Sustainability is the leading trend in fashion today. Consumers are increasingly ‘conscious’ now. But it remains to be seen if sustainable fashion is indeed sustainable.

The 3 R's of environmental sustainability - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle / Photograph by Ready Made

Sustainable fashion is one phrase we common folks have heard a lot since 2020. So much so that it was almost as popular as words such as ‘pandemic’, ‘lockdown’, ‘Covid-19’, and ‘vaccination’. Yet people still do not know what it really means. Even those who claim to know and love fashion are living under this rock.

To sum it up for the rock dwellers, sustainable fashion is all about taking an ethical, environment-friendly approach to manufacturing clothes and being mindful of the working conditions of the people who produce the garments.

The concept of sustainability in fashion started in the late 1980s due to numerous growing environmental concerns. But the idea became popular in the last two decades mainly due to the many catastrophic events in the textile and apparel industry.

The deadly Rana Plaza factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 24 April 2013 was a crucial moment. It forced fashion brands to take a more active interest in how their supply chain runs. The calls for accountability from big retail brands grew. 

One popular demand, widely raised in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza incident, was for the provision of a safe working place. While this brought some changes, the focus was still on making factories meet bare minimum standards. A lot more work is still urgently needed.

The word ‘conscious’ in the fashion industry today means steps towards sustainability where both the producers and the consumers invest their time and money in trying to lessen the environmental impacts of the entire production and consumption process. 

Now, many brands have started campaigning for a more sustainable approach towards manufacturing, packaging, advertising, and distribution of clothes.

In 2010, H&M launched its Conscious Collection of clothing made from recycled clothing materials. It became the first brand to start an initiative to collect used garments for reuse and recycling. The aim is to close the loop for textiles, though the question of whether it worked remains.

In order to answer questions regarding sustainability, we should first understand how feasible sustainability is for both the manufacturers and the consumers. It is important to cater to sustainability in various aspects, from the environmental impact to the living condition of the workers. 

Sustainability in fashion can also be determined by how disposable the waste created in the process of manufacturing clothes is and what ramifications it causes. 

According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, more than 100 billion items of clothing are produced globally every year, and an estimated 65% of these end up in landfill within 12 months. 

The pattern of consumption also determines sustainability in fashion / Photograph by Ron Lach

Brands like Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, Shein, Mango, and ASOS take first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh place, respectively, on Earth.org’s list of most polluting fast fashion companies. According to the UN, the fashion industry is estimated to be responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions.

Brands like H&M and Levi’s have introduced take-back schemes. However, just 1% of recycled clothes are turned back into new garments. H&M is now manufacturing clothes using Tencel Lyocell fibres which are made from sustainable wood pulp produced in a closed-loop process. But many buyers have complained of quality loss or degraded quality of the clothes in the process. 

Furthermore, the garment collection for recycling and upcycling of these brands is an issue because of the lack of physical stores in and around India, leading to limited options for online consumers. 

The pandemic, too, had an impact on the sustainability factor in the fashion industry. The year 2020 witnessed a rise in small businesses online, especially the ones using social media as a medium to sell goods. 

Most of these businesses have added some sustainability features in their sales approach, such as ‘Made from eco-friendly materials’, ‘Reuse, Recycle, Repeat’, ‘consciously curated’ etc. In reality, most of them are selling cheap quality products or secondhand clothes at very high and unreasonable prices, all to be dumped in the end. 

Exploiting our collective climate guilt leads to nothing but unnecessary frenzy-buying of these “sustainable” clothes with no proper consumption and disposal pattern.

Eventually, all these so-called sustainable initiatives have half-baked, unchecked, and unthought-out consequences. They need to be foresighted enough when sustainability is actually about thinking for the future and not sweeping issues under the rug.