THE IMPACT OF FASHION
Consumers nowadays are way more conscious that Fashion has an impact on the Planet. Cheap clothes are cheap for a reason. Behind the scenes of the fashion industry there are underpaid, exploited workers, constantly exposed to danger due to the lack of security measures in their factories. Laure Nissen, a PhD. Researcher at the Maastricht Sustainable Institute, focused the talk on Sustainable Consumption and in particular how Business could help us towards better consumption. Currently, humans are facing several sustainability crises, not only from the perspective of climate change but also from the social sciences point of view.
“Yes, we do need to stay within an ecological ceiling, but we do also want to make sure at the same time that as many people as possible can actually live a good life” Laura Niessen
Through the Planetary Boundaries chart, Laure explained how critical the situation is looking. Several boundaries have already been crossed and for at least 3 of them, Biosphere Integrity, Nitrogen and Phosphor use and Climate Change, we are in a space where we don’t know what we are going to face if we continue to push in the way we currently are.
WHY ARE WE DOING SO BAD?
Socially, already a quarter of the human population lives with food insecurities, 18% do not have access to fresh water. Why are we doing so bad?
“One of the primary issues is our consumption, is by far the strongest determinant of the increases of environmental and social impact”. Laura Niessen
Consumption is then also a matter of justice. It’s indeed our – privileged people with economic possibilities – consumption that produces the bigger impact. Those who are many but live in poverty leave a tiny footprint compared to those who are in a medium-high class, maybe less numerically but with a bigger footprint. Everything we need or we think we need, we buy it and then we wash it, which means great dispense of electricity.
FAST FASHION
Fast Fashion is a concept of recent development, which rotates around the production of many collections that change weekly sided by incredibly low prices. In the last 15 years, consumption has doubled, meaning that we buy double the items now. From an environmental perspective, this sector is responsible for 4% of the Green House Emissions, which equals to the combination of Germany, the UK and France total amount of emissions. In addition to these scary data, many of our clothes are synthetic, meaning that they are partially made with plastic. Each time the clothes are washed, several pieces of micro-plastic are released and end up in the oceans. Numbers are huge: it is estimated that between 300 and 1000 milligrams per kilo per wash of micro-plastic are released each washing.
The shift from fast fashion toward sustainable fashion has to come from people demanding a change. Claudia Angeli, Founder & CEO of thegreenlabels, explains how her company focuses on values that go beyond profit and rather on a sustainable mentality where small details make the difference, such as reusable packages.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Many alternatives have been proposed to reduce the impact of fast fashion, such as buying locally or buying a good quality product that is meant to last. Swapping and Renting clothes are also good alternatives, but only if practiced locally. The “Capsule Wardrobe” most certainly reduces the consumption impact, but is not the right solution for everyone. As a matter of fact, people shop for different reasons and consume more or fewer products: People that follow trends buy more than people that just buy for necessity.
What about vintage? Vintage is also a good solution, yet not a perfect one. Lately, vintage has become trendy and expensive, resellers users on apps such as Depop or Vinted gain profit from the trend and lastly, for older generations, vintage is often considered a “dirty solution”. Dressing sustainably is more a matter of conviction and information. Demanding a change, such as following movements as “Who Make My Clothes?”, talking about the topic and informing people, stop feeling the necessity to follow trends are all great ways to start a change. We are the ones that can define a greener and human-friendly trend.
POP BOUTIQUE
“People Over Profit” is the name of the project started by a group of friends, which goal was to contribute to the Refugee Crisis in Morea, Greece. POP Boutique embraces the slow-sustainable fashion concept. They collect clothes from people, upload them on their Instagram page and, when a piece is sold, they schedule a meeting with the buyer to collect the item. 100% of the profit goes to their partner association @samosvolunteers , which provides Education, Psychological support, Hygiene services and facilitates Active Integration on the refugee in Samos.
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