What is Sustainable Fashion?

Sustainable?What does that even mean?

We all wear clothes. And some of us really love clothing and putting together cute outfits and shopping with friends, but our consumption habits are having an adverse impact on the environment. The media claims that fashion is the second-most polluting industry, but sustainable fashion expert Alden Wicker more accurately states that “it’s actually the 4th most polluting industry on the planet – if you are talking about carbon emissions,” contributing somewhere between 5 - 10% the global total. But even this is excessive because fashion is big business. Experts value the global industry to be worth between 2 and 3-plus-billion dollars, even though right now a lack of transparency prevents more accurate data. More and more individuals and organizations, including the non-profit “Fashion Revolution,” are calling for greater supply chain transparency in the fashion industry, but progress has been slow.

What does that mean? It means there is a lot we don’t know. However, a quick look suggests that the way most clothing is made today and the rate at which we are producing and disposing of it contributes significantly to climate change because manufacturing uses up non-renewable resources and pollutes both water and air all along the supply chain.

In particular, we in America have a huge issue with fast fashion, but most of us do not realize the environmental impact of our shopping habits. We have gone from a few seasons of new looks each year to new collections dropping into stores every week, making shopping for novel clothing items a possibility 52 times a year.According to the Foundation for Economic Education, “the average consumer in the world is now buying more than 1.5 times the amount of apparel they did just 6 years ago.” This sounds exciting if you love trying every new trend, but it is also somewhat wasteful and controversial. We are buying too many new, cheap things, and this behavior is not sustainable for our planet. You can help change this.

This enormous increase in our rate of clothing production exacerbates the negative environmental impacts of fashion by increasing the amount of water polluted, the number of hazardous chemicals utilized, and the tons of non-renewable, oil-based resources wasted. According to a 2010 study by Textile World, the textile industry accounted for 10% of our global emissions, and textile dyeing is the second-largest polluter of clean water after agriculture.

To add insult to injury, synthetic fabrics include polyester and acrylic-based textiles which are non-biodegradable since they are made of petroleum. That means large amounts of resources are used to produce something that will take a very long time to break down.

And more natural fibers present different problems. For instance, “cotton is the most common natural fiber used to make clothing, accounting for about 33 percent of all fibers found in textiles. Cotton is also a very thirsty crop, requiring 2,700 liters of water—what one person drinks in two-and- a-half years—to make one cotton shirt.” Also, traditional cotton needs large quantities of pesticides to grow well. Producing the materials to manufacture clothing clearly has a significant impact on the environment, and the worst part is much of that ends up going to waste.

Livia Firth, Creative Director at Eco-Age, claims “the world now consumes about 80 billion new pieces of clothing every year. This is 400% more than the amount we consumed just two decades ago. As new clothing comes into our lives, we also discard it at a shocking pace. The average American now generates 82 pounds of textile waste each year. That adds up to more than 11 million tons of textile waste from the U.S. alone.” Similarly, author Elizabeth Cline says, “Americans recycle or donate only 15 percent of their used clothing... giving textiles one of the poorest recycling rates of any reusable material.” This “landfill fashion” is unsustainable. But we as consumers can adopt better habits for the planet to survive and thrive. That brings us to the idea of a more sustainable wardrobe. First of all, what does sustainable mean? It is a term often used these days, and different people define it differently. For our purposes here, we will use this environmental science dictionary definition that proposes “the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance.” It is essential to maintain a healthy environment and a balanced ecological system to protect the quality of life of younger generations and generations to come.

So what then is sustainable fashion? Brands from H&M to Patagonia to Stella McCartney are talking about it. Anne Hathaway and Emma Watson are wearing it. Well, it involves making choices that are less harmful to the planet.

Take a pair of jeans, for example. How many pairs do you own? I don’t know exactly, but I know I have way too many because, as you can read in the visual above, it takes 3,781 liters of water to make a single pair of Levi’s – and in their three-year lifecycle they can emit up to 33.4 kg of CO 2 which is the equivalent of watching 246 hours of television on a plasma big-screen or driving 69 miles in an average car. (Let’s just say I probably could have driven California from end to end instead of owning my current denim collection.)

Defining sustainable fashion can be a subjective idea with many factors influencing the results. Think about what your own priorities are. Maybe you are concerned with water usage and want your clothing dyed using best practices. Perhaps you are against the excessive use of plastic in our world. Or you hate waste. But, ultimately, you will need to decide what your own priorities are and make your own decisions. Read the rest of the unCover Handbook to learn a bit about how to make better choices because our choices can make a difference.