7 Ways Sustainable Fashion Helps the Environment
Sustainable fashion is an alternative to our current fashion industry, better known as fast fashion. As it stands, fashion is bad for the environment given its resource-intensive and polluting practices. In the face of a climate crisis, we must take immediate action to avoid this from continuing. Tackling the fashion industry is no small feat because this market is worth between 2.4 and 3 trillion dollars, and is expected to grow by an additional 63% by 2030. Yet, no matter how economically valuable a market is, we must prioritize environmental sustainability to ensure the future of generations to come. And, if we allow fast fashion to grow at a rapid pace, we not only risk our planet’s well being but our quality of life. Adopt sustainable fashion to help the environment, where we take action to protect the planet and people across the world to have a good, dignified life for generations to come.
1. Sustainable Fashion and Systemic Change
The term ‘sustainable fashion’ provides clarity on how the fashion industry can help serve the interest of our planet. It better defines what sustainability means, what it looks like in practice, and provides specific processes and actions to move towards systemic change. Sustainable fashion also clarifies the industry, given that countries define their exports as either “textiles” or “apparel”. The textile export industry creates fabric while the apparel export industry ships assembled, finished garments. Despite this distinction, sustainable fashion can and should look different across the globe given it is not a hegemonic practice, lifestyle or philosophy. Sustainable fashion is not a purely Western approach or concept, given that fifteen nations dominate 90% of global textile exports and 80% of global clothing exports, with its top players include China, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
Sustainable fashion will mean creating solutions that help the environment, especially for the global South where most apparel and textiles are made. However, the Global South is not solely responsible for creating a better fashion industry. Countries in the Global South creating fast fashion will achieve sustainable fashion when brands start to invest in people and the planet. The most vulnerable communities should not be responsible for the current state of the fashion industry, nor its impact on the environment. Fast fashion brands must take responsibility and take immediate, radical action. However, change has been slow to come. We can work towards sustainable fashion by pressuring fast fashion brands to take action. All the while, we need governments and laws that create the necessary political structures needed to protect the interest of its people's well-being and the health of its local community, which includes its environmental well-being.
2. Sustainable Fashion’s Green Innovation Frontier
Sustainable fashion is an alternative focused on sustainability and conscious consumerism. We can make the world a bit greener by examining our personal actions, like repairing clothing, buying secondhand and swapping pieces with friends and family. We can also push for innovation in the industry so that sustainable fashion helps the environment in ways that haven't been seen yet! Let's embrace forward-thinking to the array of polluting and extractive practices found in supply chains. Technology can also be harnessed to create practical solutions to nature-based goals and the needs of local communities. Yet, we must always consider if these improvements are ethical and fair for everyone involved.
Social justice and environmental justice must work in harmony in solutions presented to resolve issues found in fast fashion. If we only prioritize environmental justice in the fashion industry, while ignoring and/or using local communities, then we fail to create sustainable, holistic solutions. Green innovations in the fashion industry include innovations in garment factories operations. All the while, more textile dye innovations would further improve dye chemistry, machinery, and new materials. Especially when, in the last decades, high fixation, also known as polyfunctional reactive dye for cotton, has achieved higher fixation rates to guarantee the color on clothing lasts longer.
3. Sustainable Fashion’s Fight for Water Conservation
Water is crucial to the fashion industry because it is vital for the textile production of clothing. It is essential in the initial phase, known as the agrarian stage, to grow materials like cotton, flax for linen, and trees for cellulosic through irrigation. Water is also used for raising animals whose skin or fur contributes to the fashion industry. The agrarian stage demands millions of gallons of clean water sourced from lakes and rivers to cultivate fibers, like cotton. To create a single pair of jeans, it requires approximately 3,400 gallons of water in the cotton irrigation process. Textile factories across the globe are strategically located near rivers to be able to divert water through canals to power looms and facilitate "wet processes" involving yarns, fabrics, and garments.
Countries like Indonesia and China have established their factories along riverbanks, where critical wet processes like scouring, bleaching, desizing, mercerizing, dyeing, garment finishing, laundry, printing, and coating take place. Not only do wet processes consume large amounts of water, it also results in various wastes, including alkali, starch, acid, base, and bleach. Fabric dyeing, in particular, poses significant environmental challenges, despite being resistant to fading, given they contain elevated levels of carcinogenic substances like mercury, lead, and cadmium, as well as heavy metals such as zinc, copper, iron, and manganese. Places like Hossain, Sarker, and Khan are facing a water crisis as the industry significantly grows every year, with groundwater extraction becoming a real problem. Sustainable fashion poses a pathway in fighting for water conservation and improving its cleanliness by creating better production processes and reducing water contamination. We must push for legislation that would tackle the water crisis and pollution found in different communities across the globe to eliminate unfair situations for locals situated near garment factories.
4. Sustainable Fashion’s Vision of a Circular Economy
Sustainable fashion can help lead to a circular economy that could help our environment in the long run. A circular economy is the antithesis of a linear economy, which focuses on eliminating waste and pollution, circulating products and materials, and regenerating nature. Sustainable fashion is also known as circular fashion, focused on circular thinking in fashion design, production and consumption. Circular fashion is critical in finding ways to reduce the immense amount of waste found in the fashion industry. It also allows us to distinguish greenwashing efforts from true green efforts. Developing this ‘fashion eye’ is critical given brands, like H&M, have been claimed to be guilty of promoting false green efforts, such as collections that appear sustainable. However, these efforts lack transparency towards how they are effectively preventing waste in the fashion industry on a holistic level.
