Why Fashion Needs to Be More Sustainable
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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.
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| A Goodwill in Minnesota, where 12 grocery carts of clothing and textiles are trashed every minute. Photo: MPCA Photos |
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.
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| Turag River in Dhaka, polluted by dye factories. Photo: REACH |
What consumers can do
A vintage shop. Photo: respectable_photography
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
- Buy from sustainable brands with transparent supply chains
- 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.”