Sustainability

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE FACE OF FAST FASHION’s PACE

We are blazing through our planet’s finite resources. (We being largely Western nations overwhelmingly responsible for the climate crisis). With industrial capitalism holding the reins for much of the globe, preserving resources is rarely on the agenda. Instead, we treat the planet as a thing to be extracted — sucking every drop from the planet, presumably until nothing but a husk remains and the tech billionaires have started colonizing space. (Not the ideal eventuality, but speculative fiction is beginning to feel less speculative). 

 We need to balance out, to build practices and systems that build synergy with nature rather than perpetuate our extractive habits. With the climate crisis looming, sustainability should be at the core of every action we take. The fashion industry is grounded in producing and consuming rapid cycles of clothing, drawing natural resources and putting out byproducts that are far from sustainable.

One of the most-often-repeated definitions of sustainability comes from the U.N.:  

“meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” 

This definition centers care—for the environment, for each other, for those who have yet to inhibit our planet. Rather than just tweaking up the holes in our current fashion system to allow it to keep operating relatively close to the status quo, there is a potential to take the dire need for sustainability as an opportunity to fundamentally shift our relationships to clothing.

Sustainability scholar Kate Fletcher offers one more specific definition of sustainability for fashion:             

“Sustainability in fashion and textiles fosters ecological integrity, social quality and human flourishing through products, action, relationships and practices of use.” 

--Kate Fletcher, Material Journeys (2014)

Fletcher highlights that sustainability is not a single action nor does it come with a clear flowchart—it is a practice that will be different in different contexts. You might make a personal commitment to sustainability, such as drying your clothes on a line or eating less meat, and it would of course look much different from a large clothing company’s commitment. Practicing sustainability is about seeking to regain and maintain balance and ensure ecosystems regenerate.

Our clothes, our planet: Environmental impacts of fashion

Rivers run black, streets swell with red tides, bright blue gunk oozes from the gutters. This is not the set of a dystopian film—it’s the reality for cities like Dhaka in Bangladesh, where garment manufacturing dominates the local economy. Wastewater saturated with chemicals from textile dyeing runs off from poorly regulated factories, leaching into the local ecosystem, drinking water, and skin of those slogging through sodden streets. 

The devastating environmental impacts of the fashion industry have been gaining more attention in recent years, as climate crisis alarm bells ring ever louder. Headlines bemoan the polluted rivers, the factories spewing smoke and sucking power, and the bales of low quality textiles incapable of breaking down shunted through second-hand markets to a fiery end of incineration. But clothing production continues to increase, without substantive change. Maintaining the breakneck speed of fast fashion involves cutting corners, shortchanging environmental stewardship in every phase of a garment’s life cycle. The impacts of each corner cut—each batch of chemical runoff dumped or textile waste burned—bleed outward, permeating our interconnected ecological networks. 

When we wreak havoc on the environment, we harm our natural neighbors, and ourselves. Humans and our clothes do not exist above the natural environment—we are embedded in a fragile global ecosystem. Protecting nature means protecting ourselves, our fellow humans, and future generations. 

How can we shift our relationship to clothing to center care for the environment? We need to be conscious of the many ways our clothing affects the natural world, plan strategic interventions at each sticking point, and (here comes the now familiar refrain) slow down production and consumption. If you’re feeling like you have no idea where to start, no worries—discussion of these sustainable practices and habits of mind is to come. Companies, legislatures, individuals all have roles to play in reducing the environmental impact of the fashion industry. But first, an introduction (or a refresh) of the many ways our clothes impact the environment.

[watch: Life Cycle of a T-Shirt from TedED]

Main impacts of production

Water use

• Our clothes start as fibers…and creating fibers takes water, whether grown in a field or synthesized in a factory 

• Growing natural materials (especially cotton) requires lots of water

• Fibers for textile production are often grown in large quantities that degrade the environment, rather than balanced regenerative agriculture   

• Intensifies global water shortages 

• Alters climate and landscape surrounding area of production

Energy use 

• Factories require power to run, both machines and keep lights on. Many factories run on coal power or non-renewable energy sources.

