Sustainable fashion a myth or reality?
https://www.impactmagazine.in/may-2021?pgid=kox19h1z-a91d3feb-0b24-40df-8ef4-7824d893da23
We love fashion as much as any other person on this planet. Fun outfits, glamorous accessories, individuality. Many of us identify ourselves with it. However, the devastating environmental changes and severe human rights abuses, fashion, as it turns out, is a whole lot more complex than high waisted pencil skirts and shoulder pads. The pandemic has been a good reminder in that sense. Before lockdown, there were only a handful of designers talking about sustainable fashion, however, in the last couple of months, the conversation has picked up, and an increasing number of fashion houses have started to make this a part of their brand narrative.
So what do we understand by sustainable fashion?
Sustainable fashion- as put by Dr. Brismar from Green Strategy can be defined as “clothing, shoes and accessories that are manufactured, marketed and used in the most sustainable manner possible, taking into account both environmental and socio-economic aspects”. In practice, this implies continuous work to improve all stages of a product’s life cycle, from design, raw material production, manufacturing, transport, storage, marketing and final sale, to use, reuse, repair, remake and recycling of the product and its components.
“From an environmental perspective, it would mean to minimise any undesirable environmental effect of the product’s life cycle by:
(a) Ensuring efficient and careful use of natural resources (water, energy, land, soil, animals, plants, biodiversity, ecosystems, etc);
(b) Selecting renewable energy sources (wind, solar, etc) at every stage, and maximising repair, remake, reuse, and recycling of the product and its components.
On the other hand, from a socio-economic perspective, all stakeholders should work to improve present working conditions for workers on the field, in the factories, transportation chain, and stores, by aligning with good ethics, best practice and international codes of conduct. In addition, fashion companies should contribute to encourage more sustainable consumption patterns, caring and washing practices, and overall attitudes to fashion”. As quoted by Dr. Brismar.
Sustainable fashion can thus be about producing clothes, shoes and accessories in environmentally and socio-economically sustainable manners, along with more sustainable patterns of consumption and use, which necessitate shifts in individual attitudes and behaviour.
Fashion companies today have shifted to a more sustainable approach by increasingly changing their production, distribution and marketing practices and strategies towards greater sustainability. Swedish fashion companies have started to provide second hand fashion and have initiated rental systems for leasing clothes and accessories. Other companies have started to create fashion that is of high quality and timeless design, i.e. of long-lasting style and durability. Companies like H&M have set up collection and recycling systems that support increased textile recycling. Some companies choose to partner with I:CO, for example H&M, Adidas, Jack&Jones, Puma and the North Face, to manufacture clothes with certified textiles i.e in accordance to international standards of environmental labels and fair trade practices.
Thus we can say a more conscious approach in production, leaning towards being environmentally sensitive is already being adopted. But there is still a long way to go. Much recently Zara introduced its sustainability pledge. But can Zara ever be sustainable? As the largest fast-fashion retailer in the world, they produce around 450 million garments a year and release 500 new designs a week, about 20,000 a year. Zara’s fast-fashion model has been so successful that it has inspired an entire industry to increase their production patterns to an unprecedented number of fashion garments year-round.
Can any fast-fashion retailer claim sustainability?
Living in an era of hyper-consumption in the middle of a climate crisis. The fast-fashion business model itself is the very antithesis to sustainability. There have been many encouraging steps by fashion houses to combat climate change in their respective domains. For example, the recycling of old and used garments but even if garments are collected in-store, the capabilities to recycle clothing at the scale needed for current production rates do not exist. It is also typically more energy-intensive to recycle than to produce new products.
Another concept, put forth recently by Zara, is to use only sustainable fabrics. But switching to sustainable fabrics while producing fashion clothing under the same model of intensive production will not make any fast-fashion retailer sustainable, either economically or environmentally.
As Anita Dongre puts it, “There is no such thing as a 100 per cent sustainable fabric. Fabrics require a tremendous amount of energy and natural resources to produce. Sustainable fabrics are just less harmful by reducing their environmental impact”.
It as been observed that it is smaller brands who have jumped into the culture of sustainability by producing less from the onset. They use strategies like producing made-to-order, so they are not making more than what is sold. They do this because waste is one of their biggest concerns. They also design clothing to be of the highest quality, ensuring durability and longevity, thus these clothes have a much longer lifespan. Such brands might also offer to repair your clothing so that you may keep it longer. These small brands often opt to work under an “anti-fashion calendar.” They deliberately chose not to follow the intense seasonal calendar that fashion functions under. Instead, they produce as needed. Large global corporate retailers on the other hand do not seek to change their fundamental business model or create cultures of sustainability. That would require re-working their entire business structure.
Fast fashion is a “grow or die” business. And fast fashion continues to export this western consumerism into the Global South which could have disastrous consequences. This is the paradox at the heart of western consumerist culture and one that goes beyond fast-fashion industry. Neoliberal capitalist economies require continuous consumption and define success through growth — concepts at odds with sustainability. Business growth must be decoupled from resource use.
However the current carbon footprint of the fashion industry is over eight per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions, larger than the entire international travel combined. Therefore, to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including the 2 degree Celsius global temperature target, the fashion industry must play an active role in changing how they operate, source, manufacture, distribute and approach the market.
The overall clothing production doubled from 2000 to 2014. The average consumer bought 60 per cent more clothing in 2014 than in 2000, but kept each garment half as long. As the global population is set to grow by another two billion people in the next 30 years. To make a dent in the climate crisis, we have to cut emissions by more than 55 per cent in the next 10 years. Futuristic trends show that Apparel consumption is projected to to rise by 63 per cent in the next 10 years of which less than one per cent of all clothing produced globally is recycled.
Thus it’s not as simple as switching out current textiles or packaging for more sustainable versions. For the benefit of the earth and humanity, large brands need to look at how to move away from their continuous offerings of weekly new products. While the road towards sustainability in general isn’t easy, it’s now critical that we all learn what qualifies as truly sustainable and ethical fashion. Solutions to sustainability must include cultural change. The entire global civilisation must unite together to bring about a stark shift in how we consume and satiate our fashion urges.
