ETHICS IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY
13:25As a fashion student at the beginning of my degree, finding out that this industry is the second most polluted next to Oil, was quite shocking. This has made me question, just how sustainable is the Fashion Industry?
How did the fashion Industry become the second most polluted? This is a query that many people within or going into the industry are asking. The reason behind this, is due to the heavy demand of "Fast Fashion". Fast fashion is a contemporary term used by fashion retailers, to express that designs move from catwalk to high street quickly, capturing current fashion trends. This new way of producing trends quickly, is run but greed and money. People within this industry, forget the effects that their actions are going to have on the environment!
Fast fashion landfills are becoming one of the biggest problems within this industry and for the environment. Each year over 80 billion pieces of clothing are produced worldwide. After it's short lifespan, three out of four garments will end up in landfills or be incinerated, resulting in only a quarter being recycled. Overconsumption is one of these adverse effects of fast fashion. In Hong Kong, residents throw away the equivalent of 1,400 t-shirts every minute and out of a detailed survey of 2,000 women, the majority of fashion purchases are only worn at least 7 times! High street brand, H&M came to my University last week and announced their new campaign to make recycling "cool" again. The Brand have launched its first ever campaign that focuses on behavioural change, by encouraging consumers to recycle their unwanted clothes, as H&M seeks to pave the way for “a sustainable fashion future”. This is the way forward for fast fashion and for the industry in order to survive. If fashion continues on the path it's already on, we are no longer going to be living in a safe environment.
During the campaign, H&M aims to collect 1,000 tonnes of unwanted garments from customers, across more than 3,600 stores worldwide. According to the brand, the initiative is one of the most broad environmental projects it has ever attempted and forms part of H&M’s long-term goal to “close the loop in fashion”. I think this is an amazing campaign! H&M are grasping what needs to be fixed within this world of fast fashion and greed. They executed the campaign perfectly, making myself want to take a tone of fabric to one of their bins to recycle.
“We launched our recycling scheme globally, in all markets and in all stores in 2013 with the intention of reducing textiles to landfill, to reduce the use of natural resources, energy, chemicals and water and ultimately to close the loop in fashion – making new clothes of the old,” Catarina Midby, UK sustainability manager at the high street fashion brand, told Marketing Week. Hopefully more high street brands follow down the same path as H&M, to make a more sustainable future.
Fast fashion also contributes to the water consumption dilemma. Around 2 billion pairs of jeans are produced every year and a typical pair takes 7,000 litres of water to produce. To make just one t-shirt, it takes 2,700 litres of water, that’s the amount of water an average person drinks over the course of 900 days! The dyeing process, of which 1.7 million tonnes of various chemicals are used, to create our rich colours, contain hazardous chemicals such as PFC, that leave a permanent impact on our environment. This is creating such a bad impact on our world's eco system and also damaging animal habitats. Is the fast fashion that our industry is creating, really worth it when we know what it's doing to our environment? I hate the fact that a lot of people in this industry don't care about the well being of the plants that we source our materials from. I do hope that consumers and people within the industry follow down the path of sustainability.
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