By Anne Ellis Bohannon and Izzy Goodweather
Sustainable Fashion is a term growing in popularity. It has become a broadly used term to describe the issues with the fashion industry including its ethics and practices. It has also been used as a popular marketing term in large brands, it often is not clearly defined which creates many different issues. Words are constantly being thrown around without clear definitions; fast fashion, carbon-neutral runways, overproduction, and more. It is overwhelming, and it’s easy to just turn toward our tried and true brands. So, what is sustainable fashion?
Sustainable Fashion is meant to be used to describe clothing that is more ethical and environmentally friendly. Recently, there has been a spotlight put on the global toll fashion takes on the planet. It is reported that the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of the total greenhouse gas emissions and 20% of water waste. To illustrate this further, the average amount of water used to produce one pair of jeans is the same as the average person consumes over 10 years. So what causes this?
The major sources causing the environmental impact of the fashion industry are overproduction, the manufacturing process, transportation, and disposal. Overproduction is what makes the fashion industry so much more environmentally costly than any other producing industry.
Many brands will use the word stable fashion on products when they have some reused materials used when masking. However, the problem as a whole is that the label stable fashion has not been characterized with a checklist of what it means. This means brands like Urban Outfitters can say a product is suitable when in reality it emits the same amount of carbon as a type of clothing on Shein. This is why Sustainable fashion has been used as a marketing campaign to make consumers think the clothing they have bought is good for the environment when it is not. Especially when talking about sustainable fashion, how the piece was made itself is often overlooked.
An important part of sustainable fashion is how a workforce made clothes and got the materials. A big problem in the fashion industry is overworked and underpaid workers. A lot of the time, major corporations will propose to people that they take a job in their workforce and get good health care and well-paying jobs. In need, kids, mostly young girls, work to get more money. Putting promises that they would get paid well and sometimes health care. However, those promises are always false. They work long hours, no benefit to health care, making impoverished children work hard, dangerous jobs for under minimum wage.
The world of sustainable fashion is often misunderstood and navigating it can be confusing. These upcoming columns from the Field News will continue to update you on suggestions for what and what not to buy, along with elaborating on the problems of the fashion world.