Can Fashion Industry Save the Planet?
What fashion companies can do to address climate crisis
I recently visited a few warehouses of unsold clothing in the Greater Toronto Area and I was shocked! Tons and tons of unsold jeans, tops, sweaters, shoes and other pieces of clothing of various sizes, colours and brands were pressed in a huge 15 kg bales. A warehouse of approximately 20,000 square feet was full of bails, hundreds and thousands of bails. The owner of the warehouse, who preferred to remain anonymous, explained that all the clothing that hasn’t been sold or has been donated ends up in warehouses like this where ulterior are sorted and a portion of garment is going to be recycled or sent as a donation to other parts of the globe. And all of a sudden I found myself contemplate that what they are doing is actually a good thing; however, why does the fashion industry produce so much textile waste and nobody cares?
Numerous big and small fashion companies around the world are fighting against environmental crisis through reducing production waste, gas emissions, water pollution, recycling, creating new smart fabrics, etc. However, in order to address the climate crisis and achieve high results, the global fashion industry should implement innovative technology in their manufacturing process and work collaboratively.The global fashion industry is surrounded by “fast fashion” trend which usually refers to the big fashion companies and brands that produce affordable new collections of clothing and accessories that appears in boutiques and front stores every and very week (instead of just few new collections a year) which are replaced with the new ones in next week or two. In order to meet such a huge demand for new items, the brands and companies creates a mass production industry which not only uses a huge amount of natural resources but inevitable pollutes and negatively affects the environment. Due to increased attention on how the fashion industry contributing to the environmental crisis, “sustainable fashion” has become a new trend.
Technology+Fashion=Sustainability
Recycling the old clothes by big fashion brands or small individual companies may be a solution in climate crisis and relatively effective way to address it; although, in order to create a considerable difference and be more sustainable, fashion companies should incorporate innovative technology in their manufacturing process to optimize their use of recycled fabric. In her article “Can technology help fashion clean up its act”, Suzanne Mancini illustrates the example of Bionic Yarn, a company which uses plastic bottles collected in the ocean to create the denim fabric that ultimately is used to sew wearable clothing. Implementing such an innovative technology that is able to manufacture a fabric out of the waste materials such as plastic bottles can radically change the mass production of the textiles. Companies that produce fabrics can use the waste material of one industry and reuse it in their production which ulterior will create a reusable loop and production waste will radically decrease. Furthermore, the whole giant jeans industry can be drasticallychanged if such smart technology can be implemented in the huge world’s jeans production, as cited by Zan Romanoff in his article “Our Jeans Are Ruining the Planet, But This Company Wants to Fix That”,
“Jeans are contributing hugely to climate change and environmental degradation”.
Furthermore, in the same article, Romanoff is giving another great example of the Story Greek Color company, which was founded by Sarah Bellos, and which creates plant base indigo dye for jeans that is less harmful for the environment. The mass production and dyeing of world loved jeans uses synthetic and toxic chemicals which contributes to degradation of environment and climate change.
This example illustrates how innovative way of dyeing the jeans can change this. Instead of using synthetic chemical for dyeing the denim. The Story Greek uses legumes which are type of fruit or seed that are known for their unique proprieties to take nitrogen from air and insert it back into the soil. Uses of these plants not only reduce the environment impact but also contribute to the crop rotation in the nature. These great and innovative examples demonstrate that implementing technologies in fashion industry can address climate crisis and decrease level of negative impact on the planet.
Let’s collaborate!
Besides changing the manufacturing process and implementing technologies, fashion brands and companies should combine the available resources and work collaboratively in order to achieve higher results in fighting against environmental crisis. In her article “Sustainability Is The Most Pressing Issue Facing Fashion-And It’s Only Getting Harder”, Emily Farra demonstrates the necessity of the fashion companies to work together in order to create a massive difference regarding the planet’s health. She gives an example of Celine Seeman who asserts that if companies can combine the resources and capital they can achieve way bigger result in becoming sustainable than working independently. Numerous fashion companies are trying, and sometimes successful, to create more sustainable production and manufacturing process; however, the majority of brands in the fashion industry don’t have the necessary budget to make their production more sustainable and still remain competitive on the market. Furthermore, if thess companies could combine all their assets, resources and efforts together, even if sometimes is very uncomfortable for them to do so, their accomplishments can create meaningful contribution for the planet and develop new solutions for the environmental issues. Moreover, in her article “Google Details Fashion Sustainability Toll”, Adrianna Lee, discuss the pilot project of partnership between the Google and designer Stella McCartney, who is known for her sustainable way of behaving in fashion. While one of the most wasteful and dirtiest part of the production steps are raw materials, companies are planning to build a tool that can eventually be used by fashion production companies, to be able to control their supply chain and its waste. If the experiment is successful, the company is planning to include this and other aspects of the fashion industry which will provide a better view of current influence of fashion industry on the planet’s health. This example demonstrates that combinable resources can generate solution in order to address environmental issues. Multiple fashion companies are not able to track or quantify the emissions produced by their industries, so they do not have a clear vision of how much emissions are generated by the manufacturing process. Creating a platform where companies can actually see and analyze the data, could improve and make this process more sustainable. To sum up, companies from the fashion industry should combine available resources and work together in order to address climate change as in this way the results would be more efficient and significant.
Manufacturing process of the fashion industry should involve innovative technologies; moreover, fashion companies and brands should work collaboratively in order to address climate change. Firstly, using such advanced technologies like converting plastic into denim, can radically change the manufacturing process of the fabrics, and especially highly popular and wide used-denim, and bring it to new, more sustainable level. Secondly, collaboration between fashion companies can also create more sustainable environment; however, individual companies not always have the necessary asserts or budged to make a difference in the climate change, combining the resources available for companies will change the negative impact of the fashion industry on our planet. Innovative technology and working collaboratively has always been an excellent way to succeed in any existing industry, and I believe that implementing these actions in global fashion industry can definitely change the actual negative impact that we create on our unique planet. But it need to be done fast, before it’s too late.
