Can fashion and Sustainability truly Co-Exist?
One garment goes through a garment lifestyle, at first its raw material, then fibre production, garment production, shipping and transport, next wear and washed finally end of life. Its very much a 6 step programme but what if the cycle didn't end, what if there was to no end of life, instead it was replaced by mend and rework?
Sustainability is a very important area of the fashion industry and is often questioned wether fashion and sustainability could her coexist, the answer is yes, understanding the options of production, logistics and work policies can enable the merge.
So start of what is sustainability? we hear it a lot not just regarding the fashion industry what is it really?
According to the Oxford Dictionary, Sustainability is 'avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.'
Did you know that Fast fashion is responsible for forced and child labor in countries like Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Low wages, long work hours, unsafe conditions, sexual abuse, and physical assaults are numerous in the fast fashion industry. We are in the position to stop this, but why are we not doing anything?
Did you know It's estimated that more than two tonnes of clothing are bought each minute in the UK, more than any other country in Europe. That amount produces nearly 50 tonnes of carbon emissions, the same as driving 162,000 miles in a car.
Did you know Fast fashion kills wildlife and puts endangered species at risk. It's responsible for the trapping, farming, and skinning of billions of animals every year. Even with so many available alternatives, consumers keep buying fast fashion massively.
Did you know wastewater from the production of synthetic fabrics, which requires 70 million barrels of oil per year, releases lead, arsenic, benzene and other pollutants into water sources... yes, that's what you are drinking.
What does sustainability have to do with Fast Fashion? Fast Fashion is second to oil in the biggest polluter of the environment. Less that 11% of brands are reusing and recycling there products leading to mass waste and landfill. Sustainability is a way we can carry on developing the fashion industry but in a safer, healthy and kinder way that won't destroy the planet, kill animals or hurt children leaving the planet healthy for next generations.
Brands that are actively moving into a more sustainable environment and are breaking the barrier for sustainable fashion are Puma, Stella McCartney and Wardrobe HQ.
"Sustainability is a key value of PUMA, deeply integrated in out business operations. It guides out company to work faster towards a more just and sustainable future". - BJØRN GULDEN - CEO.
PUMA operates on 10 targets that PUMA will improve on from 2025
Human Rights
Products
BioDiversity
Fair Income
Circularity
Plastic and Oceans
Climate
Water and Air
Chemicals
Health and Safety
These targets in mind, PUMA aims to get better in the environmental, health and safety, and human rights matters within PUMA and start to adapt their supply chain to suit a more circular business model.
CLIMATE
What is Greenhouse Gas?
Greenhouse gases (also known as GHGs) are gases in the earth's atmosphere that trap heat. During the day, the sun shines through the atmosphere, warming the earth's surface. At night, earth's surface cools, releasing heat back into the air. But some of the heat is trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
In 2021, the World Economic Forum identified the fashion industry and its supply chain as the world’s third-largest polluter.
On average, it releases 10% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions annually. Per year, the industry contributes 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. By the year 2030, it is predicted that total greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 50%.
One reason why fast fashion exacerbates climate change is through clothing and textile waste. Whether your clothes no longer fit or aren’t in style, 57% of discarded, unsold, and used clothing ends up in landfills.The United States alone contributes 14 million tons of clothing waste annually. Once these landfills reach their capacity, the trash is then incinerated which contributes to many public health and safety issues as well as releases more greenhouse gasses back into the atmosphere. As clothing degrades in landfills it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, three out of five fashion items end up in a landfill. This has been a recurring theme since the 1990’s as consumerism shifted towards purchasing clothing more frequently. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that in 2017, 11.2 million tons of textile waste in the United States ended up in landfills.
PLASTIC AND OCEANS
How does fast fashion affect our oceans? What does plastic have to do with fast fashion?
Most fast fashion manufacturers have no sustainable vision for our environment. Clothes account for up to 80% of all textiles entering our oceans each year.
It takes more than 700 years for one T-shirt to biodegrade in water and soil combined. This means that if you wore just one shirt every day for an entire year, you would still leave behind over 160 pounds worth of textile waste! Waterways and oceans are two areas that see the detrimental effects of fast fashion first hand. When people throw too much clothing into landfills and do not recycle, these items will find their way into waterways and, eventually, oceans.Not only do these items pollute the waterways and ocean, but they also affect the lives of marine life. People have found entangled sea life with plastic from fast-fashion clothing, threatening their overall health and life expectancy. When we consider that approximately 1,500,000 pieces of plastic waste find their way into our oceans every day and do not include the numbers from fast fashion items such as apparel and footwear only makes the problem worse.
How could I reduce plastic pollution in my brand?
Recommend on washing labels to wash garments at a lower temperatures and provide a guide on how to wash clothing safely.
Find alternative materials to ship and package products in like sugarcane board, hemp, straw, 100% recycled paper and cotton fibres.
Use sustainable fabrics such as Recycled cotton, Recycled Wool, Organic Hemp and Organic Linen to name a few.
