There was a new star at this year’s New York Fashion Week: sustainability. The destructive environmental impact of fast fashion, our recent habit of buying many cheap garments and disposing of them quickly, is coming under intense scrutiny and criticism – as is the fashion industry as a whole. And rightly so. The fashion industry accounts for 10% of the world’s carbon emissions. And it doesn’t stop there.
Twenty percent of industrial water pollution comes from treating and dying textiles. Each year the fashion industry uses a staggering 1.5 trillion liters of water. It gets worse. All that ugly, man-made debris you see littering our shorelines? 85% of it is from microfibers (a go-to fabric for many apparel manufactures). Nearly 6% of all landfill content are textiles. I could continue to bombard you with statistics but I think you get the point.
The heightened awareness of the fashion industry’s environmental problem has resulted in various responses from both the industry and governments. Government solutions, while always suspect, do help increase awareness. The British government is considering a fashion tax. The French are taking a different approach. The “Paris Good Fashion” campaign aims at making Paris the world leader in sustainable fashion by 2024. BBC Earth is launching a sustainable fashion project and even Elle magazine is promoting sustainable fashion.
Retail powerhouse Selfridges began its move to sustainability in 2016. They currently offer “reasonably” priced sustainable garments. Many small fashion companies have been formed with sustainability at very core of their business model. Even large fast fashion houses such as L&M are taking steps to appear more environmentally friendly.
These are all good signs but are they lip service or indications of a sustainable change? Marketing campaigns based solely on sustainability have mostly been flops. The popular mantra of “buy fewer, higher quality sustainable garments” conflicts with the traditional concept of fashion. And recent research suggests that environmental concerns actually have little to do with actual purchase behavior.
According to a Journal of Consumer Research study, consumers conveniently forget ethical information when making purchases. We don’t want to think about bad things especially when we’re buying clothing that has an in-fashion shelf life measured in weeks. Recent research by LIM College indicates millennials purchase clothing based on price and convenience, not sustainability. Another deterrent is the extra work it takes for consumers to identify sustainably made clothing. Many consumers are unwilling or unable to educate themselves on a product’s environmental friendliness.
With psychology and consumer inertia working against sustainable fashion, can the movement be sustained? The environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) index, and the Higg index from the Sustainable Apparel Coalition are attempts to provide consumers with easy ways to determine the eco-friendliness of fashion products. These indices will help but require universal adoption to be truly effective.
Perhaps the rising tide of global environmental awareness will be enough to carry the fashion industry along with it. But that’s leaving things to chance. The fashion industry should take things into their own hands to sustain the sustainability movement. How about a new approach to marketing sustainable fashion, one that weaves sustainability into the core emotions of the buying experience? This could be an important step in making sustainable fashion sustainable.
© 2019 David Biagini All rights reserved
