Photo: fibre2fashion
Buying clothes has never been easier. Today 80 – 150 billion items are manufactured each year. That’s almost a 400% increase since the year 2000. But the rate at which we are producing and consuming clothing at is not sustainable. In fact, the fashion industry is now the 2nd largest polluter in the world, just after the oil industry, according to National Geographic.
And with 'UN’s recent climate report, announcing a code red for humanity', as well as witnessing the effect of climate change first hand this summer, rapid actions, now, desperately need to be taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent further warming.
This means fast fashion’s overproduction and overconsumption business model - which powers low prices, vast selections and instant satisfaction - will no longer be allowed to come at the expense of the planet.
The path forward will involve greater urgency. Fast fashion houses, and their lack of sustainability, will feel it first, but not the hardest. Players further down the supply chain - like local Apparel stores and small city brands - will feel the pain and immense pressure more than anyone else.
Those retailers who heed this trend sooner rather than later will be able to see higher and more sustainable returns on their brand investment. Those who join late will join at the back of a very big and growing crowd.
So in light of current events, I’m going to share ways, you as a retailer, can prioritise sustainability in this current climate. The goal is to help you guys get your hands on some knowledge that can help your brand and business model make the transition to a greater sustainable one, bit-by-bit.
This is what you will find in this article:
Summary from the UN Climate Change Report
The environmental cost of fast fashion
Solutions to fast fashion
But, before we dive in, if you are new to this site, make sure to check out some of our previous articles on our blog which contain powerful info you need to grow your brick-and-mortar business.
Last week's article was on the importance of having a unique selling proposition (USP). Featured was a complete step-by-step guide on how to craft a USP. The article was packed with useful information for menswear store owners and real, powerful examples from English, Irish and American clothing and consumer brands that all have strong unique selling propositions to help you get it right.
Without further delay, let’s get into it.
First, let's get a better understanding of what the UN’s climate change report actually said.
The UN Climate Change Report.
A "code red for humanity" was released by the UN after their latest climate change report. They call it “the critical impact humans are having on our planet” and it comes as a warning to what could happen if humans do not aggressively change their behaviour.
The report was the most expansive report ever undertaken into climate change, saying at this point, we are not able to stop global warming for the next 30 years, and that essentially a hotter future is already locked in. A future with extreme weather events like torrential rain, rapid spreading fires, and extreme heat will become more common.
But the report concludes that it’s not too late to make a reverse, as long as behaviour is reversed immediately. This includes a dramatic reduction in consumption of carbon emissions, with the Fashion Industry being one of the biggest sources of this pollution.
Before we can examine how the fashion industry can make the changes needed, we need to understand how we got to this stage. Through examining past history and the mistakes made, we can start to obtain insights on what NOT to do for the future of fashion.
Fast fashion's impact on the environment.
What is fast fashion?
The phrase “Fast Fashion” is used as a term to describe the accelerating process of turning new design ideas into clothes on the retail floor.
In the case of a store like Zara for example, it takes them about 14-21 days from product inception to the sale of the product. And this ability to create new trends very quickly, combined with savvy marketing campaigns, means that brands like H&M and Zara can quickly change every item in their store to drive up hype around a new line to stay relevant. Not only does this mean that consumers are tempted to buy the newest and latest styles, but it also means older items become irrelevant faster.
Producing and consuming so many clothes is starting to take its effect on the planet. We can't just point the finger at these fast-fashion giants though. In fact, all the millions of brick and mortar stores out there, together, contribute to a big portion of climate change too.
That’s why it is so important for you, no matter the size of your business, to understand the environmental cost of fast fashion. At the root of creating this rising demand for manufacturing of more and more garments, are both big and small retailers who place orders for new items each season. There are ways to improve though and I will cover this later on.
Now, let's take a look at the pollution caused by the fashion industry by looking at 3 phases of the supply chain:
Manufacturing.
Logistics.
Post-Consumption.
1. Manufacturing
A lot of different elements go into the making of a garment. From the energy and resources it takes to make the fabric, to the labour it takes to put it together. One of the most polluting parts during the manufacturing phase are the chemicals.
According to a study by McKinsey, the fashion industry is on track to increase its carbon emission to 60% by 2030.
Polyester, for example, requires a large number of fossil fuels throughout the manufacturing phase. According to Forbes, that number is 70 million barrels of oil a year, about 760 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. And polyester far outpaces the production of natural fibres like cotton and wool. In short, polyester is really cheap which makes it such a desirable fabric to work with for small shop owners. As the demand for fast fashion continues to grow, the rise of polyester production grows with it.
At this point you might be thinking cotton is a better choice?
Not at all. As polyester has its side effects, natural fibres like cotton have too. According to WWF and The Kid Should See This,"it can take 2,700 liters to produce the cotton needed to make a single t-shirt".
