Sustainable Clothing in Berlin
Kollateralschaden was a company we visited that was focused on creating sustainable clothing. While not directly competing with ‘fast fashion’, as there is no way they can win, all of Kollateralschaden’s goals as a company are opposing fast fashion. For example, all of their pieces are considered “slow fashion” meaning they aren’t trying to constantly keep up with the newest trends and pump out a ton of low quality clothes. They are sustainable clothes and are often times able to be worn in several different ways. This means consumers are needing to consume less for separate pieces of clothing. Kollateralschaden is a perfect example of a company making up Mittelstand, one of the Seven Secrets of Germany found in our required readings. This term, in short, means that a lot of small to medium sized companies form the “backbone” to the German economy.
A lot of German infrastructure is set up in a way that fosters sustainable practices. For example, their recycling bottle system. In this, whenever you buy a plastic or glass bottle (or a few other recyclable containers), you pay a deposit, which you will get back after the bottle is brought to one of the recycling stations found all over the city. This not only stimulates the economy, as it creates a new transfer of money, but also incentivizes everyone to be sustainable. As a result of this and many other systematic infrastructures revolving around sustainable practice, citizens of Germany are more inclined to implement new sustainable habits into their own lives. This is where Kollaterakshaden comes in. Because recently fast fashion has a growing talking point in social media, people are becoming more conscious of where they purchase their clothing. Kollaterakshaden is one example of many, of a small sustainable clothing brand that is unable to compete with large brands that fall into the fast fashion category, but still appeal to a decent sized demographic of people. This population of people is likely larger in Germany, given their sustainable national goals. This ‘public opinion’ perfectly aligns with Module 2 of the classroom portion of the class, as with so many citizens living lives with sustainable habits, it becomes the norm. This helps explain how renewable energy became so dominant for Germany. One potential unresolved problem for not only Kollateralschaden, but for other sustainable German norms, including the bottle return program, is how easy it is to do the alternative, non-reusable option. For example, it is a lot easier, more convenient, and cheaper to buy fast fashion. This is because it is mass produced, making it more accessible, and also a very high supply of it. In a similar regard, for the bottle return program, many businesses make it an option to just buy the disposable cups for a cheaper price. This makes it so you can either spend more money to have to do more work, or spend less money, throw it away, and forget about it in a few hours (yet still contribute to massive waste production). To resolve this, I would suggest getting the German government to have some financial incentives for people who consume sustainably. Similar to the subsidies the US government gives to people for buying electric vehicles, except in this case on a much smaller scale.
To touch briefly on the third module of the course, the topic the Kollateralschaden visit most closely relates to is the disparities in the labor market. Kollateralschaden helps with this, as they are actively hand making all of their clothes in shop. This makes it so there is no sweatshop worker overseas. This means that there is no cost of importing and transporting the clothes, both to the environment, or to the firm selling the clothes.
