Planet
The Planet is always in conversation everywhere, meetings, casual conversations over a drink, and even government announcements. The Planet is crucial in the future for the human race as we can’t just set up shop and move, however people need to focus on how to create a more sustainable future in specifically fashion instead of conversing about it. Earth, full of 7.888 billion people inhabiting it, is dying and fast due to rising global temperatures due to the increase of CO2 levels, which industries are pumping out into the environment. This is evident in the amount of landfill, excessive farming, fast fashion, and manmade material production.
A way of progressing and looking to the future of fashion sustainability is the circular economy, and focusing on changing and improving the existing model that has been in place since the fashion industry began. Raw Materials – Textiles – Garment Factories – Distribution Network – Retail. This style of business shows a lack of responsibility towards environment as it disregards the fact of what happens after the garment is bought, worn and thrown away. Instead a more circular approach should be taken, for example Fibre Production – Clothing Production – Use – After Use, which then would go back round in a circle to eventually cut out the large percentage new materials and instead be revolving the materials already in circulation and creating use for the ones that have ended up in landfill. However, this could be expensive and as luxury brands like Burberry look into reducing emissions by 46% by 2030 and becoming net zero by 2040 (Moran, 2022) while being heavily backed by hedge funds and big investors, its going to be the small brands that will struggle with change into improving as the cost of production and reproduction will increase. As the luxury sector will outperform the rest of the industry, as wealthy shoppers continue to travel and spend, and thus remain more insulated (Berg ET AL, 2022) from the affects of climate change and decrease in consumer spending.
Sustainability in fashion should be related to how we look to not let anything from waste enter environments and keep them in a flow of creating new from old in effort to reduce what enters the environment. At the moment 68% of all clothes produced are produced with oil based fibres, which are harmful to the planet and once thrown away due to the product not be regarded as needed, it ends up in parts in the world where there are city sized landfill and died the structure of chemicals it takes thousands of years to degrade and even when it does what is left is still alien to environment it degraded in. Also, due to high amounts of people overfishing garments, fibres come off in the water and when drained to their micro size they end up not being able to be filtered out and are carried into drinking water, oceans and food due to ingestion when drinking, manmade material garments also produce micro plastics that build up in animals in the wild from drinking water and can kill them over time.
UN SDG (Sustainability Development Goals) are goals focused to improve the state of planets integrity and ability to move forward with a responsible and sustainable future. Focusing on one of the SDGs; Responsible Consumption and Production, it’s apparent that the current market is devised by the economic state of a country, the divide between rich and poor, and the mentality of the consumer when it comes to buying clothes. While statistically wealthier people will buy more high end small production clothes, on the other hand people with lower incomes will buy cheaper, more environmentally impacting garments frequently due to lack of quality and occasionally buy a middle to high end product which will be cherished and not worn as often. Brands need to make re-cycle and sustainably made garments more accessible, due to most brands that offer products aligning with these values are marked up to take advantage of market with a demand and not enough suppliers.
Moran, G. (2022). Collaborating for Change: Sustainability Report 2022. [online] Drapers. Available at: https://www.drapersonline.com/guides/collaborating-for-change-sustainability-report-2022.
McKinsey (2022). The State of Fashion 2023: Holding onto growth as global clouds gather. [online] McKinsey. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/state-of-fashion.
