8
2020 ISSUE
W27
THE MODERN RESPONSIBLE SHOPPER BY JOSEPH MACARIO One of the trending topics in the fashion world and other industries today is the term sustainability. People are talking about what sustainability is, why it’s important and who is doing it. In the most literal terms sustainability is defined as something being able to be supported or upheld without being weakened. Its environmental and more modern definition involves a product or practice not being harmful to the environment, depleting natural resources or involving unethical business practice. Brands will use the term “eco-friendly” or “sustainable” to describe their products. Many brands do not, however, adhere to what a true sustainable product would be described as. One of the larger offenders to these issues is fast fashion, which is defined as trendy clothing that is made very quickly and cheaply in response to catwalks of clothing brands and trends. Companies like Zara and H&M quickly produce these clothes in what are often ethically and environmentally harming ways. The quality of these products is also very poor, so the clothes will be worn once or twice and then discarded to the trash once deemed unwearable. This cycle of fast fashion has negative impacts on the planet and cannot be described as a “sustainable” practice with its current definition. Around 85% of textile waste in the United States goes into landfills while the microfibers in the products end up in the oceans, our ecosystems and our foods. These microfibers do not decay quickly and will be in the earth for close to 200 years. Along with fast fashion’s eco impact is the ethical impact. Many fast fashion brands use labor from outside the U.S. where wages are lower and labor laws are looser. The workforce of fast fashion mostly consists of 18 to 24-year old women who make close to a few dollars per hour while working more than 8 hours a day. With the facts laid in front of you, many would ask how can I know if a brand I like is practicing responsibly? The best way to see if a brand you’re interested in is ethical is to research. Read up on the policy section of the website and impact reports; a company with nothing to hide is one to trust. Check for locations, names, facts and numbers referring to where and how the products are sourced, produced and manufactured. Look for Fairtrade or B-corp Certified brands. These are third parties that vouch for the ethics of a company. Also, be aware that some companies can have certain products that are Fair Trade and will try to put that on the forefront of the whole company, so it falls on the consumer to do in depth research to find an ethical brand.
PHOTO COURTESY BECCA MCHAFFIE
While researching brands is the best way to shop ethically, there are other ways you can responsibly shop without needing to go look into the ethics. Thrifting is a huge way to help reduce the amount of fabric waste today. Thrifted or second hand clothing helps to prevent clothing from becoming waste in landfills and slows down the fast fashion process. With more clothing being recycled, there is less need for the production of environmentally harmful textiles and chemicals, while a slower fashion cycle puts less stress on manufacturing employees of fashion brands. Upcycling your clothing and investing in repairs, as opposed to discarding, is much more beneficial in the long run. This will help to balance out the amount of clothing in the world today. Brands like Nike run a ‘reuse a shoe’ program where a person can donate any brand of worn-out athletic shoes to be reused. All you have to do is drop the shoes off at a participating Nike store, and they will reuse the shoes materials into future apparel, athletic surfaces, such as courts and tracks, and footwear. So far the program has shoes being reused in 71% of Nike’s products. Investments in more well produced clothing will also help due to the extended use of your apparel along with needing less clothes throughout the seasons. Investing in more sustainable, versatile or classic clothing will allow you to resist the urge of last minute fast fashion buys. Other small ways to use clothing in an eco-friendly manner is to invest in less pollutant washing detergent, shop locally and look for more responsible textiles such as silk, organic cotton, hemp and tencel while trying to avoid non recycled polyester and unethically sourced cotton if possible.
Two examples of ethically responsible brands to help lay a blueprint are Study NYC and Kaight. Both of these brands provide extensive information about how they run their practice along with the facts to back it up. Both brands work with local NYC businesses and woman-owned ethical manufacturers to help produce more responsibly. Study NYC provides all the names of their partners along with locations and what each location provides. These brands are both fair-trade certified, and they provide information about what textiles they use and how they are recycled. Each brand also provides quick contact information for any other inquiries about their practices. This raises a question: if these smaller companies can provide us with responsible practices, why can’t larger brands? A much larger brand with stronger influence could switch over to these practices with much more efficiency. Quick research into many large fashion companies will show that there is still much improvement needed for them to become a “sustainable” practice. For example, H&M has started to use 25% organic cotton for their clothing, while Zara provides extensive information into their more improved labor and wage practices, but this is far from the position many of these brands should be in, with the current issues we face. With the current global state, many people are pressing the question of what we can do next. Fast fashion is a large component of many of the problems we see today, but it is also there with the entire apparel industry as a whole. The industry can turn a blind eye to many of these things today, but with the current conditions. ■
