annually due to the increasing population and people’s growing demand. The fashion industry is now seen as one of the most vivid illustrations of unreasonable use of resources (Bick, Halsey and Ekenga, 2018). Fast fashion can be referred to as “a business model based on offering consumers frequent novelty in the form of low-priced, trend-led products” (Niinimäki et al., 2020, p. 189). On the one hand, this model has enabled millions of people to access more clothes that are more affordable. On the other hand, adverse environmental and social impact has been substantial as well. Due to the shift towards more sustainable business practices, the fast fashion industry is also undergoing certain changes. This paper includes a brief analysis of the ways to address consumers’ fashion-related needs and reduce the negative environmental impact of the fast industry.

To some people, the fashion industry may seem rather irrelevant compared to such traditional giants as the oil industry, but the former has a considerable share in the global market. It has been estimated that the value of the world’s fashion industry is approximately 3,000 billion dollars, which is over 2% of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Shirvanimoghaddam et al., 2020). The consumption of textile goods has almost doubled during the past two decades and reached 13kg per individual or 100 million tons annually (see Figure 1).

Such significant growth comes at a price that is mainly associated with a tremendous effect on the environment (see Figure 2). For instance, Shirvanimoghaddam et al. (2020) stress that only 15% of the wastes are recycled. It is noteworthy that developing countries are more vulnerable since a considerable portion of the used textile is a part of the second-hand clothing trade (Bick, Halsey and Ekenga, 2018). For example, over 500,000 tons of used textile goods are exported from the USA (Bick, Halsey and Ekenga, 2018).

Estimated environmental impact of the fast-fashion industry

Recycling mainly occurs in western countries, which makes the environmental burden of developing countries more pronounced (see Figure 2). In addition to the contamination of vast territories used as landfills, fast fashion wastes often penetrate into diverse ecosystems due to inadequate waste management (Mehta, 2019). Textiles produced of low-quality components contaminate the ocean and suburban areas. Since a considerable part of production facilities is located in developing countries, these areas are affected most. The governments of these countries tend to place a lower value on ecological problems, which leads to undesirable effects.

Global environmental effects of the fashion and textile production industries

In addition to the environmental impact, the fast fashion industry is closely linked to the consumerism culture that is still prevalent in the world (Niinimäki et al., 2020). According to the social practice theory that is a social theory focusing on the human society and its peculiarities, things are seen as an indispensable part of human existence (Reckwitz, 2002). Things have become something more than objects used to satisfy individuals’ needs. People see things as “objects of the knowing subject” and “constitutive elements of forms of behaviour” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 253). In simple terms, things have an influence on people’s behavior, and fast fashion can illustrate this process. Many people find it critical to wear fashionable things to be a part of a group (sub-culture) or express themselves (Barnes and Lea-Greenwood, 2018). Others want to buy new things for the sake of acquiring a new thing or in the course of socializing (Afaneh, 2020). Fast fashion offers numerous ways to satisfy people’s needs and make them feel members of a larger community.

E-commerce has contributed to the growth of unsustainable behaviors as purchasing has become even easier and more affordable (Niinimäki et al., 2020). People are enticed to buy more as they can save more (and buy more) without even leaving their homes. The COVID-19 pandemics contributed to the increase in online sales. Niinimäki et al. (2020) emphasize that this business model is even less environmentally sustainable due to the peculiarities of logistics. Container boat transportation typical of traditional retailing is replaced by air cargo in e-commerce, so the environmental footprint is more significant.

Although the human society is still characterized by the focus on consumerism, people are becoming more responsible. Consumers start being more environmentally conscious and try to reduce their negative influence on the environment (Javed et al., 2020). The rise of the corporate social responsibility approach can be seen as companies’ response to this trend. Manufacturers try to develop sustainable ways to produce goods, reduce natural resources consumption, and introduce recycling incentives. C&A is one of the leaders in adopting sustainable practices in the industry (see Figure 3). The third of the garments the company sells can be referred to as eco-friendly goods ( Sustainable fashion , 2020). The retailer claims that they focus on the production of garments of recyclable cotton and try to adopt a holistic approach to the production process in order to ensure the reduction of CO2 emissions and proper waste management (C&A, n.d.).

