The past few years has been a journey for me in coming to terms with my own purchasing choices and how they may or may not be particularly sustainable for both me and the planet. To be fair, I’ve never been much of a fashionista, but when I’m not in leggings I do enjoy putting myself together and have admittedly (and sometimes poorly) fallen for the latest fashion trend. But research is also now showing that textiles and footwear account for a substantial amount of carbon emissions and our need to have the latest pair of pants or our fifth grey sweater (someone please explain why I have more than 1 of these?!) is impacting our planet. It’s time we start talking about sustainable clothing and what really makes our fashion sustainable.
Sustainability seems to be the latest trending word. Which is great because awareness is key in seeing any change, but I also worry that people aren’t understanding the full picture. Before diving into what sustainable clothing really is, I wanted to have a transparent conversation about fast fashion and what we need to be aware of when it comes to being more sustainable with our clothing choices.
What is Fast Fashion?
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We can’t have a conversation around sustainable fashion without discussing fast fashion.
Ready for me to get on my soapbox? If you’ve been an avid reader of the blog you know how important protecting our environment is to me. I advocate for organics, I shared how to make your kitchen more sustainable and I love sharing tips for living sustainably. If you care about this planet, you have to care about the fashion industry. The fashion industry is one of the major polluting industries in the world.
Fast fashion is extremely harmful to the environment. Their goal is to produce as much product as possible, as quickly as possible. They chase fashion trends and pump out product to the consumer, not caring if they overproduce too much or if the products themselves are crappy. Trends pass through this country quickly and a lot of this clothing ends up at a thrift store or in the trash. The apparel and footwear industries together accounted for more than 8 percent of global climate impacts — the equivalent of 3,990 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2016, according to a report from Quantis. Total greenhouse gas emissions related to textiles production are equal to 1.2 billion tons annually. This is not something we can ignore.
There are a few big issues with fast fashion: 1. the emissions of clothing production, 2. the emissions from discarded items that end up in landfills and 3. poor working conditions and pay
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