The Sustainability Myth

Vinted’s recent advert shows individuals walking the streets wearing what appears to be the full contents of their wardrobe. A girl struts along wearing five pairs of sunglasses, each slightly different – one with white frames, one with orange frames, one with translucent – all likely purchased under the justification that the different colours would match different outfits. She passes an older gentleman reading the newspaper wearing six or seven hats, a collection he perhaps didn’t realise he’d made over the years. Later, a girl gets into a lift dragging a gaggle of handbags along the floor behind her – you get the picture. Nowadays, we have a lot of stuff.

Fast fashion brands use clever ads to convince us that this excessive consumption is sustainable. H&M for example, with their ‘Conscious: Bring it on’ advert claimed our old hosiery, jeans and T-shirts alike would get “what they deserve” at the end of their life, and the “one thing” they wouldn’t do, is “waste it.” Yet, CBC reported that only 35 percent of the clothes they collect are recycled. The Guardian also found that after collecting a total of 1,000 tonnes of clothes waste from consumers, the company would then have to spend 12 years using up that 1,000 tonnes of fashion waste, to get rid of it. Meanwhile, H&M will continue producing 1,000 tonnes every 48 hours. Yet, Fashion Revolution still ranked H&M second in their 2023 Fashion Transparency Index.

Tansy Hoskins, author of The Anti-capitalist book of fashion, has debunked a lot of greenwashing and misinformation in her career. “There’s now a language and a way of shopping that’s supposed to make us feel comfortable about what we’re buying,” she says, “but that’s not the same as it being, in reality, safe or fair or ecologically sound.”

Globally, the fashion industry is responsible for ten percent of carbon emissions, more than “international flights and maritime shipping combined,” according to the environmental news website, Earth.org. Despite predictions from Chatham House that our plastic use will double over the next 20 years and Professor Dilys Williams, founder of the University Arts London’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion, standing before the UK’s Environmental Audit Committee at Westminster in May this year professing that we are in an era where the fast fashion industry is becoming “the instant fashion industry”; major fashion brands are still making a play to convince consumers that they are becoming more sustainable. But, The UN predicts that emissions from fashion will increase by nearly fifty percent by 2030, so why is it that despite countless green advert’s and updated labels that say “100 percent sustainable,” emissions are predicted to get worse?

Ultimately, it’s a myth to say that any a piece of clothing can be sustainable, Hoskins says. The production of any piece of clothing, from the materials being produced, to their debut on a shop hanger, creates carbon emissions, and yet consumers are largely blind to this: “If you ask the average person what’s your shirt made off? They might say polyester, if they even know that,” Hoskins says “If you ask where polyester comes from, people don’t understand that polyester is a fossil fuel.”

“There’s a new language and a way of shopping
that’s supposed to make us feel comfortable
about what we’re buying”

Polyester; which Green Match, the Green energy comparison site, found accounted for 52 percent of the fibres produced globally in 2020, is created from coal and petrol, among other things. The production of polyester uses massive amounts of water; if companies do not have proper wastewater facilities the used water releases harmful substances, like antimony, cobalt, manganese salts, sodium bromide and titanium dioxide into the environment. Then, when polyester is eventually discarded; Business Waste, a UK based waste carrier, reports it will lie for hundreds of years decomposing, releasing methane into the air – the greenhouse gas heating up the planet.

The Ellen Macarthur foundation, a foundation dedicated to creating a circular economy, define the circular economy of fashion as a system wherein “clothes, textiles, and fibres are kept at their highest value during use and re-enter the economy after use, never ending up as waste,” making the lifecycle of clothes continuous. There is a push from the EU to incentivise businesses to adopt circular business structures for the life cycle of their products.

In their EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles the EU outline various goals to improve sustainable practices with plans to reduce overconsumption, raise awareness about greenwashing and encourage that textiles be produced that are easier to repair and recycle. These goals are intended to “reverse overproduction.”

