Some clothes are more environmentally friendly than others. Here's how to find them. (photo: Getty)
And don't forget thrift and consignment stores
By Amanda Abrams, YES! Magazine
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now, the word is out: fashion, particularly “fast fashion,” is killing
our planet. Low-cost, cheaply-made clothes that are designed to be worn
briefly until styles change are terrible for the environment.
Over the past decade and a half, consumers have been buying and discarding considerably more outfits. Between 2000 and 2014, global clothing production doubled,
with shoppers purchasing roughly 60 percent more garments; at the same
time, the number of times a piece of clothing is worn before it’s tossed
out dropped by a third. The fashion industry is now solely responsible
for 10 percent of the earth’s carbon emissions and 20 percent of its wastewater;
it’s the second largest polluter of water in the world. And in the end,
very few of those clothes are recycled: most of them end up in landfills.
Those figures are downright dismal—especially for an industry that markets itself as being about positive feelings and fun.
But the numbers are no secret, and today there’s a
wide range of advocates and organizations working to hold the industry
accountable to improving its track record. Within the field, a few
outlier brands have made massive changes in how they do business, and
others are banding together in groups like Textile Exchange and Sustainable Apparel Coalition to identify new operating models.
That means consumers have a growing opportunity to
make educated decisions, sort the polluters from the companies that are
trying to improve, and ultimately push the industry toward greater
sustainability.
The $1.3 trillion apparel industry is very complex,
though, with inputs that start in the field and may well travel halfway
around the world before hanging in your closets. What elements should
buyers prioritize?
“It seems so overwhelming, but it’s not as complicated as it seems,” says Elizabeth Cline. She’s the author of a popular book about fast fashion and recently released The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good.
If you’re planning on buying a new piece of clothing, the place to
start thinking about environmental impacts is the label, she says. After
all, the largest portion of the clothing industry’s environmental
impact is in the manufacturing phase, not retailing or shipping.
Buyers who dutifully lug canvas bags to the grocery
store and would never dream of sipping out of a single-use water bottle
might be surprised to learn that over 60 percent
of textiles today include synthetics made from fossil fuels. They’re
part plastic, that is. And because plastic is cheap and easy to
manufacture, it’s hard to avoid; even a t-shirt or a pair of jeans may
have synthetic material mixed in.
But not all polyesters are the same. “If you’re
shopping for synthetic material, look for recycled content. It uses less
energy, and no new sources,” says Cline. In most cases, that means the
fabric—or shoes,
in some cases—started out as plastic bottles that were melted down and
turned into new materials. Recycled nylon is another new option; Econyl
comes from post-consumer waste and has become increasingly popular in
clothing.
Most natural materials can’t be recycled; the fibers
tend to shorten with processing, so they have to be mixed with virgin
material to be viable. But post-consumer cashmere—that is, sweaters made
from discarded garments or leftover factory scraps that are then
re-spun—has become a thing, purportedly saving grasslands in countries
like Mongolia and China from the ecological destruction caused by
cashmere goats.
If you’re shopping for cotton or wool clothes, look
for a tag that says they were produced organically. That’s key: cotton
is grown using huge amounts of pesticides, and wool often requires harsh
scouring agents, bleaches, and dyes.
The makers of rayon, also known as viscose, have often
billed the fabric as “natural,” and indeed it does come from wood or
bamboo. But the raw material may be sourced from old-growth forests, and
it requires powerful, poisonous chemicals to be transformed into usable
fibers. So when buying rayon, keep an eye out for garments labeled
Tencel or lyocell (the former is the brand name; lyocell is the generic
fabric); while their manufacture does require chemicals, they’re safer
than those used on regular rayon, and the wood used as a raw material is
certified as sustainably sourced.
Another key component of sustainable shopping can
happen in front of the computer. The apparel industry’s supply chains
are notoriously opaque; materials may move from the fields of one
country to a spinning mill in another, a knitter in a third, and a
manufacturer in perhaps a fourth nation. “Each step requires specialized
equipment and significant investment,” says Donna Worley of Textile
Exchange. “It may take six or seven stops and six to eight months before
a bale of cotton becomes a pair of socks,” and the same is true for
other fabrics.
In response, says Cline, get thee to Google. “Start
looking for brands that are rethinking the way they manufacture
clothing,” she says. That means much more than just powering their
headquarters with renewable energy; increasingly, it means radical
transparency about the supply chain they’re utilizing. Trailblazing
companies like Everlane and Allbirds highlight all of the factories they
work with on their websites, opening them up to further scrutiny.
Analysts say that younger shoppers tend to be far more
concerned with how their clothes were made than preceding
generations—and manufacturers are highly aware of it. That’s consumer
power, and an increasing number of brands are responding. Even companies
like H&M and Gucci have made significant efforts to reduce their
environmental impact, though they’re still in the minority.
Online
ranking tools like Good on You can highlight various brands’ efforts.
But some consumers are electing to abandon disposable
fashion altogether and are taking advantage of new disruptive business
models. Online secondhand retailers like Thredup and the RealReal are
thriving, as is subscription fashion service Rent the Runway, which was
valued at $1 billion earlier this year.
And then, of course, there are the brick and mortar
thrift shops located in most towns and cities. Many are packed with
inventory and humming with business, given the high turnover rate of
clothing today. They, too, can be part of a sustainable fashion
strategy.
But the first and most important step, says Deborah
Drew, associate and social impact lead at the World Resources
Institute’s business center, is simply reducing one’s consumption. Drew
encourages people to not redo their wardrobes every few weeks. “Instead,
they should buy more timeless pieces they can keep,” she says. “Really
try to be conscious about what they buy and what impact it has on the
planet.”
After all, Drew explains, “[while] improvements in
technology are great, if we’re still producing at such a volume, it’s
outweighing all the good of these new technologies and fibers. We’re
simply overwhelmed by the volume.”
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