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Recycle, Reuse & Repurpose Fashion

The idea of recycling, reusing and repurposing fashion isn't a new one - but it wasn't until recently that the once-taboos of shopping at thrift stores became trendy. Today, some of the biggest e-commerce sites are based on reselling second-hand items, such as The Real Real and Vaunte, or apps like Poshmark & Depop, which make it easier to participate and get some great deals on brand name items.

At first it was the discounts and access to luxury items that attracted people to second hand shopping. As we see a shift towards consciousness; people care more and more about their impact on the planet. This shift is pushing more brands to become transparent on their processes. With organizations like the Green Peace publishing the current Detox report and documentaries such as, "The True Cost" it makes sense both brands and consumers are paying attention.

Moving towards this lifestyle isn't easy and changing the way people consume fashion is a behavior that has been set for years. People can't get discouraged and need to remember that every small step they take is making an impact. So, here are some simple ways to incorporate recycling, reusing, and repurposing into your lifestyle.

1. Recycle by purchasing secondhand

Know the item you are looking to purchase (brand, name & size) and head to your favorite fashion influencers' Instagram or Pinterest to get inspired. Once you have the information you can start the search. Head to all the online consignment shops to see if any carry that item. If not, check out the second hand apps or make a trip to your local thrift shops. Remember to keep an open mind. Maybe you wont find that exact item but you will find something similar.

Inside Tip: For online shops, make sure you sign up to their email list, as they have weekly discounts. Make a list of all the thrift shops nearby and note when they get new arrivals, that way you're able to get first dibs on the new items.

2. Reuse what you already own

Seems obvious but start with looking in your own closet. Many people forget what they own or have purchased in the past. Try to see each piece in a new light, perhaps pairing it with new accessories you have. If all fails, think of other ways to utilize the clothes, such as the fabric. For example, you can make cleaning rags into re-usable produce bags.

Inside Tip: Hold a swap party with your friends. Take those items that you no longer love & let someone else give them love. In turn, you can find new pieces for your look.

3. Repurpose by altering old clothing

Repurposing brings a new life to something that's used and doesn't contribute to the 11 million tons of textiles waste in the US. Buying recycled or reused means you don't always find the garment you love in multiple sizes, so it's key to look beyond the garment. Think of all the ways you can alter it to make it the item of your dreams. This also works for the items you currently own, perhaps make those old pair of jeans into cool denim shorts or those midi skirts into mini skirts.

Inside Tip: Everyone should have a good tailor! Especially for more drastic changes to the item.

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Sustainable Fashion: Recycle, Reuse & Repurpose

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The idea of recycling, reusing and repurposing fashion isn't a new one - but it wasn't until recently that the once-taboos of shopping at thrift stores became trendy.

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The pressure is mounting on fashion brands to lower their impacts on people, the planet, and animals. But we, as consumers, also have a role to play. Read the article to learn more about the five Rs of fashion, a simple model for making the most out of what's already in your closet and reducing the impact of your fashion choices.
Get to know the 5 Rs of fashion

It's no secret that the fashion industry leaves a big footprint on the planet, and as a result, we have seen a rising trend in consumer awareness of the impact of our spending choices. More accessible information has invited increased pressure for brands to step up and do better. So, while brands are at work looking at the part they play in all of this, what can we as consumers do to contribute? A lot can be said for some catchy alliteration at the core of this shift that can help you get started: reduce, rewear, recycle, repair, and resell. Ready?

Reduce

The benefits this "R" brings are countless, and the rewards can be felt instantly. Although a challenge (and often a gradual process), the act of decluttering has been around for years, especially as we learn the horrible impact consumerism is having on the planet, people, and animals.

A prominent figure in the area of decluttering and reduction is Marie Kondo, whose principles and philosophy offer a useful starting point to reducing your spending habits and your wardrobe, all while offering great tips for how to keep it organised and ensure you can utilise everything you already own. You, therefore, will reduce what you feel the need to buy.

