Sustainable Fashion Brands To Know

A report published in Nov 2017 claimed the disposable way we make and consume fashion means the industry is now responsible for 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse emissions yearly. According to the Guardian, this is larger than that of international flights and shipping combined.

And that’s not all. The facts only get more scary:

• Less than 1% of material used to make clothing is recycled into new clothing
• A truckload of clothing is wasted every second across the world
• It takes an average of 7,000 litres of water to produce one pair of jeans (that’s equivalent to the amount you drink in five to six years) 
• In the US, 10.5m tonnes of clothing are sent to landfill each year
• The volume of water consumed by apparel production each year is currently around 79 billion cubic meters, or 32m Olympic swimming pools 
• It’s estimated that close to 20% of the world’s water pollution comes from the dyeing and treatment of these man-made textiles 

What’s actually going wrong?

There are multiple factors. The first are environmental; 99% of the cotton used by the fast fashion industry is non-organic, which requires huge volumes of water to grow. Then, because disposable incomes have only risen in the past century, the ‘make and mend’ attitude of the past has dissipated, leaving us with vast amounts of wasted purchases that are then non-recyclable; according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 84% of unwanted clothes in the United States in 2012 went into either a landfill or an incinerator, whilst the Global Fashion Agenda and Boston Consulting Group predict that overall apparel consumption will have risen by 63% in 2030 –that’s the equivalent to 500 billion more T-shirts. 

And the other factors?

Are humanistic. Much of the fast fashion we consume is made by employees in disadvantaged countries, where factory workers are payed very little (according to one study, 16,000 Bangladeshi workers’ wages are equivalent to 1 US CEO’s annual salary). A survey of 219 fashion brands found that only 12% could demonstrate any action at all towards paying garment workers above the legal minimum wage, whilst tragedies like the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013, killing 1138 factory workers and injuring another 2500, confirm the unsafe and unsanitary conditions employees of the biggest brands are forced to work in.
 

How can I help?

First, check out FashionRevolution.org, the movement encouraging brands to be more responsible, provide dignified working conditions, conserve the environment and repair, reuse, recycle and upcycle. From signing petitions to lobbying labels, they have endless ways you can get involved.

Secondly, you can start shopping responsibly. Here are just some of the brands making sustainability a priority…