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As the Clothing Industry is a Major Polluter, Sustainable Fashion is Rising
By Gabe Herman
Six years ago, Amer Jandali didn’t think much about environmental issues when it came to his shopping choices. And yet here he was, on a recent October evening in Soho in lower Manhattan, explaining why he had just purchased the sleek black sweater he was wearing that was made completely from recycled plastic bottles.
It was an item by Everlane, a company that emphasizes sustainability and transparency in its operations and ethics. The company’s latest line is called ReNew, with every sweater and jacket and item made from recycled plastic bottles.
“I vote with my dollar,” Jandali said, standing in a temporary Everlane space being used to roll out the ReNew line.
For Jandali, environmental awareness began in 2012 after watching a documentary in the middle of the night showing the damage done by plastic bags, which he then stopped using. Then he stopped using plastic bottles. Then he started shopping organic. Then he moved to New York from New Mexico to get his masters in Design for Social Innovation. Now he’s in the process of starting his own company that focuses on promoting sustainability in products and services.
“I’m interested in how individual change begins to reflect onto the macro level,” Jandali said of his desire to buy sustainable items, including clothing from companies like Everlane. “I make changes in my personal life, and then I like to see that reflected in organizations.”
That the fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters in the world is one of the industry’s best-kept secrets — it uses a quarter of the chemicals produced globally, and its share of the world’s CO2 emissions is expected to rise from 2 percent to 26 percent in the next 30 years.
Developing nations — where many factories are located — are most affected. Every year in Bangladesh, for example, tanneries dump enough toxic waste into rivers to fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools. Advocates and some in the fashion world are working to not only get the word out, but to revolutionize the way the industry does business.
Younger consumers are more environmentally conscious, and newer brands are emerging that emphasize sustainability. Many established clothing companies — like Gap and Burberry — — are adding environmentally conscious lines and dedication to sustainability, as awareness spreads in the industry and to respond to consumer consciousness.
Five billion people are about to be added to the middle class, which likely means spikes in consumption levels, according to Deborah Drew, an associate at the nonprofit World Resources Institute who focuses on sustainable consumption and alternative business models. She says people reaching the middle class is good for improving quality of life, but in terms of consumption levels, “the planetary boundaries are going to be an issue.”
“What we’re seeing is the volume of clothing does continue to rise,” said Drew. “Our closets are growing so quickly but we don’t wear all of those clothes.”
This is where the “slow fashion” movement can help, said Drew.The “slow fashion” movement refers to consumers who are more consciousness of what items are actually needed, as compared to “fast fashion” which has constant cycles of consumption and where customers buy the latest trends. Fast fashion is big business in the clothing industry.
The average consumer bought 60 percent more clothing in 2014 than in 2000, and kept each item half as long. The average item is worn just seven times, and only 15 percent of unwanted clothes are recycled or donated. Globally, 80 billion garments are consumed every year, a 400 percent increase from two decades ago.
Turning Consumption on its Head
The linear model of taking raw materials, creating a product, then throwing it away, is not viable, said Drew. “That sort of consumption pattern will have to be turned on its head.”
The change includes increasing an item’s life, through reuse, repair, and resale. “The industry at large does recognize the need for change,” said Drew. “So just trying to understand the best approach for that change and then doing so in a cohesive collaborative way will be really crucial for success.”
A big turning point in consumption habits came in 2013, when the Rana Plaza clothing factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing more than 1,100 and injuring nearly 2,500 more. The tragedy made international headlines and put a spotlight on social issues that included working conditions at the facility, which manufactured clothes for big-name companies, including Walmart and Benetton.
One month after the tragedy, fashion companies and unions signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. It was legally binding and included measures to ensure safe work conditions in the Bangladesh garment industry, such as inspections, safety committees and more workers’ rights. It was a five-year agreement that was renewed in 2018 with a goal of eventually transferring these measures to a national regulating organization.
“I think the Rana Plaza disaster really catalyzed some action in the apparel industry,” said Drew, who noted that it also affected consumers. “People started to question, Where are my clothes made?”
One was Mathilde Charpail, who up until the factory disaster was working at a textile company in Spain, which had a factory in Bangladesh. “That really revealed to the world and myself, wow, that’s what I’m doing as a consumer,” she said.
Soon after, Charpail left her job and began researching sustainable, ethical fashion. In 2017, she founded the nonprofit Sustain Your Style to create more awareness and advise consumers about which brands are more environmentally and ethically conscious.
“The objective is to inform people about the issues in the fashion industry, and also to feature nice brands,” said Charpail, who now lives in Germany. She said it’s important for sustainable clothing to still be fashionable. “I like style. I think it’s very important to make it look good.”
Helping Consumers Look Good, Last Longer
Clad in his new Everlane Re-New sweater, Jandali said he wants to make sustainable fashion choices, but only if they also look good. And he sees the environment as an important issue, not only in itself, but because there are so many other advances that humans can make if we take care of the world, like space travel and alleviating poverty, he said. “All these things are so possible. We just have to stop deteriorating the planet. That’s why sustainability is important to me.”
Charpail has now founded a second organization, Sustainable Identity, which advocates for labels on clothing to clearly tell consumers if they have been certified sustainable. “The definition of sustainable fashion is not very clear for consumers,” she said. “The idea is to create certification and offer one definition of sustainable fashion.”
Charpail said clear labeling makes it easier. “The consumer can just go and shop without asking if it’s okay. They just can buy without having this anxiety about how it’s made,” she said.
