Pretty Stickers to Make Us Feel Better? Why Fashion Shouldn’t Follow in Food Industry’s Footsteps When It Comes to Transparency
You are what you eat, right? But are you also what you wear?
Increasingly, we are starting to see such a pattern. For example, McKinsey was surprised to find that consumers buying watches are looking for completely different things than just a few years ago. Historically, consumers prioritized elements such as design and features — now, people first look for a brand they feel they can identify with and want to wear this brand as part of their public persona.
In many cases, associating our identities with brands and products means we’re also no longer willing to accept (or overlook) unethical and unsustainable practices. And while the food industry had a headstart in sharing specific production insights, this process of extending visual trust to consumers failed to wholly eradicate prominent issues in food value chains, such as inequitable profit distribution, labor exploitation, and greenwashing.
Many of the problems the food supply chain has historically and continuously encountered — from underpaid labor to harmful chemicals usage — rear their heads in the fashion industry, too. Particularly after the Rana Plaza factory collapse of 2013 in Bangladesh, leading to the death of 1,134 people, the whole world was forced to acknowledge the sweatshop problem. And the devastating footage of garment workers desperately digging through rubble for their colleagues and relatives called into question the actual price of our clothing.
As we demand more transparency for the clothes we wear, what lessons are there to be learned from the food industry, and what’s the best way forward?
Fashion may be glamorous; its production is not
Fashion products used to be released in two primary seasons: spring and fall. Now, with new collections coming into stores practically every week, today’s fast fashion supply chains have been optimized for a pace of consumerism that is not environmentally or socially sustainable. Fashion production has doubled since 2000, and the industry shows no signs of slowing. By 2030, retail sales of fashion and apparel are projected to reach three trillion dollars.
The problem with the current model of fashion production, like in most manufacturing value chains, is that when profits come first, human and environmental rights are left behind. So, unfortunately, there’s a high price to pay for garment making — and not just a financial one.
The 2015 documentary The True Cost estimated that less than 2% of the people who make the clothes we wear earn a living wage. In 2022, real wages for garment workers have not increased, and they continue to face precarious pay conditions — further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. One study across nine countries found that workers saw a 21% decrease in income between March and August 2020 — with monthly wages dropping from $187 to $147. In addition to earning unlivable wages, workers are subject to long working hours, workplace accidents, verbal, psychological, and even physical abuse, and in extreme cases, slave-like conditions. And in many fashion supply chain origin countries where women are already vulnerable to underpayment, violence, and exploitation, these realities disproportionately impact women, as an estimated 75% of global garment workers are female.
If we examine the environmental impact of the industry, fashion accounts for around 10% of our greenhouse gas emissions. On top of that, the industry has been responsible for toxic waste and harmful substance runoff, desecrating local ecosystems and poisoning water sources. And with an estimated 85% of all textiles that get produced ending up in a landfill every year (many of them made up of synthetic fibers that take up to 200 years to decompose), it creates myriad urgent problems for the environment.
This affects each one of us, not only because we have to live with the very real social and environmental consequences, but because (unless you’re a nudist) everyone wears clothes. But if there is good news to be found here, it’s that many of the industry’s problems stem from little visibility, transparency, and awareness — not our inability to actually resolve them.
“We believe it is our responsibility as a sustainable fashion brand to educate. It’s not just about selling as much as possible — it’s critical to inform our customers about what is truly happening in the industry so they can make educated decisions when it comes to consuming clothes,” notes Emily-Jane Bayliss, the founder and CEO of Beatrice Bayliss, a sustainably focused slow fashion clothing brand.
The problem with food certifications
The only way to consume responsibly is to have the information needed to choose what to consume. The fashion industry doesn’t have a long history of providing ethics and sustainability information, but in the food industry, the journey has been straightforward, with labels and certifications.
The history of the first recognizable certification dates back to 1988 when the Fair Trade label Max Havelaar was applied to packs of Mexican coffee sold in Dutch supermarkets. Since then, labels have gained mass popularity, indicating social issues, environmental impact, dietary restrictions, fair trade, animal welfare, and more.