Synthetic materials

• Polyester & petroleum-based synthetics are derived from oil (essentially made of plastic) … moving away from fossil fuels does not just mean more electric cars, it also means fewer polyester clothes!

Chemical pollution

• Chemical pollution from factory production leeches back into water systems, contaminating already scarce clean water supplies. Nearly 2 billion people are facing water shortages, a number that is only expected to grow in upcoming decades.   

What does a more sustainable system look like?

• Innovate or incorporate new energy sources 

• More effective wastewater management practices

• Using reclaimed, regenerative materials that require less water

Main impacts of use

Laundry

(It might seem boring, but our washing routines have big ramifications for the planet.)

• Washing less reduces water and energy use. 

  • If you’ve been loyally washing your jeans after every wear, your laundry routine just got a little shorter—items like jeans, sweaters, overshirts really only need to be washed about every three wears, depending on how dirty they are. Trust your judgment on whether something needs a wash, but don’t feel pressure to throw something in the “dirty” pile simply because you put it on. 

• Microplastic pollution

  • Microplastics from polyester and other synthetics shed off synthetic clothing during laundering and when worn, which end up in our oceans and lungs. 

  • Microplastics can enter ecosystems and accumulate, impacting ecosystem balance and decreasing biodiversity. 

  • Microplastic filters are becoming available for washers, as well as relatively affordable microplastic filter wash bags. 

• Laundry products

  • Detergents, fabric softeners, and other laundry products often runoff into water systems and can have a negative impact.

  • Often the fragrance chemicals are what have the most impact—look for unscented and add some essential oils! 

[check out: How to Start an Eco-friendly Laundry Routine]

Note! If you suddenly feel pressure to throw out all your detergent and buy a more efficient washing machine, remember the refrain: often, the best thing you can do is use what you have already. This way, you use up and wear out what you already have rather than feeding the cycle of production and consumption. Implementing small sustainable practices can be extremely impactful. Air drying your clothes on a line or rack is one of the simplest things you can do and it goes a long way in lowering the environmental impact of your laundry routine. 

End-of-life impacts

In 2018 the U.S. discarded approximately 12 million tons of clothing and footwear, which is two times the weight of the Pyramid of Giza or thirteen times as heavy as the Golden Gate Bridge but whichever way you want to parse it, is an unfathomable amount of clothing that could certainly have clothed cities, if not small countries. Of those 12 million tons, nearly 70% ended up in the landfill and 2 million tons were burned for disposal.

Lacking the infrastructure to handle such vast quantities, the textile waste and incineration pollution enters our landfills and our air. Some textiles are recycled but it remains an often complicated process requiring time, research, and money. 

[read: “Why clothes are so hard to recycle” (BBC)]  

We all confidently assume someone down the line is attending to the environment, and then wring our hands when it becomes pressingly clear that is not the case, when heaps of textiles are burned and chemical pollution continues to spew from factories. Environmental legislation targeted towards the fashion industry, such as the Fashion Act moving through the New York legislature in 2022 will help protect and preserve natural resources. 

Many calls for industry sustainability center on shifting from the linear economic model (what we have now) to a circular economy, where as much material as possible is reclaimed and recycled back into the supply chain. Environmentally conscious brands such as Patagonia or the Girlfriend Collective already accept returns of their goods to be re-sold or recycled, experimenting with this approach.

“True sustainability requires less. And circular systems still require water and energy and extraction of resources and human labor.”

-- Aja Barber, sustainable fashion writer, Consumed (2020)

Shifting to a circular economy would take us in the right direction. But as Barber notes, to be sustainable, it not only matters how we make clothing but how much. The most important change is to slow down production—the clothing industry needs a real reckoning with how to reduce the rapid rate of production, to protect the wellbeing of the planet and of people. 

Working towards sustainability as an individual and collective practice requires a mindset shift in how we view the intentions behind clothing production. If we do not move away from the current fixation on consumption and constant change to attention to care, maintenance, and moderation, it will be impossible to achieve a sustainable future for fashion.

“Without changing how fashion is thought about, both as a sector and as a set of individual and social practices, the very issues that cause unsustainability will prove resilient.”

-- Kate Fletcher, Material Journeys (2014)