Charpail said it’s also important that companies make quality clothes that last longer. She said consumers will wear them longer and “avoid generating so much waste.” Currently, the average lifespan of a clothing item is three years.
She said that to be truly sustainable, clothing should be repaired for longer life, and reused when possible.
“Give it to a friend, and try not to consider clothes as disposable,” Charpail said, adding that very few clothes are recycled. In fact, just 15 percent of clothes are recycled or donated. She said second-hand clothing stores and rental clothing are all good models that reduce waste.
A major second-hand clothing option in the New York area is Goodwill New York/New Jersey, which said it re-purposes 163 million pounds of donated goods annually, which includes clothing and household items. It also teams with the Department of Sanitation and the Road Runners club to pick up discarded clothes from New York marathon runners each year. In seven years, Goodwill said they have collected over 700,000 pounds of clothing, which are then resold.
“If we didn’t pick that up, I guarantee it would be scooped up and put into a landfill,” said Lennox Thomas, executive vice president of retail for Goodwill NY/NJ.
“Not only do we serve people with barriers to employment and people who have disabilities, but we also have an environmental function,” said Thomas.
Thomas said it’s young people that are leading the way when it comes to fashion sustainability.
“More so than my generation, I think the Gen X’s and the Gen Z’s are very conscious about reusing. In fact, it’s not cool to be wearing something that doesn’t come from somebody else,” he said.
Thomas also said it’s important that the store look good and appeal to consumers. At the Greenwich Village location, that meant removing some of the tightly-packed rows of clothing and opening up the space.
“It’s not just about putting out stuff — we’re trying to make sure that it’s an environment like any other boutique,” said Thomas.
Before joining Goodwill’s management team in 2017, Thomas worked for big brands in America and Europe, including Ralph Lauren. Now at Goodwill, he has assembled a team that has experience in luxury retail, including Burberry and Tourneau.
“We’re here because we firmly believe there is no brand that serves the community the way this does,” said Thomas, adding that he and his team are passionate about working for such an organization in the clothing industry.
Thomas’ said big-brand fashion companies are generally working to be more sustainable because of greater social awareness of environmental issues. He said this includes younger people, as both consumers and designers entering the industry. “It’s a causal effect,” Thomas said of young people driving increased environmental awareness in the industry.
Recent stories have suggested that mainstream brands are not all the way to sustainability, however, with reports that some brands have recently burned excess clothing, a practice companies use to scale down supply and drive up demand for their products.
H & M was accused of this in October 2017 by a Dutch television station, which said the company had burned 60 tons of usable clothing since 2013. H & M denied the accusations, saying it only destroys clothes that don’t meet its standards on issues such as containing mold or having unsafe chemical levels. When the Dutch program, Operation X, revealed tests it had done on the clothes showing that they were safe, H & M said its own tests were more thorough and released its own results on the clothes showing levels of mold and lead.
When H & M was recently reached for comment about whether it destroys excess clothing, Emily Scarlett of H&M U.S. wrote by email, “We would never destroy a garment that could be reused or recycled in any other way. With that said, we must send clothes that have failed to fulfill safety regulations and cannot be reused or recycled for destruction. It is our legal obligation.”
H & M’s website touts its involvement in sustainability practices and environmental consciousness, as do other brands like the Gap, Burberry, and Urban Outfitters. “We don’t believe that providing fashion on a large scale and working in a sustainable way is a
contradiction,” said Scarlett of H & M. “We want to offer fashion and quality at the best price, which means that our clothes have a good quality and hence a long life.”
Sustainability expert Deborah Drew said it is a good sign when companies give details about their practices. “The more transparent a company is, the more you can trust where they’re coming from and if they’ve made strides to address their environmental and social impacts.”
“Everlane really started with this premise of transparency,” said company founder and CEO Michael Preysman at an October 2018 talk at the Soho launch of its Re-New line. He said from the company’s start in 2010, the Everlane website has shown how much items cost to make. A jacket’s costs to make, for example, are broken down specifically by materials, labor, transport, duties and hardware, and come to a total of $60. Then Everlane’s price, $128, is shown next to the “traditional price” for that garment, which the site says is $300. “On average, traditional retailers mark their products up 5–6x,” the site says. “Us? Just 2–3x.”
Preysman said the company’s website now gives information about the specific factories that manufacture its products, and the company’s transparency has now moved to the materials used, and especially plastics. “The biggest punchline for us is, ‘Used for a minute, lasts forever’ — plastic never decomposes,” said Preysman.
That reality led to its ReNew line, which uses recycled plastic bottles to make clothes. The process involves breaking down the plastic and turning it into a soft, yarn-like material.
The plastic bottles mostly come from Asia, where Everlane produces its items, according to Kim Smith, general manager of apparel. “Part of that was to limit the footprint so the bottles travel as little as possible.”
Plastic is used in stages of production such as packaging and transport, something Smith and Preysman said they are moving away from. A big goal for the company is to stop using poly bags, a plastic pouch used to protect garments in shipping and which is often wrapped inside another poly bag.
“The sad reality is every single item you’re wearing came wrapped in a poly bag,” said Preysman. Smith said that more poly bags are used when an item is returned, meaning up to four bags can be used in the life of just a single garment.
For those perhaps skeptical of clothing of wearing plastic from the ReNew line, Preysman notes plastic’s ubiquity in consumers’ lives.
“People say, ‘why are you making things out of plastic?’” he said, adding that he has a ready reply: “Hey dudes, you’re already buying things made of plastic. Now you’re just buying it from recycled plastic.”