Chapter 1

Closet, Meet Sustainable Fashion

IN THIS CHAPTER

Seeing what sustainability means for people and the planet

Recognizing unsustainable practices in the fashion industry

Looking at your role in the fashion industry's transition to sustainability

Getting started on your sustainable fashion journey

You've decided to start your sustainable fashion journey (or maybe just give it a try), but as with anything new, you're a bit overwhelmed. I get it. There's an overload of information out there! Sifting through it all and finding a way to feel like you're making a difference can be stressful. You've probably seen pictures of landfills filled with clothes and read startling statistics about the environmental damage from the fashion industry, but you tell yourself that you don't make or sell clothes, so how can you make a difference? I'm here to help you figure things out.

In this chapter, I help you get started with the basics. I help you understand what sustainability truly means, how the fashion industry is contributing to the climate crisis, how some stakeholders in the fashion industry are trying to do things better, how you can become a sustainable fashion consumer. Most importantly, I show you how to be part of the solution while avoiding eco-anxiety (the fear of environmental disaster that comes from observing the impact of climate change).

Understanding Sustainability

The dictionary defines sustainable or sustainability as the avoidance of (or reduction of) the depletion of natural resources to maintain ecological balance. The terms sustainable or sustainability, in general, tend to describe how humans must change how they consume natural resources to slow climate change and ultimately reverse it. But simply put, it is living our everyday lives, doing all the things we do in a way that is not harmful to our planet so that we live in harmony with nature.

This section covers some foundational concepts around sustainability.

Preserving our planet and preventing climate change

The conventional definition or understanding of sustainability tends to focus on eco-friendliness, particularly on pollution and climate change.

A person or population's impact on the environment is measured and referred to as a carbon footprint (which is the total amount of greenhouse gases - including carbon dioxide and methane - that are generated by all our actions. The average carbon footprint for a person in the United States is 16 tons per year, one of the highest rates in the world. There are many ways to reduce your carbon footprint, like by eating less meat or using public transport, but those methods are beyond the scope of this book. In this book, I help you reduce your carbon footprint by shopping sustainably, purchasing less clothing, and sending your unwanted clothing or textiles to other places besides a landfill.

Treating people with dignity and respect

The environmental aspects of sustainability are critical, but there is another important aspect of sustainability: ethical practices.

Fashion is sustainable if the clothes and accessories are made in an eco-friendly, ethical, and socially responsible way. The socially responsible aspect of sustainability in fashion means that clothes and shoes are made in a way that is fair to workers and the farmers who grow the crops for fabric, such as cotton. Workers should work in safe environments and receive adequate wages.

The ethical aspect of sustainability in fashion means that there is a fair and transparent supply chain, with fashion brands directing their business to factories that are audited and accredited for fair labor practices or sourcing fabric from fair-trade farms. I discuss this in more detail in Chapter 5.

For me, sustainable fashion must incorporate the ethical aspect I describe earlier, but you will see that many commentators or authors sometimes use the terms "ethical fashion" and "sustainable fashion" interchangeably, and other times as if the terms refer to entirely different things. To me, the ethical aspect is a part of sustainability.

Calling Out the Problem with Today's Fashion Industry

The fashion industry has an overproduction problem, and this overproduction is part of what makes the fashion industry the least sustainable, one of the worst polluting industries, and the one with the most unethical practices. New stuff comes into stores every week, our closets are bulging with clothes, and charity stores are receiving record amounts of clothing donations because there are just too many clothes entering circulation. It is estimated that 100 billion clothes are produced annually. That's the equivalent of 12 new pieces of clothing per year per person, and whether these clothes are bought or not, they are still made. Those statistics explain why we have clothes piling up in landfills. We are consuming 60 percent more clothes now than we did 20 years ago and throwing away a lot of them. Also, a lot of the waste comes from fashion factories in the form of excess fabric that isn't used in garment production and is thrown away.

The rise of fast fashion

So what has happened in the last 20 years? Why do we all own more clothes? The 60 percent increase correlates with the rise of fast fashion. Fast fashion is an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers. Fast fashion equates to quick production, high volume, trendy items, and inexpensive prices at the register. (But that doesn't necessarily mean the clothes cost less! Chapter 6 explains the concept of cost per wear.)

Fast fashion appeared in the 1990s and early 2000s and has taken the industry by storm, providing more variety and a greater volume of clothes than we have probably ever seen - or needed.

Fast fashion is the norm right now, but there was a vibrant fashion world before fast fashion. Many well-known brands predate fast fashion, and they were viable, successful businesses back then.

A three-legged monster

The fast-fashion model relies on churning out lots and lots of trendy clothes very quickly, which in turn is heavily dependent on fast, on-demand manufacturing and uses a lot of resources. The end product - literally tons of clothes - ends up in landfills as soon as a trend is out of style. Consequently, the problem with fast fashion is threefold:

• The fashion industry has become an environmental disaster. According to the World Economic Forum, fashion production makes up 10 percent of humanity's carbon emissions. Dyeing and constructing clothes leads to water pollution, and the final product ends up polluting the land when it's tossed into a landfill. But that's not all. Today, most clothes are made with synthetic (man-made) materials that take decades to decompose, emitting greenhouse gases in the process. These gases trap heat in our atmosphere and contribute to climate change.
• Garments workers are treated poorly. This breakneck speed of production means that clothes need to be in and out of the factory in two to three weeks and workers must work arduous hours, often in unsafe conditions. On top of all that, most of the time, garment workers aren't even paid a living wage (an income that keeps a worker out of poverty).

• The modern mass-market fashion industry's business model scams you, the consumer. What seems like a good deal when you have options galore weekly at apparently cheap prices is not a good deal. That's because if you aren't spending a lot of money on an item, chances are, it's made with poor-quality materials. Once it falls apart, you need to buy a new one. And then another one. In the end, you probably would've been better off buying a higher-quality, but more expensive, item at the start. This concept is a key component of cost per wear, which I explain in Chapter 6.

  Most fashion brands try to convince consumers to buy more than they need. That works for them, because you give them more money, but it's not good for your wallet or the environment.

Being Part of the Solution and Avoiding Eco-Anxiety

The scale of the problematic practices of the fashion industry may make it seem as if individual action can't have any meaningful impact in reversing the adverse impacts of such practices. The more you read or hear about the problem, the more you are at risk for eco-anxiety, a chronic fear of environmental doom and feeling helpless about it

Even if that's not you, you may still wonder where you fit in all of this. You don't make clothes; you just buy them. You still need clothes and still want to enjoy fashion, but you don't want it to be at the expense of the planet and the people who make your clothes. You also know that precious resources go into making your clothes. Armed with this information, you can and should make more sustainable fashion choices. This book explains what those choices are and helps you implement them.

You may be one person, but your choices and actions have an impact! The actions of each one of us ultimately add up to become a catalyst for good, meaningful change in the fashion industry. So don't aim to change the world by...