Why Is Sustainable Fashion Important?

You’re on Instagram and you see an ad for some baggy low-rise pants in orange, and you think they’d be great for a night out. You click on the tag, go to the brand’s website, see it’s just $25, and you purchase it. Just like that, you’ve bought yourself some new trendy pants. Feels good, right? Right?

Fast fashion is precisely that. It’s fast. And it’s cheap. It doesn’t let you think twice before you buy something. It fulfills an impulse that perishes as fast as it arrived.

For some people, a $15 price tag for something that will make you ‘fashionable’ is a no-brainer. Who could let that opportunity pass? If it’s an item that’s in style, and might not be in three months, why spend more if it’s only going to be used for a season?

This has turned the fashion industry in one of the most polluting ones, but it’s not just about the environment. For a shirt to be sold at $15, costs should be kept low, and that includes materials, as well as the workforce. Remember, as I explained in my post ‘What Is Sustainability and Why Is It Important’, Sustainability not only entails the environmental aspects, but also economic development and social responsibility. When you buy that $15 shirt, you’re buying something that was made not to last long (so you can buy more afterwards), made from cheap and plastic materials, and made by someone who can’t get their needs met at work.

Let’s see why sustainable fashion is so important.

WHAT IMPACT DOES FASHION HAVE ON THE ENVIRONMENT?

According to UNECE, 85% of textiles are sent to landfills–that’s 21 billion tons a year. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned.

The fashion industry produces an estimated 10% of global carbon emissions. It’s also an industry that misuses and pollutes water–textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of water globally. Water waste is a major issue, especially considering the forecasted water shortages for upcoming years. It takes around 2,000 gallons of water to make one pair of jeans. As if this wasn’t enough, textiles are estimated to account for approximately 9% of annual microplastic losses to the ocean.

Every time we buy fast fashion, we must take all those losses into consideration. The problem is this has gotten worse during the past years. The number of times a garment is worn has declined by 36% in 15 years. As we buy faster, the things we already have become obsolete, they turn into an inconvenience we need to get rid of. And so, the cycle begins.

What Does Sustainable Fashion Mean?

As I mentioned before, Sustainable Fashion doesn’t only mean clothes made from recycled materials. That’s just a part of it. Ethical and eco-friendly fashion takes care of its workers, focuses on processes, materials, animal rights, the environment. As with everything regarding sustainability, it demands knowledge and compromise from the consumers, especially to avoid being fooled by greenwashing.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR FASHION TO BE SUSTAINABLE?

Textile Waste 

 Fast fashion is bad for the environment for many reasons. In Europe, fashion brands went from offering an average of two collections per year in 2000, to five in 2011. Currently, this numbers are sometimes higher. For example, Zara offers about 20 collections per year. They keep selling things consumers don’t need, won’t keep for long, and might never even use. In fact, it’s estimated that 40% of clothes in our wardrobes are never worn. Whatever doesn’t sell, gets thrown away. In consequence of this fast and compulsive cycle, the turnaround from consumption to post-production waste is just as fast: the lifespan of three garment types (t-shirts, knit collared shirts, and woven pants) in six countries, averaged only 3.1 to 3.5 years per garment.

In addition to consumers’ own waste–propelled by the urgent need to have more fashionable clothes while disposing of the old–there’s also pre-consumer textile waste (production waste), which is produced during the manufacturing of textiles and garments. An estimated 15% of fabric used in garment manufacturing is wasted because of garment design, mistakes in assembling, and faulty pattern designs.

While fast fashion is a business model based on cheap and novel clothes that don’t have a long-term spot in our closets–basically promoting quantity and disposability–Sustainable Fashion focuses on quality and longevity. Fast fashion feeds on impulse buying and recurring consumption, promoting an urgency to be up to date. To respect these, and to stay relevant, they rely on short-lived materials and cheap manufacturing to fulfill the industry’s planned obsolescence.

Sustainable Fashion Brands offer different approaches to reduce textile waste. Some use deadstock, or only manufacture on demand. They put special attention in creating quality pieces, that will last longer, therefore reducing waste. Because prices are higher when garments are sustainable, consumers cherish them more and don’t take them for granted. Sustainable fashion also allows people to develop a personal style. A garment that suits their personality and is timeless, is carefully chosen before buying it.

Working Conditions

Together with the decline in the amount of times a garment is worn, and despite an increase in the number of items owned, the average expenditure on clothing and footwear per person has decreased in the EU and UK, from 30% in the 1950s, to 5% in 2020.

As paradoxically as this sounds, it’s a truth that can be explained by the massification of the industry. Prices are kept low, by keeping costs low too. An investigation of Los Angeles garment factories from the U.S. Department of Labor in 2016, discovered that workers were paid as little as $4, and $7 on average, working 10 hours per day, sewing clothes for Forever 21. Sometimes brands hire workers in Asian factories, where wages for garment work are typically the minimum. For example, in Sri Lanka the minimum wage is $54 a month, while the living wage is $409 per month.

Besides the poverty wages, workers lack job security and healthcare (not to mention they are exposed to chemicals used in clothes), have bad contracts, spend hours in unsafe workplaces and appalling conditions, and don’t have their rights respected.