Today, there are more than 456 labels in 199 countries of the world just in the “ecolabel” space. Some certifications are better managed than others — with many being difficult for consumers to understand. The sheer quantity, complexity, and overlap may cause a “label fatigue” phenomenon, which isn’t necessarily helping responsible consumption.
In addition to making greenwashing easier, because, after all, what does “Eco-Friendly” actually mean, certifications fail to paint the full picture. A label may give you peace of mind that your chocolate bar didn’t cause animal suffering, but what about the working conditions of the cacao farmers, deforestation, water consumption, or other negative externalities? And if your manufacturing is sustainable, is your distribution, too? Certifications give us insight into isolated supply chain information — but they don’t show us the entire supply chain process.
A great example is what we recently witnessed at COP27. Companies can attend, pat each other on the backs, and show how many offsets they bought… but what if they are actually underpaying their employees and polluting rivers? These are the stories that individual certifications don’t tell.
“Just being organic because you aren’t using chemicals is not enough. We need to talk about how we are taking care of the earth,” notes Christa Barfield, founder of LifeLeaf Organic Farms, highlighting how certifications can present a narrow view of a complex problem.
Labels have been used as a differentiation, creating niche markets in which brands can secure higher prices for their products — but how can we really trust that commitments are met? Without proof of positive impact, labels are susceptible to becoming a greenwashing tool. And considering that many certification processes are human-mediated and centralized, any claims are difficult to verify and monitor over time. Because how do you actually operationalize checking up on 700,000 farmers in Colombia?
While certifications do certainly deserve some merit, replicating the same model in the fashion industry, which shows similar supply chain patterns, would be inadequate. To execute (and prove) their sustainability efforts, social impact, product origin, and more, it’s vital for the whole industry to start opening up its supply chain fully for everyone to see.
Is web3 the solution?
As long as we can’t create holistic impact structures for companies, as well as verifiability and trust mechanisms for the claims they make, certifications will remain an imperfect solution.
As an immutable, distributed ledger, blockchain has the potential to help the fashion industry achieve unprecedented levels of transparency. Leveraging satellite imagery, photos, labor and product data, or even chemical analysis (for example, of soil samples from cotton fields) — either manually or with the help of IoT (Internet of Things) devices — companies could create comprehensive “journeys” of their products. And using a framework such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), they could easily communicate their positive impact.
Such radical visibility means that both brands and consumers have the information they need to identify inefficient, unreliable, and unsafe suppliers that can be associated with unethical practices and thus damage their reputations. And as investors, regulators, and prospective buyers increasingly favor companies that associate themselves only with actors committing to ESG efforts, this could bring in more business, too.
Moreover, open fashion supply chains inspire inclusivity. Fashion companies wouldn’t need to get certified for a specific effort; instead of telling, they could directly show. This levels the playing field for those manufacturers that don’t have access to the right connections or the resources to apply and pay for expensive and arduous certification processes.
Perhaps most importantly, transparency catalyzes impact. Good actors would be rewarded with brand loyalty and price premiums (backed by claims easily verifiable on-chain). For example, if a brand is going the extra mile to minimize water consumption in denim production, they could easily showcase this innovation — and they can build the emotional connection to environmental or social impact that their customers desire.
On the other hand, transparency would also encourage those that yet have work to do in the industry to adopt more sustainable and ethical practices. And even if they are not there yet, not quite perfect, that is actually okay — showing progress and commitment goes a long way.
Behind a piece of clothing in your closet, there is very likely an untold story of unethical practice. Realizing that, our societies start to place further pressure on the fashion industry to become more sustainable and humane. This won’t happen without transparency — and we need to seek solutions beyond third-party labels. With the help of blockchain technology, fashion can shatter the Industrial Revolution’s status quo and build value chains and customer experiences that favor openness, authenticity, and consumer value alignment, ultimately redefining what it means to wear your values.