CIRCULARITY
A circular business model "is a way of organizing a company's operations to increase efficiency and reduce environmental impact. These strategies are especially popular with companies in the manufacturing sector. Companies may use a variety of techniques to become more sustainable, including reducing waste, reusing materials, moving to a leasing instead of sales model and redesigning their supply chains. These strategies are only feasible if companies are able to implement them while maintaining profitability, making them a popular choice for businesses that produce durable and high-value goods."
Implementing this into business models could reep great rewards on environmental. operational and social fronts. The primary objective of a circular business model is to create a more sustainable plan, many circular model encourage the use of renewable energy and the recycling of materials, which can reduce emissions. Recycling can also reduce environmental impact by preventing the disposal of used products in landfills and by reducing the demand for new material extraction. This allows companies to use less land in their operations and conserve natural resources.
There are 5 types of circular business models
Coordinating circular value chains through data - Creating products, from recycle to reuse.
Circular product design
Use, Reuse, Share and Repair - Creating durable goods from recycled and reused parts can be inputs for downstream circular business models.
Collection & Reverse Logistics - Close the material life-cycle loop by creating products that can be upcycled, repurposed and re-sold.
Sorting and Preprocessing - Finding alternative value in the parts that make a product whole.
Fair Income
A approach that can be taken to ensure fair income within a business is to research and do in depth research on manufacturers if sourcing from other countries, many disruption houses in the likes of India, China and East Asian countries are known for underpaying workers and treating workers under the standard of human rights. To ensure this does not happen companies can make sure they are partnering with fair trade and legal companies and do extensive research into the workplace, workplace standards and staff standards. Another alternative would be to produce in house or chose manufacturers in the same country so regular checks can be carried out.
BIODIVERSITY
Biodiversity is our solution to Nature Sustainability. Everything we need to function as human beings depends on how healthy biodiversity is. This means everything and anything from what we drink to what we eat even to the air we breathe.
Biodiversity, or the variety of all living on out planet, has been declining at an alarming rate in recent years, mainly due to human activities, such as land use changes, pollution and climate change.
Traceability is the capacity to verify the history, location or status of an item by means of documented identification. Using Traceability on garments we can install customer confidence that their garments were produced safely and friendly. More and more consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the processes used to create garments and the standards that should be upheld in the process, traceability allows customers to trace the garments journey from shipping, manufacturing all the way to how the material used were produced.
PRODUCTS
Brands must be able to ensure that 90% of there products contain more sustainable materials and components.
Some examples of how to make a product sustainable are:
Sourcing materials locally to decrease transportation emissions and costs.
Use reclaimed, post-industrial grades of plastic instead of virgin materials when possible.
Reduce the amount of material needed through part design.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Embedding Human Rights and compliance to ILO Core Conventions in all our operations and suppliers are an essential value to a brand core.
Many businesses rightfully see such integration as a source of opportunity, allowing them to attract and retain employees, consumers, and investors. While improved application of human rights standards in the workplace brings benefits, this must also be seen as a business imperative. The negative impacts of bad human rights practices are borne by the company in the form of reputational, financial, operational or even legal risks. In addition, local communities where businesses and their subsidiaries operate are also negatively impacted, as are employees and consumers.
Understand risks and impacts: identify your business’s human rights risks and impacts and know your scope of responsibility.
Educate employees: ensure they are aware of basic human rights principles so they are better prepared and can help integrate them into the business.
Articulate commitment: publicly share your company’s commitment to human rights through a policy or statement.
Embed in the business: integrate human rights into existing business systems and processes; develop capacity building for relevant personnel.
Be transparent: engage with relevant stakeholders and rights-holders; report publicly on progress and challenges.
Provide remedy: develop an appropriate remedy where the company has caused or contributed to harm.
By following these steps, a business can make significant strides towards improving human rights standards along its entire value chain, which can have dramatic follow-on effects in terms of employee job satisfaction, community support, and customer satisfaction.
ISO: International Labour Standards are legal instruments drawn up by the ILO's constituents and setting out basic principles and right to work.
Conventions and Recommendations are drawn up by representatives of governments, employers and workers and are adopted at the annual International Labour Conference.
HEALTH AND SAFETY
According to recent data from Census of Fatal Occupational Industries:
Every 99 minutes, a worker died from a work-related injury in 2019, Fatalities increased among workers age 55 and older by 8 percent from 1,863 in 2018 to 2,005 in 2019 – the largest ever recorded for this age group. Workplace deaths due to suicides (307 recorded) and unintentional overdoses (313 registered) increased slightly in 2019.
PUMA has promised to reduce industry rates significantly to achieve zero fatal accidents and injury rates below industry average.
CHEMICALS
Some of the most harmful chemicals in a workplace are Acids, Caustic substances, Cleaning products such as disinfectants and chlorine bleach, Glues and Heavy metals, including mercury, lead, cadmium, and aluminum. These chemicals can get into a contaminate supply chains.
Reducing the discharge of these chemicals will create a safer work place for employees and safer products for customers, brands must bring there chemical discharge in supply chains to zero to provide a sustainable future.