H&M initiated several projects aimed at reducing its wastes. In addition to second-hand sales and the promotion of more durable fashion, H&M developed the concept of recyclable jeans (Mehta, 2019). The company utilizes natural components to produce jeans and accessories that are easily recyclable. Another fast fashion leader in the global market, GAP, has also expressed its intention to move to a circular industry (Mehta, 2019). The two large textile producers show their commitment to sustainable practices, which resonates with the overall attitudes to the matter in different countries.

It is necessary to add that, along with companies’ willingness to build positive images and adopt CSR strategies, regulations imposed by national governments and international institutions encourage businesses to employ sustainable approaches. These efforts are instrumental in setting the minimum level of CSR activities necessary to improve environmental sustainability and offering directions to move for further development (Mehta, 2019). The primary areas covered within the scope of these efforts include CO2 emissions reduction, recycling, waste management, and resource consumption.

Some of these initiatives include the provision of financial support and tax reduction to high-achievers in dropping the levels of CO2 emissions (Niinimäki et al., 2020). The EU government is introducing diverse regulations concerning waste management, forcing and encouraging companies to recycle instead of bringing their wastes to landfills (Wang et al., 2020). It is important to note that European countries display different approaches and commitment to environmental sustainability. Such countries as Germany, Norway, and Finland have progressed considerably, while less wealthy states lag behind. Trade policies established by the USA are aimed at ensuring global equity (Bick, Halsey and Ekenga, 2018). Such regulations impose restrictions related to importing and exporting used textiles. Companies are encouraged or directly forced to donate to the projects aimed at the development of recyclable industry and similar initiatives (Mehta, 2019).

Further steps in the areas mentioned above are necessary for the minimization of the negative effect of the fast fashion industry. The standards existing in the western world are quite appropriate and under proper review each year (Bick, Halsey and Ekenga, 2018; Mehta, 2019; Wang et al., 2020). In addition to various strict regulations regarding CO2 emissions and waste management, the UK government, for instance, has the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan for fast-fashion companies to follow (Abdulla, 2019). This voluntary plan of action encourages companies to join in and suggest their strategies to comply with the existing and upcoming standards. Numerous retailers and fashion industry leaders tend to join the initiative, which positively affects their overall image and gives an opportunity to contribute to the development of sustainable practices for the entire industry.

The UAE can become a major advocate of sustainable practices for the development of the region. The country posed a number of KPIs to be reached by 2021 regarding waste management, emission reduction, and other environmental aspects. Some of the 2021 environmental targets include the improvement of the portion of treated waste of total waste generated ( Environment and government agenda , 2020). It also aims at reducing the consumption of non-sustainable energy, as well as decreasing CO2 emissions. However, there are no specific restrictions on the fashion industry. Moreover, the policies tend to be confined to the exact practices of companies without paying sufficient attention to the activities of their partners, which has become a norm in the EU countries.

The introduction of new restrictions rather problematic as businesses oppose such laws and try to shape the politicians’ agenda in different ways. Many laws and norms are regarded as unnecessary and harmful restrictions imposed by irresponsible politicians trying to win votes (Abdullah, 2019). Educating the public about potential hazards and possible ways to mitigate the negative consequences can be instrumental in achieving the consensus in the society (Afaneh, 2020).

The provision of direct financial support can also become an effective strategy governments can utilize to make the fast fashion industry more circular. Small and medium-sized companies are facing significant issues related to the COVID-19 pandemics (Brydges and Hanlon, 2020). The situation related to the pandemics can serve as the basis for the promotional campaigns popularizing sustainability. It is possible to emphasize that humans are vulnerable to numerous global challenges, while sustainable practices are key to the successful development of the society.