A brand that’s considered ethical and sustainable, is not only that which uses eco-friendly materials, but ensures fair wages and fair conditions for the workers. Sustainability should always base part of its core values on human rights, not just the environment. When you’re paying “extra” for a garment, you’re valuing the worker who made it. We can’t just look to the other side and be silent accomplices.

Animal Rights

Sustainability also considers animal rights in their business model.

On one hand, as fast fashion uses cheap materials to sustain low price tags and low-quality, they mostly use plastic. About 60% of clothes are made from plastic, including polyester, nylon, and acrylic. Every time they’re washed, they shed microfibers. Around half a million tons of plastic microfibers are released into the ocean every year, by laundry alone–the equivalent of almost 3 billion polyester shirts. These microplastics are then ingested by animals, hurting their digestive systems and overall health, sometimes causing death.

Animal materials shouldn’t be used for a brand to be considered fully sustainable. Leather and fur are popularly known for being cruel, as well as killing the animal that provides it. But even materials that people believe are harmless, like silk and wool, aren’t. Also, shearing sheep is done quickly to save costs, which ends up hurting them and sometimes amputating body parts. Sheep also suffer a similar fate to cows in milk factories–when their production starts to decline because of age or overworking, they kill them.

Fashion that’s sustainable won’t use animals for their own gain but would rather look for alternative materials. For example, some vegan leathers are made from cork, mushrooms, recycled plastics, apple peels, or pineapple leaves.

Carbon and Environmental Footprint

In addition to the fashion industry contributing to environmental pollution, textiles are manufactured by using a lot of water and energy in processes like bleaching and dyeing.

In the fast fashion business model, every step of the garment production often occurs in different countries, increasing logistic steps between processes, and therefore the garment’s carbon footprint. The supply chain traceability is a main concern. Sometimes, a garment can travel around the globe more than once during the process. In every step, they release Co2 emissions, use water, chemicals, and resources.

Co2 emissions are the highest during fiber extraction, especially when it comes to synthetic fibers, because they originate from fossil fuels.

The textile industry uses more than 15,000 different chemicals during the manufacturing process, including lubricants, solvents, softeners, bleaches, surfactants, among many others. A single European textile-finishing company, uses over 466 grams of chemicals for each kg of textile.

According to UNCTAD, some 93 billion cubic meters of water–enough to meet the needs of five million people–are used by the fashion industry annually, contributing to water scarcity. Around 20% of industrial wastewater pollution in the world comes from this industry.

Sustainable fashion aims to make processes more sustainable, local, and organic, reducing its environmental impact to the lowest numbers.

Materials

Some people believe cotton is a sustainable material. Did you know it’s one of the worst? To produce one cotton shirt, 2,700 liters of water are used–the estimated amount a person drinks in 2.5 years. An organic-cotton shirt, however, uses 91% less water, according to the Soil Association. Organic cotton also reduces water pollution by 98%, by avoiding pesticides and fertilizers, in contrast to its inorganic counterpart.

Textile production uses approximately 44 trillion liters of water annually for irrigation, 95% of which is associated with cotton production, which is usually grown in countries that are already facing water shortages. It’s estimated that 20% of the water loss in the Aral Sea was caused by cotton consumption.

Toxic insecticides are used to protect conventional cotton crops. The cotton industry accounts for 16% of the world’s pesticide consumption.

Using animal materials isn’t just unsustainable for ethical reasons. According to the Higg Materials Sustainability Index, leather from cows is nearly 3 times as harmful to the environment as vegan leather, and wool twice as harmful as polyester. It’s not just about feeding and hydrating the cows, as well as keeping them–this is related to the meat industry, which you can read more about it in my post Why Is a Plant-Based Diet More Sustainable–leather is unsustainable for various reasons. To stop a cow’s skin from decomposing, massive amounts of energy, chemicals (including coal-tar derivatives and formaldehyde), and processes are required. Most leather produced in the U.S. is chrome-tanned, and all wastes containing chromium are considered hazardous by the EPA. The process of tanning requires large amounts of pollutants, and runoff from feedlots contaminates and eutrophicates the water.

Sustainable brands offer a wide range of eco-friendly and vegan materials, from organic cotton and organic linen, to LENZING™ ECOVERO™. They avoid using chemicals and opt for natural dyes. Being treated organically, the garments also biodegrade faster when their life cycle ends.

HOW CAN MY CLOSET BE MORE SUSTAINABLE?

The best option if you want to buy new clothes is to do so from sustainable fashion brands. But get informed before you do: understand what those companies fight for, and what they do to change the industry. Remember, some brands merely state a few sustainable features in their ‘About Page’, for marketing reasons. That’s greenwashing. I use the Good On You App to find new ethical brands, or to check if a brand I’m interested in meets my sustainability standards. Luckily, there are a lot of sustainable clothing brands in which you can trust.

The most sustainable options are using what you already have, mending clothes instead of throwing them away, swapping with friends and family, thrifting, and even renting clothes for special occasions.

You can also read my post “How Often You Should Wash Your Clothes”, to make sure you treat your clothes in the best way when doing laundry, to avoid microfiber pollution and to extend their lifespan.

If you’d like to embark on this journey with me and read my future posts, please don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter!

Hi, I’m Melina,

I’m the creator of Sustainable Rookie, and my goal is to share what I learn throughout my sustainability journey, so that I can help other people live a more conscious life.

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