This is vital in reducing your fashion footprint, with thousands of tonnes of clothing ending up in landfill everyday. Not only will you reap the benefits of the savings you will accrue and the space you will create, but a big bonus is the decision fatigue you will avoid along the way.

This has been true for various successful figures, including Barack Obama, who only ever wears grey or blue suits as a way to focus his "decision making energy". Reducing becomes much bigger than just fashion and your wardrobe⁠-it will have you looking at other areas of your life, too.

A useful question to pose to yourself is: "When did I last wear this?". The answer should help to determine if the garment has served its purpose, and to decipher what should stay and what should go. And when we say go, we don't mean into landfill, but giving to a friend or donating to the local charity drop off (see the Resell part of this article for more information).

Rewear

The waste implications of fashion are a major area of concern and a huge contributor to the constant polluting of our planet. A recent study outlined that 95% of the textiles that end up in landfill each year could be recycled (particularly with increasing technological developments). The fashion industry is also one of the most intensive in terms of resource use such as water, waste, land clearing, materials, and more. Yikes.

Today, reusing is essential to minimising your fashion footprint, and we need to normalise rewearing outfits. We already have so many clothes in our closets, including many that we love and cherish, so of course, we should want to wear them again and again.

It's 2023, we need to normalise rewearing outfits.

If you're worried about what people might think, ask yourself this: "Do I remember what my friend wore last time I saw them?" No? Well, chances are they don't remember what you were wearing, either. And if you do remember and see them wearing the same thing more than once, do you care? No? See, there's nothing wrong with repeating outfits, and we really shouldn't be afraid to wear something more than once. Especially if it's that cute dress or shirt that suited you so well. Be proud.

There are a number of ways it can be a fun and easy shift in mentality. Once you have reduced your wardrobe and your shopping frequency⁠-and know exactly what you have⁠-you can try out new pairings and look for creative ways to, for example, bring back that favourite item that's been gathering dust for six months.

A big part of this puzzle is buying better quality clothing that is made to last⁠-garments that you will wear again and again. Essentially, following a slow fashion approach rather than the ever troublesome fast fashion, which is a huge contributor to the fashion industry's greenhouse gas emissions.

Resources like Good On You provide a perfect launch pad for accessing garments that will serve you for longer, while trusting they are sourced responsibly and not harmful to the planet, people, or animals.

Reusing can also encompass participating in clothing swaps with friends as another great way to have fun while utilising what you have in your wardrobe (or what your bestie has in theirs). Swapping something out with a friend every few months will give your old clothes a sense of novelty, while also supporting your friends to reduce and reuse as well.

If you are up for a challenge, Project 333 is a great initiative to shift your behaviour and really delve into the reuse part of this process.

Recycle

As new years or seasons roll around, a lot of us want to start fresh and declutter our closets. But what to do with that old dress you haven't worn in years? You can't throw it in the trash as it'll end up in landfill. So why not recycle your old clothes?

If your item is unsalvageable, you can donate it to a company that will recycle it for you, such as:

Patagonia and their Worn Wear program. The brand accepts used Patagonia clothing that functions perfectly and is in good condition. When you trade in your quality, well-loved Patagonia gear, you'll get credit toward purchases in Patagonia retail stores, on WornWear.com and Patagonia.com.

Swedish Stockings has got your nylon waste covered. Currently, the brand collects and grinds down old pantyhose to be used as filler material in fibreglass tanks, which are used in the commercial industry to separate grease from water. To participate in this wonderful, more sustainable process, simply collect and send in three or more pairs of synthetic pantyhose from any brand.

Knickey is a "Great" American-based underwear brand that has a recycling program for worn undies. The brand has partnered with a local NYC non-profit to safely recycle your intimates and divert them from landfill. The undies are sorted by fibre makeup, broken down and made into a new fibre, and eventually recycled and used for insulation and rug pads. So send them your ready-to-retire intimates and they'll take care of them, Knickey or not.

Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe program recycles athletic shoes, giving them a new life through Nike Grind. Just drop your used shoes at a participating Nike retail store in North America or Europe. Nike Grind is a collection of recycled materials developed by Nike that is composed of pre-consumer manufacturing scraps, recycled post-consumer shoes from the Reuse-A-Shoe program, and unsellable footwear.

Or you could find ways to repurpose these once-cherished items: cotton t-shirts can become makeup removing pads, headbands, cushion covers, or grocery bags. Have fun with it.

Repair

Repairing, restoring, and salvaging is something previous generations knew all too well-but has this handy pastime been jeopardised by a changed approach to fashion and consumerism? This step is where lowering your fashion footprint gets creative, and presents a chance for you to channel your inner grandma for innovative ways to patch, stitch, and extend the life of your garment.

Repairing can be as simple as sewing up a hole, or as dedicated as taking your shoes to a professional cobbler for new soles.

Both these examples don't take more than 20 minutes, and could add at least two years to the lifespan of a clothing item. And in fact, lengthening the life of our clothing from 1 to 2 years decreases their carbon footprint by 24%. What this approach mainly does is generate a new life for your fashion items, all while saving you the money and time it would have taken to replace them. Getting yourself a compact sewing kit to have on hand is a necessity, and once you get into the habit, you will find yourself whipping it out more than you initially thought. You will also find yourself thinking through ways you can repair things, from patches to professional alterations. For example, transforming an older style dress into a trendy top. This also feeds into the saving benefits from this part of your fashion footprint overhaul.

If there's a piece you're still in love with but it no longer fits right or needs mending or altering beyond your skillset, connecting with a local who knows what they're doing is a great way to save your clothes and support artisans at the same time. Our friends at The Seam offer an innovative option here for those in the UK. The Seam is a digital platform that connects customers with local, specialist Makers to alter, repair, and rework clothes, as well as craft beautiful, made-to-measure garments.

Many more sustainable brands also offer to repair your items nowadays, such as Patagonia with its Worn Wear initiative, or Scandinavian brand Nudie Jeans.

Resell

Found some items you are ready to say goodbye to? Not to worry- selling your second hand goods is easier and more accessible than ever.

There are numerous online platforms where you can sell your clothes second hand (or new) such as eBay, Gumtree, and a popular one for fashion, Facebook Marketplace.

Uploading photos takes five minutes, and it's a great way to make some extra coin while keeping within the minimal fashion footprint framework (after all, we don't want this minimising process to add more clothing to landfill). If online is not your vibe, then hosting a market stall or a good old yard sale is a great alternative. Who knows, you might even meet some like-minded folks in the process.

Considering these tips and the fun task ahead, making commitments or challenges for yourself is a useful way to keep motivated and committed to this process.

And don't forget: there is a lot to be said for the positive impact individuals can have by addressing their own habits to reduce their fashion footprint, setting a positive example for those around them to do their bit, too.

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The 5 Rs of Fashion: Reduce, Rewear, Recycle, Repair, Resell - Good On You

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There's increased pressure for brands to step up and do better, but what can we as consumers do to contribute? Enter: the five Rs of fashion.

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ReDress is a Hong Kong charity that's sole focus is on creating less waste in the fashion industry. Frontline Fashion is a docuseries following contestants who create sustainable collections while also learning more sustainable practices.

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Redress Working to cut waste out of fashion View Our Work

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In the production process of shoes, such as sole injection molding, shoe adhesive, ink, paint and solvent, benzene containing waste gas is volatilized, which mainly belongs to high air volume and low concentration waste gas. Only by constantly exploring and creating new environmental protection materials and using recycled materials can enterprises have more competitive advantages and achieve sustainable development. As early as 1993, Nike launched the recycling program, aiming to build awareness of waste reduction and recycling materials. The considered series is an environmental protection series with the concept of low toxicity, low cost and waste, the use of harmless materials and sustainable innovation. Nike produces a lot of industrial waste while producing a lot of shoes every day. Recycling the waste into products not only contributes to the environment, but also lays the foundation for the long-term development of the enterprise.

Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe Program

Our Reuse-A-Shoe programme recycles athletic shoes at the end of their life, giving them a new life through Nike Grind. We make it easy for materials to live on from one product to the next—just drop your used shoes at a participating Nike retail store in North America or Europe.

https://www.nike.com/gb/help/a/recycle-shoes

NEW LIFE. LESS WASTE.

NIKE REFURBISHED

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1: IS this one of the most sustainable options for brands to become more sustainable? Reusing their unsold stock to create new collections?

2: Apps like Vinted and Vestaire are on the rise, but what happens to the clothing that doesn't fit?

3: Can this reduce landfill waste? Can brands obtain stock sent to the landfill by Charities to create a new collection?

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‎Watch trailers, read customer and critic reviews, and buy Frontline Fashion 2 directed by Lindsay Robertson for $8.99.

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Wearing Jeans may be a comfortable and convenient choice, but don’t underestimate a small pair of jeans, it may harem the earth. The pollution of denim industry is not only related to the waste of water resources, but also the carbon emission of the whole life cycle of denim products is amazing. From the cotton planting stage, textile link, printing and dyeing processing, garment manufacturing, transportation, sales to the final recycling of clothing, the corresponding carbon emission will be produced, causing pollution to the atmospheric environment.

“At Levi’s, we consider the past, present, and future. We design for longevity and durability, so the resources used to create our jeans are put to good use.”

RECYCLED DENIM

Denim production can be harmful to the environment, but it doesn’t have to be. Made of 20% recycled denim, 20% sustainably sourced viscose and 60% organic cotton, our recycled denim reduces our environmental footprint. This means less water, less carbon dioxide and fewer chemicals for our planet. “Every part of the jean, from the red tab to the thread, is carefully calibrated to maximize their potential for a second life.”

SAVE WATER. WEAR HEMP.

Why hemp? Because compared to cotton, it grows quicker, uses less water and leaves behind cleaner, healthier soils.

https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/blog/category/inside-levis/sustainability/

In the modern world, our clothing will have a significant impact on the environment and society, we can not continue to ignore. Especially in the purchase of goods to take some factors into account. When I look for a fashion dress, I look for style, quality, longevity, environmental benefits and social influence. It can be worn with more formal clothes or more casual clothes. Many clothing brands have launched a lot of different technologies in recycling and utilization, which not only protect the environment and save materials, but also increase the competitiveness of enterprises. Many people and enterprises in different industries are working hard for un2030 sustainable development goals.

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LVMH dead stock fabric source

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Making new clothes takes a lot of resources and energy. It is estimated that the impact of new clothes bought each year by one household is the same as carbon emissions from driving an average car 6,000 miles.

The average household owns about £4,000 worth of clothes and spends £1,700 per year on new clothing. What's more, around 30% of clothing in the UK has not been worn for a year.

Keeping a smaller number of clothes in use for longer can help reduce the 350,000 tonnes of clothing sent to landfill each year.

There are a number of ways to reduce clothing waste and make garments go the extra mile.

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Making new clothes takes a lot of resources and energy. It is estimated that the impact of new clothes bought each year by one household is the same as carbon emissions from driving an average car 6,000 miles. The average household owns about £4,000 worth of clothes and spends £1,700 per year on new clothing.

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The application of recycling technology can accelerate textile recycling. Clothing enterprises can save production materials while carrying out environmental protection, so as to reduce costs and reduce the impact of fast fashion industry on the environment in terms of manufacturing and processing.