Large retailers and manufacturers tend to set new standards and norms accepted by consumers. For example, H&M, in collaboration with other fast fashion companies, has launched initiatives aimed at the reduction of their environmental impact (Javed et al., 2020; Mehta, 2019). Such incentives should obtain governmental support that can be manifested in financial or educational aspects. American officials can also promote such initiatives through international platforms such as the World Trade Organization or other institutions.

Although the benefits of such efforts can hardly be overestimated, governments can be reluctant to be involved in such incentives. As mentioned above, financial constraints countries have to face make environmental issues seem less relevant and urgent. Activists should ensure that the most urgent ecological topics are discussed in the society, which will make countries address them. Consumers can also become less concentrated on environmental issues due to their financial issues (Afaneh, 2020).

Activists and governments should pay much attention to raising people’s awareness of the economic burden of less sustainable practices in the long run. Social media have been utilized effectively to discuss numerous issues and encourage people to take a particular action. Such incentives as H&M’s online second-hand platform and such products as recyclable jeans should receive high publicity facilitated by the governmental support (Mehta, 2019). Being sustainable should be synonymous with being competitive, and governments can help businesses see the exact paths to achieve competitive advantages based on environmental aspects.

On balance, societies are becoming increasingly aware of environmental issues and willing to adhere to sustainable practices. Durability and recyclability are seen as more relevant in the modern societies. Governments try to develop regulations and standards, facilitating the changes and shifts towards environmentally friendly behaviors. Although these trends are more pronounced in developed countries, developing states are also integrated into the process of this transformation. However, numerous barriers to the implementation of projects aimed at establishing sustainable norms are apparent. Global financial issues can be regarded as major reasons for the slowdown in changes. Nevertheless, governments, companies, activists, and the public should remain in close contact in their effort to create a more sustainable fast fashion industry. Numerous incentives launched in different countries and regions show that governments can contribute to a gradual shift towards sustainable industries.

Abdullah, H. (2019) ‘UK government outlines steps to fix fast fashion’, Just-Style . Web.

Afaneh, S. (2020) ‘I can’t quit fast fashion as a student, but I can change how I shop’ , Lifestyle . Web.

Barnes, L. and Lea-Greenwood, G. (2018) ‘Pre-loved? Analysing the Dubai luxe resale market’, in Ryding, D., Henninger, C. E. and Cano, M. B. (eds.) Vintage luxury fashion: exploring the rise of the secondhand clothing trade . London: England, pp. 63–78.

Bick, R., Halsey, E. and Ekenga, C. (2018) ‘The global environmental injustice of fast fashion’, Environmental Health , 17(1), pp. 92-95.

Brydges, T. and Hanlon, M. (2020) ‘Garment worker rights and the fashion industry’s response to COVID-19’, Dialogues in Human Geography , 10(2), pp. 195-198.

C&A (n.d.) ‘Our vision: making sustainable fashion the new normal’ . Web.

Environment and government agenda (2020). Web.

Javed, T., Yang, J., Gul Gilal, W. and Gul Gilal, N. (2020) ‘The sustainability claims’ impact on the consumer’s green perception and behavioral intention: a case study of H&M’, Advances in Management & Applied Economics , 10(2), pp. 1-22.

Mehta, A. (2019) ‘ Beyond recycling: putting the brakes on fast fashion ’ , Reuters Events . Web.

Niinimäki, K., Peters, G., Dahlbo, H., Perry, P., Rissanen, T. and Gwilt, A. (2020) ‘The environmental price of fast fashion’, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment , 1(4), pp. 189-200.

Reckwitz, A. (2002) ‘Toward a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing’, European Journal of Social Theory , 5(2), pp. 243-263.

Remy, N., Speelman, E. and Swartz, S. (2016) ‘ Style that’s sustainable: a new fast-fashion formula ’ , McKinsey & Company . Web.

Shirvanimoghaddam, K., Motamed, B., Ramakrishna, S. and Naebe, M. (2020) ‘Death by waste: fashion and textile circular economy case’, Science of the Total Environment , 718, pp. 1-10.

Sustainable fashion: how are the leaders in fast fashion doing? (2020). Web.