Circular fashion allows us to reimagine what the industry can look like. Consider what fashion would look like if we considered the technical and biological cycle of clothing. According to Ellen McArthur Foundation’s circular fashion framework, having a technical cycle would help ensure that products and materials are kept in circulation through recycling, reuse, repair and remanufacture. The biological cycle would then ensure that the nutrients in any biodegradable fashion are returned to the Earth so nature is regenerated. Ideally, a circular economy for fashion would create better products and services that are used more, over and over again, and could be recycled or used for renewable options. It would help create a fashion industry where waste and pollution are designed out from the beginning, where the root causes of biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution are tackled head on.
5. Sustainable Fashion’s Fight for Environmental Law and Compliance
Sustainable fashion must fight for environmental laws and compliance to claim it helps the environment. Current levels of environmental degradation and pollution in the fashion industry are unacceptable. Global environmental standards in the fashion industry must be established to ensure proper regulation and practices to mitigate our climate crisis. Yet, as it stands, every country is free to determine its own regulations, oversight, and enforcement in the industry. Turkey, Pakistan, India, and China's outcome evaluations are most dependent on textile production, although factories often don’t comply with guidelines. And, unfortunately garment factories are often in a race to the bottom. Fashion brands take their business to the cheapest garment factories across the globe. This forces garment factories to keep production costs low in order to secure contracts with fashion brands that subcontract out their garment production.
Laws that enforce regulation and compliance are essential for the fashion industry to serve the interest of the planet. It would make brands and factories alike to invest in solutions, like green innovation. Imagine if a major fashion brand helped garment factories to invest in water treatment processes, including updated equipment and technology essential to keep up with ideal environmental standards. Yet, as the industry stands, factory managers see water treatment improvements as non-productive use of funds because they need to cut costs to keep contracts with major fast fashion brands. Contamination and social injustices will persist if collective action is not taken to achieve systemic change. We must push for major fashion brands to protect our planet. This is critical in the midst of a climate crisis where voluntary solutions have failed to be bold enough, nor drastic enough to address its seriousness.
6. Sustainable Fashion and the Mitigation of Textile Waste
Sustainable fashion helps the environment by pushing for the mitigation of textile waste. Fast fashion has created a culture of disposable clothing that results in massive amounts of textile waste. It has a detrimental impact on the planet, normalized by the constant fashion trends created by brands. Rapid trends encourage consumers to discard garments after only a few uses. To stop this rapid production of production and consumption, sustainable fashion acts as a powerful alternative. We can be part of the change by no longer buying fast fashion trends and to stop throwing clothing away. Consider fixing your clothing the next time it breaks or stains. Learn how to sew and get a bit creative with what you got! You can also recycle your clothing by converting your used textiles into new things. It will not only save you money but will give your garment another life.
In addition to these individual actions, sustainable fashion pushes for the regulation and minimization of textile-related pollution. Fast fashion brands must take responsibility for the entire life cycle of their clothing. Brands should offer post-consumer drop-off recycling boxes in their stores or in key locations to collect old pieces that are no longer wanted. All the while, brands should explore how to repurpose the fabric for future collections. This would help minimize waste and reduce their adverse ecological impact on a planet that has enough clothing to dress the next six generations. When fast fashion brands take action to recycle clothing, and take on alternative business practices, they start supporting a circular economy.
7. Sustainable Fashion’s Preservation of Biodiversity
The fashion industry's insatiable demand for raw materials has been a driving force behind habitat destruction and biodiversity loss. In response to these environmental challenges. The primary strategy sustainable fashion can take is to protect biodiversity through the adoption of organic and regenerative farming practices. Unlike conventional farming that relies heavily on synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, organic farming prioritizes natural, biological processes. This not only eliminates the harmful effects of chemical runoff but also promotes soil health and fertility. Regenerative farming also aims to restore and enhance entire ecosystems for its soil health, water conservation, and biodiversity. All the while, sustainable fashion must push for more organic material in the industry. Organic materials include cotton or hemp to further move towards biodiversity. Organic cotton, for instance, is grown without the use of synthetic pesticides and genetically modified organisms, reducing the negative impact on surrounding ecosystems.
Hemp is known for its low environmental footprint, requiring minimal water and pesticides that can thrive in diverse climates. Both cotton and hemp can contribute to the conservation of biodiversity by fostering healthier ecosystems that support a variety of plant and animal life. By opting for materials that do not contribute to deforestation or habitat destruction, the industry can maintain the delicate balance of ecosystems. Protecting habitats is also essential for the survival of numerous plant and animal species, many of which play crucial roles in maintaining ecological stability, such as pollination, soil fertility, and pest control.
Sustainable fashion is a critical solution to address the environmental challenges posed by the current fast fashion industry. The fashion sector's massive economic value, projected growth, and global impact necessitate urgent action to shift towards sustainability. Sustainable fashion not only presents a vision for a more environmentally conscious industry but also offers tangible ways to achieve systemic change. In essence, the adoption of sustainable fashion is not merely an option but a necessity. It is a comprehensive and integrated approach to the multifaceted environmental challenges posed by the industry. Consider embracing sustainable fashion, we not only protect the planet but also paves the way for a more responsible, ethical, and inclusive fashion future for generations to come.