Fashion: A Throwaway, Disposable Industry
Ellen MacArthur and Stella McCartney co-launched A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion's future on November 28, 2017.
Andrew Morgan’s The True Cost successfully segments awareness of “stuff” with the implications of value dissociation. Including YouTube clips of lifestyle personalities sharing their fast fashion hauls from the likes of Forever 21 and H&M. The various options and cheap prices appealed to their impulsive gratification and upon reflection sparked them to question: if what they loved at the moment was something they valued to actually wear in the future?
When as a society, the allure to own outweighs the importance to keep, garments become disposable—quite literally. In the U.S. alone, the average consumer tosses 80 lbs. of clothing annually (1), that’s about one garbage truck of clothes being either landfilled or incinerated every second (2). The inclusion of fast fashion has created an environment where brands compete to keep collections reflective of trends while offering products cheap enough for the consumer to only intend on wearing so few times until the next best thing comes to the market.
Design for Waste
As fast fashion fruitions, fashion players have adopted the economic model: Take, Make and Dispose. This is known as a linear model, designed for waste without consideration of the 99% of clothing sold that can be recycled into new (1). Affirmed by the 400% increase of global fashion consumption over the last 20 years, this model perpetuates the mentality to love a garment over valuing it.
When the consumer values what they own, they are informed (via brand transparency or their own research) and plan to maximize product usage. The functionality, durability, and quality are considered before making a purchase with the intent of extending its use for as long as possible.
Global Fashion Agenda: Circular Design Toolbox
WornWear.com is an online store for used Patagonia clothing- helping clothes that sit idle in closets make their way back into the field, instead of the landfills. If you need a garment, you can buy used on WornWear.com (or new on Patagonia.com).
Design for Longevity
Transitioning away from design-production-consumption, brands are regarding garment longevity during the design stage to consider repairs and remanufacturing before wasting. Patagonia’s Worn Wear, EILEEN FISHER Renew and The Renewal Workshop who offer services in addition to their products committed to repairing and redesigning old or worn garments for long-term keep.
Design for Circularity
Design-Production-Consumption-Repair-Reuse-Design
With consideration for the longevity of clothing use, circular fashion is an innovation model extending product usage and looping materials back into the fashion system to be used as raw materials. As a collective, the adoption of circular fashion into the industry “restores and regenerates materials, in addition to providing opportunities to reduce environmental pressures…capturing the value of a product to the greatest extent possible” (3).
For brands, this is an innovative challenge inviting them to rethink the way clothes are designed, produced, sold, and later collected. The consumer expects the brands and industry to address environmental issues that have to do with water usage, chemical toxicity, pollution, and garment waste; circular fashion is the shared solution to these incremental problems.
2020 Circular Fashion Commitment
“The Fashion industry’s poor performance at the end-of-the-use phase of the value chain, coupled with high impact potential of circularity, clearly illustrates the case for change”
By 2030 the world population is expected to exceed 8.5 billion people and global garment production is to increase by 63% (3). As a response to this hyper-production and consumption Global Fashion Agenda (GFA)—host of the annual Copenhagen Fashion Summit on fashion sustainability—invited the industry to pioneer circularity.
In May 2018, 94 companies (H&M, Nike, ASOS, Dhana and others), making up 12.5% of the global fashion market, pledged to the 2020 Circular Fashion Commitment to take act to accelerate the circular transition in fashion. Rectifying the less than 1% of materials recycled into new clothing and the less than 20% of clothes collected for recycling, the signatories pledged to at least one of the four actions points to adopt by 2020 below:
Implementing design strategies for cyclability
Increasing the volume of used garments and footwear collected
Increasing the volume of used garments and footwear resold
Increasing the share of garments and footwear made from recycled post-consumer textile fibers
This clothing line turns fabric scraps into unique pieces of clothing. Daniel Silverstein founded 'Zero Waste Daniel', aka 'ZWD', to close the gap on the fashion industry's waste problem - here's Daniel's story.
Addressing Disposal Waste
As part of the commitment, an essential part of the system is to facilitate collection programs for consumers to dispose of their unwanted garments differently and sustainably. If the current collection rate tripled by 2030, the value of avoiding landfills could be worth more than EUR 4 billion for the world economy. Following through the circular process, if all fibers collected were recycled this would be an additional EUR 80 billion boost in value (4). In recognizing the opportunities in focusing on the end-of-use phase of the value chain, there is an appetite for brands to remedy disposal waste and consumers to change their habits. Check out these brands that are revolutionizing fashion waste back into the value chain here.
Not All Unwanted Need to be Unworn
Bringing these solutions to the consumer, Global Fashion Agenda partner I:CO has teamed up with signatories of the 2020 commitment to facilitate the collection of used garments. In association with brands like GUESS, Levi Strauss, and Target, these in-store collection programs are materializing action points 2 thru 4 providing an assortment to resell, redesign, and re-assemble from. These collection facilities help aid the issue attributed from the misconception that donating clothes to charity organizations is a sustainable solution when in reality only 10% of donated clothes are sold. The remaining 90% is exported and dumped onto the shores of developing countries like Haiti, where the surplus of clothes run the risk of suffocating the local economy and polluting the environment with garment waste (6).
In addition, one major solution to combating waste and non-recycled materials will be for brands to decrease the use of materials (mostly synthetic) that cannot be easily disassembled or are of very poor quality. In producing better quality clothes, the consumer feels more confident in their ability to keep for an extended period and donate once no longer wanted.
You Don’t Need to Own to Save
The RealReal and Stella McCartney are working in partnership to make a positive impact and advance our shared values: sustainability and the promotion of the circular economy in luxury fashion.
This year’s Business of Fashion State of Fashion 2019 report highlights the various ways brands can change the way they offer products and collect old to cater a more sustainable and ‘rental’ future.
That’s right—the future of fashion is resale and rental. Within the next ten years, the resale market could be bigger than fast fashion, meaning more clothes circulating from owner to owner and less landfilled or incinerated. CEO of Rent the Runway, Lauren Sherman reflects, “Rental is about the customer’s intention behind the usage of the item” (5). Brands and businesses like Rent the Runway and online, luxury consignment The RealReal, are part of the movement towards circularity, giving value back to the consumer and empowering conscious shopping behavior. “From a sustainability standpoint, there is absolutely no reason to fill up our landfills every single year with all this junk. One-fifth of LVMH Group is not thrown into a landfill every year; it’s one-fifth of H&M” Lauren Sherman (5).
Committing to collecting closets full of quality, made-to-last clothes is the first step in reducing fashion waste. Rethinking disposal methods is the second. Just because a garment no longer is of value to the owner does not qualify a means to an end. Look out for collection facilities, donation centers and brands that are requesting used garments. As the industry progresses forward, odds are the same garment that was once ‘old’, will be re-assembled or resold to be restoratively new.
Brought by Dhana Inc.
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