Wang, D., Tang, Y. T., Long, G., Higgitt, D., He, J. and Robinson, D. (2020) ‘Future improvements on performance of an EU landfill directive driven municipal solid waste management for a city in England’, Waste Management , 102, pp. 452-463.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Fashion — Sustainable fashion and ethical issues

Sustainable Fashion and Ethical Issues

Categories: Fashion Sustainability

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Published: Dec 18, 2018

Words: 469 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Introduction, the importance of ethical and sustainable fashion, the environmental impact of fast fashion, the ethical imperative, the sustainable revolution, transparency and accountability, the power of consumer choice, references:.

Fletcher, K., & Tham, M. (2019). The Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion. Routledge.
Black, S., & Eckert, C. (2019). Sustainable Fashion in a Circular Economy. Springer.
Dauvergne, P. (2016). Environmentalism of the Rich. The MIT Press.
Niinimäki, K. (2020). Sustainable Fashion in a Circular Economy: A Comparative Environmental Impact Analysis of Contemporary Fashion Products. Sustainability, 12(17), 6976.
Kärkkäinen, H. (2020). Ethical fashion: drivers, barriers, and characteristics of Finnish consumers’ choices. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 24(5), 586-605.

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Abstract. Fashion is a growing industry, but the demand for cheap, fast fashion has a high environmental footprint. Some brands lead the way by innovating to reduce waste, improve recycling, and encourage upcycling. But if we are to make fashion more sustainable, consumers and industry must work together. Fashion is a growing industry, but the ...
Fast Fashion and Sustainability
Fast Fashion and Sustainability Essay. Finding a balance between development and sustainability has been an objective many people find difficult to attain. The use of resources has been intensifying annually due to the increasing population and people's growing demand. The fashion industry is now seen as one of the most vivid illustrations of ...
Systematic Literature Review Of Sustainable Fashion Consumption From
[email protected]. Abstract. This systematic review wa s designed to assess the previous studies re lated to consumers' be haviours. towards sustainabilit y in a fashion that c overs various fashi ...
Sustainable Fashion and Ethical Issues
Sustainable fashion is intrinsically tied to ethical fashion. It prioritizes the use of environmentally sustainable materials like bamboo, hemp, and organic cotton, and replaces chemical dyes with natural alternatives. Sustainability also involves rigorous monitoring of water consumption throughout the production process and ensuring that ...
Fast fashion: How clothes are linked to climate change
And global clothes sales could increase by up to 65% by 2030, the World Bank suggests. Most of fashion's environmental impact comes from the use of raw materials: cotton for the fashion industry ...
Exploring the influence of social media on sustainable fashion
Eleven papers discussed the general issues around sustainable fashion discourse and consumers on social media. Media, including SM, have a dual role to play when it comes to fashion consumption. On the one hand, it encourages overconsumption (Johnstone & Lindh, Citation 2022 ) and normalises fashion obsolescence (Philip et al., Citation 2020 ).
Sustainable Fashion Essay Examples
Sustainable Fashion Essays. Social Impact Analysis: Impact on Diversity, Equality, and Structural Inequality. Introduction This reflection paper aims to delve into diversity equality and structural inequality in the U.S. or the global sphere as influenced by a particular product. We study the life cycle of this product in a bid to understand ...

Why Fashion Needs to Be More Sustainable

Fashion’s environmental impacts

Impacts on water

Contributions to climate change

Microplastic pollution

Fashion’s social impacts

How can fashion be more sustainable?

Better materials

Better working conditions

Beyond sustainability

The need for transparency

What consumers can do

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The Fashion Industry’s Environmental Impact: Everything You Need To Know

What is the Fashion Industry’s Environmental Impact?

1. Carbon Emissions

2. Water Usage

3. Resource Depletion

4. Chemical Pollution

5. Fast Fashion

6. Textile Waste

7. Labor Practices

8. Sustainable Alternatives

9. Consumer Awareness

10. Policy and Regulation

How Do You Address The Fashion Industry’s Environmental Impact?

The Future of Sustainable Fashion

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Making Fashion Sustainable: Waste and Collective Responsibility

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