Sustainable Fashion: a brief introduction
Last week I stumbled upon a question in Quora, quoting “what do you think of sustainable fashion?” and as an individual trying to shift my lifestyle into a more sustainable one, I can’t help but bother to answer this question and I want to drag you too in answering this.
To answer the question, let’s look at your choice of clothing today — look at your top and look closely at the fabric, the color, feel the fabric as it touches your skin — and spare the thought of its origin.
For me, a piece of clothing is a story, it is a journey in itself. The textile might be originated from cotton farm in Afghanistan or some Poly-manufacture in Indonesia (the textile production), it might be sewn or manufactured by laborers in Vietnam (the clothing construction), and then shipped and distributed to stores in the Europe (the shipping). The very piece of clothing you wore today; might have been produced many waste and involved many people in the making process, utilized various means of transportation releasing gas emission in the distribution phase, until we find THAT one piece of clothing in a store, bought it, and finally use it today.
Now let’s talk about sustainability and its relation with fashion. The essence of sustainability as firstly appear on Brundtland report 1987 (credit to my Environmental Law professor who repeatedly brought this topic up in class) focuses on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs constituting of three pillars: environmental protection (planet), economic growth (profit), and social justice (people).
Looking back at your top and minding its journey of creation, you can see now how the three pillars of sustainability and fashion are concisely connected. But defining the combined terms of ‘sustainability’ and ‘fashion’ into ‘sustainable fashion’ is another homework, because currently there is no common and universal definition of what this term actually means.
Despite the absence of common definition (but various conception) of sustainable fashion, Green Strategy’s explained the practical implication of the sustainable fashion is a “continuous work to improve all staged of the product’s life cycle, from design, raw material production, manufacturing, transport, storage, marketing and final sale, to use, reuse, repair, remake and recycling of the product and its components.”

To put it simply, sustainable fashion isn’t merely a theoretical concept, but rather an active action; starts by looking at the clothing’s tag, questioning its origin and resources. It is about preventing every used clothing and other fashion items go straight to waste into the landfill, and instead prolong its lives and usage by continuing the lifecycle through the process of remake, repair and recycle. It is about putting the environmental, social, and economic consideration before buying a fashion item.
A piece of clothing has a myriad detrimental impact to the planet, profit, and the people — shifting to sustainable fashion might be one of the *easy* ways to protect the planet and the people, while concurrently generating profit. How so? Let’s trace the impact of sustainable fashion down into each sustainability pillar.
Sustainable fashion effect on the Planet
Numerous sources acclaimed the fashion industry (from textile production, clothing construction, to shipping) as the second most polluted industry, just behind oil industry. This plausible acclamation is on the grounds that the industry contributed to release high the level of carbon footprints, water pollution, toxic chemical use and textile waste to the environment.
Do you remember the fabric’s name of the top you wear right now? If the tag says ‘made from Polyester’ or mentions Polyester, and/or other Poly-materials in the composition chart, you may need to pay a careful attention to what I’m going to say next.
Polyester is believably the most popular fabric used for fashion — thanks to its low price and wide range of choices — but it is also the most polluted textile as it combined coal and petroleum in the production not mentioning the appealing colors and prints attained from (presumably by many) toxic chemicals.

This petrochemical-derived textile is not only contributing to the world’s pollution in its production but keep on during the consumption by *sadly* us, as the consumers. Every time we wash our clothing made from the poly-familia, we shed the non-biodegrade microfibres from the textile that are easily passing through our waterways where eventually it would end up in our river to the ocean — bringing forth a serious threat to aquatic life and ecosystem.
One important leap towards the sustainable fashion, is by knowing about the harm and potential threat generated by the type of fashion materials, then finding a way out to avoid buying and using them by searching the safer alternative or substitute of the harming materials (plant-based and recycled materials are the focus of and prevalent materials for sustainable fashion, more on this later).
Sustainable fashion effect on the Profit
The fashion industry, like any and all industries, is market-driven. The massive use of polyester, is in fact caused by the economic motives to make as many, as updated, as trendy, fashion items offered to the market by finding ways to lower production cost to increase profitability in return — and what is the perfect recipe to respond this scheme but mass-produced polyester.
Now because people (myself included) can easily get attracted and trapped to the ever fast-changing trend, the fashion industry is selling fashion items in response to adjusting (or even making) the newest, current fast-changing trend; let’s call it fast fashion henceforth.
Do you remember what was the fashion trend last year? Was it pastel-colored clothing? And what is the recent fashion trend? Is it bold-colored minimalist clothing? Is it plaid-patterned clothing? Or else? Now look at your closet, do you buy and have at least one fashion item from each wavering trend? And lastly, do you even wear all your clothing pieces frequently, and if not, what do you do to the unused clothing you owned? While you looking at your fashion closet, remember that in the future only few will remain and most of the pieces will throw at the garbage to the landfill, becoming just another trash.
What it means of sustainable fashion is prolonging the lifecycle of your clothing pieces, maximizing its usage, preventing the change in status from ‘my favorite top ever!!’ to ‘nahhh this top is out of style, better buy something new’. Any means to prolong the material’s lifecycle is in line with the concept of the circular economy, as the world moving towards to find an alternative to keep resources in use for as long as possible including regenerate products and materials at the end of each material’s service life.
Sustainable fashion can supporting the implementation and the realization of circular economy by increasing the use of recycled and sustainable materials to reduce the amount of clothing send to landfill, to pre-empt resource scarcity, and to help improving resource security and availability.
Sustainable fashion effect on the People
Finally, we arrive at the last pillar of sustainability; us, the people. If you following my simple narrative of the clothing journey above, there’s a slight chance you might think and (hopefully) realize a huge impact of a very top you wear today. Now for the last time, I’m asking you to look at your top — once again. Do you remember the price of that top when you bought it? Do you have any idea that the price and the money you spent — that ‘great deal’ feeling — came at the price of the laborers’ lives?
All those clothes piled up and hanging in your closet come at a serious price for impoverished laborers around the world (including children!), while they are require to work long hours in dangerous conditions with minimum safety, and (in some cases) underpaid to make the cute, exquisite top you bought from a major, well-known brand. Our $10 top might cost someone’s life.
Not only impacting the life of laborers, we also indirectly but gradually harming our own life. By keep buying and using the so-called fast fashion, we supporting the brands to keep producing; keep releasing dangerous gases into the air, polluting freshwater by chemicals and releasing non-biodegrade microfibres into the ocean eaten by small creatures in the food chain to fish to be eaten by us.
In other words, by keep buying fast fashion clothing item, we also degrading our quality of life as we participating in polluting the air, the water, and the food. Ok, allow me to rephrase the aforesaid line; our $10 top might cost our and someone else’s life.
Just as the sustainable fashion impacting the environment and the economy, it is also impacting and evidently connected with us, the people. By consciously buying sustainable clothing or clothing made from sustainable materials with sustainable making process, we slowly but continuously re-improving our life (this particular issue is deeply linked with one of the fundamental human rights to live in a healthy environment, more on this later on the ethical issue).
To end this long — but brief — introduction of sustainable fashion piece of writing, I want to invite you to think; as the world’s leaders are fighting and dealing to tackle environmental problems that affecting the economy and people’s lives in the grand and major scale, we can be the part of the solution by shifting our fashion choice to the more sustainable one. Sometimes the small thing we do, the small change in our life, can lead to a revolution. Let’s take your chance on this revolution by simply questioning the origin of any item you buy. One question at a time; baby steps, we are moving in the right direction, en masse.
