The Greenwashing Sin
Fashion of late has been heavily rolling the sins of climate disaster. Developing countries suffer from unethical labor laws ranging from child labor to deprived workers, and landfills for waste such as Chile with about 59,000 tonnes of fast fashion clothes that are not used in Europe, Asia, and the US. 20% of global water waste comes from the fashion industry through fabric dyeing and treatment; it takes 7,500 liters of water to make a pair of jeans and 2,700 liters of water for a cotton t-shirt. Greenhouse gas contribution both while making the cloths and while it is left to decompose in landfill (decomposing can take up to 200 years) amounts to 8% of global contribution with added severity of toxic emissions and dyes run into groundwater and soil. The impact of the fashion industry on the environment is severe.
So the big question is, can the fashion industry truly be climate-friendly?
Let’s look into common terminologies used and how it impacts all of us and the decisions we make?
1.Fast fashion
These are clothing lines that move quickly from design, to catwalks to fast scale manufacturing, requiring large-scaled labor resources. The underlying business concept is that with a high economy of scale that increases production volume, the cost will reduce drastically. Instead of 4 seasons, most often it could be down to weekly fashion trends.
The downside to this, because of the quick change of trend cycle, clothes that are not sold often get thrown away and replenished with new designs to captivate buyers, you. According to fashion nonprofit ReMake, some of the popular fast-fashion include Uniqlo, H&M, Zara, Forever 21, Shein, and Fashion Nova.
2.Greenwashing
Greenwashing refers to brands that portray themselves as sustainable especially through false advertisement, but fail to live up to the definition. According to Earth.org, H&M, Zara, and Uniqlo were caught greenwashing. H&M launched a “green” clothing line claiming to use organic cotton and recycle polyester. Unfortunately, the Norwegian Customer Authority brought up that there were no definitions used for words in marketing campaigns such as “sustainable”, “green”, and “environment-friendly”, hence considered to be used loosely to mislead consumers.
3.Ethical fashion
The ethical practice of the fashion industry involves human rights practices from the production of raw material until it is sold to customers. Some of the issues commonly brought up are child labor, sexual harassment, unlivable work environment, min wage, no wage, etc. The Bangladesh fire burn that killed 117 people and injured 200 more who were producing garments for Walmart, US Marines, and various retail in Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands was an eye-opener to how poorly labor workers in underdeveloped countries were treated. H&M, a Swedish brand failed to pay 850,000 workers a living wage, female workers were sexually abused and unbearable working conditions leading to the death of 100 people according to sustainably-chic. Urban Outfitters used to steal indigenous artist designs and make them into door rugs. Misguided sold what was supposedly “faux-fur” to contain fur from cats, dogs, raccoons, minks, and rabbits. Zara’s customers found secret messages in items of clothing that were garment workers were forced to work for free. Victoria’s Secret was accused of using child labor and models sexually harassed.
4.Sustainable Fashion
Sustainable fashion concerns the environment – when it comes to the production of fashion for example wastage, chemicals used, water, landfills, etc. As fashion is considered to be one of the greatest pollutants on earth, customer awareness and the call for brands to be environmentally friendly have been strong over the past few years. A lot of fashion brands are progressively moving towards using organic cotton that reduces gas emissions and eliminates soil and water from contamination. Other proactive measures include regenerated cashmere, recycled textiles, recycled materials for packaging, recycled denim, and recycled used plastics and ABS. The challenge most brands face is the cost of R&D, testing, and production required for developing sustainable material replacements. This results in a lot of certified sustainable brands are in the higher price range. The mass availability of sustainable raw materials is much needed in the world today.
5.Vegan – Synthetic
Faux leather is also known as vegan leather because it is animal friendly. The most common are polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyurethane (PU) which primarily contain the plastic component. While this is widely used as its material components fit the technical needs of product development and prevent animal cruelty, the harm to the environment is not negligible. Plastic will take a long time to decompose and synthetic vegan uses toxic dyes. Synthetic vegan leather is also not durable which requires it to be replaced often incurring wastage with a long biodegradable period. Faux leather also doesn’t break down easily and is distressed which makes it hard to be recycled. There is a major need in innovating faux leather replacements for mass usage.
6.Vegan – Natural Resources
Vegan leather from natural resources such as pineapples, corks, apple peels, and other fruit waste is available but the production is not in mass-market yet. The challenge production has is in its performance in terms of stretchability, design flexibility but it has a lot of potentials in innovation growth and usability. According to greenmatters, some of the brands that use these raw materials are Will’s Vegan shoe using cereal crop leather, Desserto using cactus leather, Veja using corn leather, and Veerah that uses apple peels. Mestrae uses pineapple fabric for its heels bag.
7.Circular fashion
Circular fashion is an optimal state to improve the environmental impact of fashion drastically whereby raw material that is used to develop the product comes back to momma for a second life.
The challenge with this however is that the durability of recycled materials may not have the same strength as its original form, and the cost is more expensive. Raw material producers will have business limitations but ultimately the goal is to move towards sustainable production. There is a lot of consumer education that is needed in this sector. Fashion blockchain aims to disrupt the fashion industry and create a more circular connection but the challenge with institutionalized blockchain is the token customizations and capitalist market control. A decentralized platform using Bitcoin which is native to the internet currency would be more suited but again this requires technology and innovation growth.
8.Sustainable fashion certifications
There are various independent fashion certificates available for the authenticity of claims. The details are as follows :
ACO – Australian Certified Organic
Organic product and every element is traceable
BCI – Better Cotton Initiatives
In making cotton more organic and sustainable
Certified B Corporation
A corporation that is driving positive change towards a sustainable environment
Fairtrade
Protection of farmers, farming environment, and workers all around the world
FSC – Forest Stewardship Council
Responsible forest management – deforestation for farming and wild animal rehabilitation
GOTS – Global Organic Textile Standard
Organic fibre textile standard (min 70% organic)
Standard 100 by EOKO-TEX
Test against harmful materials for all good leather, fabrics, finished and raw yarns, buttons, zips, etc
Woolmark
The product is made out of natural, renewable, and biodegradable wool, and its accordance with the exacting quality standards.
ECA – Ethical Clothing Australia
For local textile, clothing, and footwear businesses to protect the rights of garment workers
WRAP – Worldwide Responsible Accredited Programme (WRAP)
This is a factory certification (not brands) for apparel, footwear, and sewn products based on international workplace standards and local laws
So can fashion brands be truly climate-friendly?
The awareness and need are building up. But there are 3 major challenges seen :
1) Fast Fashion has high market capitalization and dominance to do whatever they want to –customer call for better environment support is required.
2) Small brands cannot afford the cost of independent R&D, testing, and production of finding sustainable replacements. There needs to be a lot more drive towards innovation and mass-market availability of product replacements.
3) There are a lot of innovation opportunities – more fundings are needed for international R&D labs, universities, sustainable entrepreneurs, etc.
If we can focus on this, we have a better possibility at making fashion more green and eco-friendly
Artisan Story is a passion project by Mestrae in reaching out to a wider community who loves fashion and technology. Mestrae believes that fashion has to evolve to remain relevant to today’s modern times and needs.