As well as the impact on the environment, the working conditions of garment workers is another cause for concern. After the collapse of a garment making factory in the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh in 2013 where 1,134 workers died, there has been increasing political pressure to pay attention to the ethical implications of the supply chains that enter the UK and fill our high streets. The Clean Clothes Campaign reports that Bennetton, Primark and Matalan were buying garments from the Rana Plaza factory.

Hoskins says, “[Rana Plaza] was supposed to be a watershed moment, when the whole fashion industry woke up and started caring about workers, but that never happened.”

In November 2023, Reuters reported that Bangladesh’s State Minister for Labour and Employment, Monnujan Sufian, said that from 1 December 2023 Bangladesh’s minimum wage would see it’s first increase since 2019, before the pandemic, from 8,000 taka which the Clean Clothes Campaign reports converts roughly to $74, to 12,500 taka or $114 per month. The decision came after garment workers had taken to the streets to protest since earlier in November when a lower initial wage increase was rejected by workers, The Guardian reports the protests led to three known deaths.

The Clean Clothes Campaign, the largest alliance of labour unions globally, reports that H&M, ASOS and Uniqlo are among the many brands sourcing from Bangladesh who have kept quiet admidst the fight for living wage for workers in their supply chains. The campaign is making efforts to encourage these brands to speak out for their workers, in an attempt to get the minimum wage increased again to 23,000 taka ($220). Research from the Bangladesh Institute for Labour Studies, found that this wage increase would give workers enough money to support thier family. The Clean Clothes Campaign reports that this would avoid recurring human rights violations where workers, 70 percent of whom Fashion United report are women, are working overtime, and compromising their nutrition to pay bills. The campaign further reports that in some cases workers pull their children from school early to become child labourers, to generate necessary income for their family.

“[Rana Plaza] was supposed to be a watershed moment,
when the whole fashion industry
woke up and started caring about workers,
but that never happened.”

Over ten years on from the Rana Plaza incident, workers are still not being paid a living wage, although the World Fashion Exchange reported in June last year that Bangladesh’s textile industry was valued at just over $40 billion, which the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority reports accounts for just over 6 percent of the global apparel export market.

The Bangladesh Investment Development Authority website also boasts that Bangladesh was the third largest exporter of ready made garments in the world in 2020, while Fibre 2 Fashion reports that China is largest textiles and clothing producer in the world.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president, Faruque Hassan has no interest in slowing down production. The Daily Star reported that he said “Bangladesh can increase garment exports to $100 billion by 2030 and account for 12 percent of the global trade through market diversification.”

Free-trade zones have increased with globalisation; there are currently 16 free trade zones operating in Bangladesh, and FDI China reported that there were 21 in 2021 in China; the link between both countries success in the ready made garment industry and their hosting multiple free trade zones can’t be ignored. The Global Financial Integrity Think Tank report that “the zones are especially attractive to low- and middle-income countries looking to attract export businesses and foreign direct investment.” Free-trade zones permit different “trade-related laws” than the rest of the country, which means that labour laws and sustainability goals can be relaxed in those areas.  

With such ambitious sustainability goals, but no regulation to quash or restructure garment making factories in free-trade zones, it looks like as long as there’s demand for brands who sourced from the Rana Plaza and still source from Bangladesh, like H&M, fast fashion will meet the UN’s predicted increases.

From the production of the materials that make our camis tops, to who makes them and how those workers are treated under unregulated trade zones, to their falling out of trend and into landfill – the circle of clothes lifespan is pretty bleak. Unless clothes are sold or given secondhand, they will end up in landfill. The Global Fashion Agenda reports that “as of 2022 80 percent of all clothing ever made now lives in landfills.”

Shopping secondhand, passing clothes between generations or between friends, learning how to sew and upcycle our textiles are all ways that we can curb demand for fast fashion brands and make the most of what we have without being a ‘consumer.’

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Pictures: Stock Images

Designs: Pius Bentgens