RECYCLING SY;STEM ’LOOOP’ HELPS H&M TRANSFORM UNWANTED GARMENTS INTO NEW FASHION FAVOURITES

Looop is the world’s first in-store recycling system turning old garments into new ones. In just eight steps, Looop shreds your old garment and knits a new one from the old fibres. No water, no dye. The only thing added is some sustainably sourced material to strengthen the yarn. This has to be done since the mechanical shredding shortens the fibres of your old garment.

A run-through of the eight steps turning old garments into new:

(1) Cleaning First, your old garment is sprayed with ozone to remove any microorganisms. (2) Shredding The garment is then shredded down into small chunks of fabric fibres.（3） Filtering  Shredded chunks are filtered to remove dirt, and extra virgin material is added for strength. （4）Carding  The clean fibre mix is straightened into a fibre web and then pulled into slivers.  （5） Drawing  Multiple fibre slivers are combined to create even stronger, thicker slivers. （6） Spinning  The thick fibre slivers are spun to create a single yarn thread. （7） Twisting  Single yarn threads are doubled and twisted together to increase their strength.   （8） Knitting The yarn is then knitted into a new, ready-to-wear design.

H&M wants to lead the change towards a sustainable fashion industry. By 2030 H&M aim for all our materials to be either recycled or sourced in a more sustainable way.To fight climate change, H&M need to change fashion. One way of doing this is circular solutions. If we use, for example, a recycled cotton shirt to make a new shirt there’s no need to grow more cotton. We can just use what’s already been produced. That’s circular fashion.

https://about.hm.com/news/general-news-2020/recycling-system--looop--helps-h-m-transform-unwanted-garments-i.html

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Recycling and waste separation in the Amsterdam Area

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Recycling and waste separation in the Amsterdam Area

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Recycling

Before throwing something away, please consider whether items such as clothing, appliances or furniture can be given a second life at one of your local second-hand stores ( kringloopwinkel). There are licensed second-hand stores in Amsterdam (and neighbouring municipalities) and many of them will collect bulkier items if you arrange an appointment. You can find a list of these stores here(in Dutch). Also keep in mind that if you are purchasing new electrical goods or appliances, shops in the Netherlands can receive and recycle your old product - either at time of purchase or delivery. For further information, you should check with the individual shop.

Plastic recycling

Throughout greater Amsterdam, residents can often recycle plastic packaging by depositing their plastic waste in the dedicated plastic containers - clearly marked as ' Plastic verpakkingen'. These can typically be used for empty plastic packaging, such as trays, cups, lids, bread bags, bottles, plastic wrap, flasks, pots, bags and tubes. In some municipalities you can also deposit drink cartons and cans in these bins, but please check first. If you don't see plastic recycling bins on the street, it may be because your municipality extracts recyclable plastic directly from your household waste - the City of Amsterdam, for example, is moving to this model throughout 2021 and should be complete by the start of 2022.

Paper, cardboard and glass

Some of the most common recyclables in the Amsterdam Area are paper and glass. The Dutch have been collecting such materials for a long time already, ensuring old paper and glass is reused.

Textiles and clothing

Old clothing, towels, cuddly toys and shoes can often be reused or recycled. The style and colour of these bins varies by city district but are commonly marked as 'Textiel'. All clothes and textiles should be clean, usable and must be deposited within closed refuse bags. Pairs of shoes should be tied and packaged together. Such textile bins should not be used for items such as carpeting or other bulky fabrics. In some areas, collection is handled directly by your municipality, but other textile bins may be the property of a charity. The important aspect to consider is to avoid discarding textiles in your household waste unless it's badly damaged or soiled beyond repair.

Minor chemical waste

Items such as used alkaline batteries, energy saving light bulbs, rechargeable batteries, oils or old paint are harmful to the environment and should never be discarded within your household refuse. They can safely be disposed of at your local waste collection point. A growing number of supermarkets, hardware stores and other shops also have bins for depositing the likes of light bulbs and batteries. Old medicine can be returned to your local chemist.