Today the Fashion Industry is the 2nd largest consumer of water in the entire world.
“The water consumed to grow India’s cotton exports in 2013 would be enough to supply 85% of the country’s 1.24 billion people with 100 litres of water every day for a year. Meanwhile, more than 100 million people in India do not have access to safe water.” - The Guardian.
Whilst some fabrics need more water than others to grow, the fashion industry is also a heavy polluter of our water, the 2nd biggest polluters in the entire world, due to garment dyeing.
Photo: apparelresources.com
According to a report by The European Environment Information and Observation Network (Eionet) “it is estimated that about 20 % of global water pollution is caused by dyeing and finishing textile products, affecting the health of workers and local communities”.
The use of pesticides during the farming of materials like cotton, along with the dyeing and bleaching of textiles, results in harmful wastewater filled with chemicals being released into the environment each day. Not only are these mass-produced methods of fashion manufacturing causing the land, soil and the water to be destroyed, it is also killing the people who live in the surrounding areas. Some regions in India and Bangladesh, popular places for cotton farming, are seeing a rise in the number of cancer cases each year.
2. Logistics.
Manufacturing for a large majority of our clothing happens overseas, but not always in the same location. Most items of clothing have been on a journey through multiple countries. Raw materials can be produced in one country and then processed and assembled in another. This results in a lot of unnecessary transportation. And with each journey, a piece of fabric or clothing item is sealed in plastic packaging and cargo boxes that are never used again.
The clothing is then stored in warehouses waiting to be shipped on further to the retailers.
Once the garment ends up in a store, or in the hands of the customer, a new environmental problem occurs. As a result of unwanted or unsold clothes, we've seen horrific images of landfills drowning in waste.
Photo byThe Guardian
3. Post-Consumption.
Due to the low cost of fast fashion, fashion brands now typically produce 52 micro seasons a year, or, a new collection every week. Consumers are constantly bombarded with media that puts pressure on them to buy new and trendier clothes only to throw them away when they are no longer in style.
Around 92 million tons go to landfills or are burned every year and by 2030, we are expected as a whole to be discarding more than 134 million tonnes of textiles a year according to BBC. A typical brick-and-mortar store in Ireland, for example, can order up to 5 different styles, in volumes of 30 pieces each, only to end up selling 40% of it by the end of the season. Where does the unsold and unwanted pieces go?
On the coast of West Africa, ships with unwanted clothing arrive day after day with unrelenting cargo. The UK alone have seen 300,000 tons of clothes being dumped over the past year and a report by ThredUp stated that “1 in 2 people are throwing their unwanted clothes straight in the trash”.
You might think when you give away clothes they are being recycled, but in fact, less than 1% are recycled and the rest end up in landfills as stated in a report released in 2018 by Traid.org.uk. And of this 4%, 72% contain synthetic fibres like polyester, that are made of plastic fibres, which can take 200 years to decompose according to Sustainable Fashion.Earth. Synthetic fibres like polyester are also the leading causes of micro-plastics in the ocean. When washed, polyester clothing sheds fibres that then find their way into larger water loops.
So finally, what are the ways retailers can prioritise sustainability in this current climate?
Solutions to fast fashion.
The best way to combat the fashion industry is to discourage these manufacturers from overproducing.
Instead of choosing to buy bulks of seasonal stock, encouraging the manufacturer to overproduce -> buy, instead, from reliable wholesale suppliers that can offer you a lower quantity per order or even better, a made-on-demand retail model, where garments are only made when you have an order.
“The problem is really mass consumption and mass production. We can’t undo the mistakes of the past, but we can make changes now to to stop things from getting even worse. It’s just a matter of time before the media and the consumer themselves start to target fashion houses. The problem is, this time around, smaller brands won't be able to avoid the spotlight. Anyone who carries substantial inventory is going to feel the pain.” - Rónan Kent, RJ MTM
In order to tackle this problem brands and consumers will need to change their behaviours.
Industry pioneers like Rent the runway and Patagonia are proving that there are viable business opportunities in a less is more approach. Others need to follow soon.
At RJ MTM, we have developed an End-to-End Apparel Retail solution to actually solve the acceleration of fast fashion and shift the current industry over to on-demand production and a more sustainable fast fashion direction. Helping shop owners operate with less stock whilst being able to offer their customers the exact garment that they desire.
At the end of the day, the biggest changes need to come from the brands and store owners that currently create a demand for manufacturers to overproduce. Future climate changes rely on your cooperation.
Although you may not see any of these impacts mentioned in this article first-hand, you know now the harm that is being caused.
So the question remains, what will you do?
If you found this article useful, make sure you give it a thumbs up so that I know what type of content you like. Also, if there are topics you like me to cover in the next article, let me know in the comment box below.
Cheers,
Camilla
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