WATER AND AIR
Fashion is the third-largest manufacturing industry in the world and, by some calculations, it produces up to 10% of the world's emissions. And fast fashion is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, water and air pollution, creating problematic levels of waste. The textile industry uses enormous amounts of hazardous chemicals for farming, washing, bleaching, dyeing, finishing, and treating fabrics. It pollutes the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat.
30.3 million tons of cotton are produced each year worldwide, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). But cotton farming requires tons of chemicals that pollute nearby water sources. The mass production of conventional cotton is very wasteful and toxic. China is the largest cotton producer worldwide, with 6.1 million tons of cotton produced in 2018, followed by India (4.69 million tons) and the United States (4 million tons).
PUMA have vowed to meet industry good practise on waste-water quality and air emissions to 90% at PUMA core suppliers.
Using more sustainable materials will make customers feel better and play better with the growing amount of alternatives used in PUMA products, PUMA is constantly striving to use more sustainable key materials such as cotton, polyester, leather and cardboard.
"We love doing sport outside. Thats the only possible in a healthy ecosystem. At PUMA, we are constantly working on improving our environmental impact, We're determined to reduce our carbon emissions, water usage, waste and air pollution in out own offices and , even more importantly in our supply chain"
"PUMA's path to a better world is inspired and guided by our stakeholders. These include customers and consumers, direct and indirect employees and their representatives, shareholders, suppliers, regulators, non govermental organizations, international agencies, foundations, academics, our sustainability committee and many others. It is crucial for us to frequently engage with everyone to reflect on our programme, get valuable feedback and adjust our course if necessary."
STELLA McCARTNEY
MISSION STATEMENT: "We are committed to operating a modern and responsible business. We are agents of change, We challenge and push boundaries to make luxurious products in a way that is fit for the world we live in today and the future; beautiful and sustainable. No compromises. Each decision we make is a symbol of our commitment to defining what the future of fashion looks like. From never using leather or fur and pioneering new alternative materials to utilising cutting edge technologies, pushing towards circularity, protecting ancient and endangered forests and measuring our impact with ground-breaking tools."
The Stella McCartney brand uses a range of sustainable fabrics to uphold there promise of a sustainable future for the brand.
Cashmere: There knitwear collections are made from re-engineered cashmere.
Fibres from forests: They source our viscose in a way that helps to protect ancient forests.
Fur-Free-Free: They believe that fashion can be luxurious without using leather or fur.
Metals: They are working to reduce the environmental impacts of out metal consumption.
Organic Cotton: They use organic cotton to create products in a way that enriches the environment.
Vegetarian Leather: As vegetarian brand, they never use leather skin, fur or feather.
Silk: They are exploring completely new ways of creating silk.
Wool: There wool is sourced from hand-selected, high quality animal welfare farms.
Recycled Nylon and Polyester: Synthetic materials can - and should - be recycled and come from recycled sources.
Other ways to look at Sustainability in Fashion
Rentable fashion has taken a sudden increase with customers renting instead of buying items for events such as Weddings, Proms and events. Rentable fashion keeps the garment alive and saves the customer money.
Some examples of rentable fashion are apps such as ByRotate, an app where garments are uploaded by brands and customers who are selling an item for two-five days for a certain price. Examples of brands on the app are YSL, Gucci, M&S, H&M as you can see there is a wide range of brands and the app allows for any budget.
Selfridges London also offer a Renting service with brands such as Zimmermann, Cecilie Bahnsen and Emilia Wickstead. Many buy rented and second hand fashion for the benefits and not for the feel of the clothes, knowing the benefits and the good they are doing for the environment makes the wearer feel good.
My Wearer HQ is a website providing renting fashion services, it works by first you browse through thousands of new and old brands and designers, you can also buy pieces for less that the RRP. Before renting you verify your identity or checkout as a guest, then you continue with your rental and the item will be shipped to you in as little as 4-14 days, after use you will be send a return label for you to return the item to the seller.
Through renting with My Wearer HQ you are provided with designer pieces that are authentically checked, you are provided with a fully managed service - all items will arrive on time and in a clean and pristine condition. Items rented with also include a rental insurance for minor wear and tear, fuss-free returns via any DPD drop off points, free dry cleaning and un refunds for any unworn items.
"By re-wearing items we can extend the life cycle of a garment by up to fifteen times, we can offer an additional way for brands and retailers to sell through pieces that either didn't make it into production, or dint sell through at the end of each season. We can encourage customers to buy better, buy less: through education, consumers will discover that the better quality items are often made with more stringent processes that don't - or have less of - an impact on the environment."
Wardrobe HQ are fully committed to becoming a fully sustainable business and have partnered with Blanc Living Dry Cleaners whose cleaning technology uses only non-toxic, biodegradable detergents and pure water.
Green Courier is the UK's leading environmentally- friendly courier company and delivers all our parcels on a fleet of modern vehicles that run on engines in order to protect the environment.
コメント