Planet
Environmental sustainability occurs when processes, systems, and activities reduce the environmental impact of an organization’s facilities, products, and operations. For renewable resources, the rate of harvest should not exceed the rate of regeneration. Also the rates of waste generation from projects should not exceed the assimilative capacity of the environment.
A circular economy favours activities that preserve value in the form of energy, labour, and materials. This means designing for durability, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling to keep products, components, and materials circulating in the economy.
Sustainable fashion is a way in which brands create clothing that not only reduces the impact on the environment but is also mindful of the people who work to produce the garments. It is fashion that is ethically made and environmentally friendly.
For the industry to become sustainable as a whole, consumers must be willing to pay more to help make the change, or at the very least, stop buying from brands that have no regard for the environment.
The fashion industry is incredibly harmful to the planet. Second only to oil, the industry is one of the world’s largest polluters, responsible for 20% of global industrial water pollution. It comes as a surprise to many that most clothes are actually made out of plastic, creating a microplastic disaster in the making. Add to that the thousands of harmful chemicals used in the textile mills around the world, which are dangerous to both the environment and the people working with them, and the time has come for a global change in the industry.
I think the most important SDGs for the fashion industry will be SDG 12, which is responsible consumption and production. This calls for the decoupling of economic growth from increasing resource consumption. Fashion uses 98 million tonnes of non-renewable resources each year, and only 12 per cent of the material used in clothing is currently recycled. There is therefore a clear need to move towards more circular practices in the industry, which will require the input of both consumers and manufacturers (Hempstead, 2022).