Cooking oils

Cooking oils used for baking or frying should never be poured down sinks or drains as they can be dangerous to both the environment and to your city's waste and sewer infrastructure. What's more, such products can now be recycled and used as biofuels. Pour your used oils back into a bottle and take them to a local location with a yellow recycling bin ( view a list of locations in Dutch) or to a waste collection point.

Recycling in Amsterdam

Residents in Amsterdam can learn more about the recycling opportunities in their city district via amsterdam.nl. If you live in a neighbouring town or city in greater Amsterdam, contact your local municipality for more information.

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Recycling in the Amsterdam Area | I amsterdam

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Before throwing something away, please consider whether items such as clothing, appliances or furniture can be given a second life at one of your local second-hand stores ( kringloopwinkel). There are licensed second-hand stores in Amsterdam (and neighbouring municipalities) and many of them will collect bulkier items if you arrange an appointment.

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Nike launches refurbished program to recycle sneakers

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Nike launches refurbished program to recycle sneakers

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Sporting giant Nike has launched a refurbish program that allows customers to return Nike shoes that are then either resold, donated or recycled.

The refurbish program is a part of Nike's sustainability initiative Move to Zero, to create a more circular customer offering while reducing its waste footprint. The program works by extending the lifespan for three types of footwear: almost new, gently worn, and cosmetically flawed.

If a shopper returns a pair of shoes to Nike within its 60-day return window, suitable footwear is added to the Refurbished program. The shoes are inspected and refurbished by hand using different methods and products from a Nike team member to return the shoes to their original new condition. The shoes are then given a condition grade and priced accordingly before being returned to the Nike shelf to be resold. Customers can scan a QR code on the box to see the shoe's history and condition grade.

Gently worn footwear that doesn't make it in the Nike Refurbished program is donated to local community partners. If the shoes are at the end of their wearable life or cosmetically flawed, they go into the Nike Grind machine to be recycled and turned into new material and products such as gym floors, tracks, courts, or new sneakers.

The Nike Refurbished program is currently available in 15 Nike stores across the US, with plans to expand to more US-based retail destinations throughout 2021.
Interested in working at Nike? Click here for more information >>

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Nike launches refurbished program to recycle sneakers

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Sporting giant Nike has launched a refurbish program that allows customers to return Nike shoes that are then either resold, donated or recycled. The refurbish program is a part of Nike's sustainability initiative Move to Zero, to create a more circular customer offering while reducing its waste footprint.

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New Balance and Jaden Smith launch recycled sneaker

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New Balance and Jaden Smith launch recycled sneaker

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Sportswear brand New Balance has linked with artist Jaden Smith to debut a unique sneaker crafted with recycled and surplus materials.

The Vision Racer ReWorked sneaker features Spinnex fiber, made with at least 30 percent textile waste cut-offs from factories. The shoe features 16 percent recycled polyester and 10 percent spandex.

"In our commitment to contributing to a healthier planet, we've continued to think bigger in terms of unconventional innovation and the Vision Racer ReWorked is a great example of that," stated Alex Carlson, designer, materials innovation, and sustainability for New Balance, in a release.

"We approached this launch with Jaden Smith, a leader in environmental activism, through the lens of reducing waste long term and created a product that uniquely transforms recycled materials as a result while maintaining the style and trend-forwardness for which the Vision Racer is known."

The Vision Racer ReWorked launch is part of New Balance's larger sustainability initiative. The company stated it is continuing to produce an apparel collection featuring a green leaf icon which signifies that the apparel is made with at least 50 percent environmentally preferred materials such as recycled or organic content.

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New Balance and Jaden Smith launch recycled sneaker

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Sportswear brand New Balance has linked with artist Jaden Smith to debut a unique sneaker crafted with recycled and surplus materials. The Vision Racer ReWorked sneaker features Spinnex fiber, made with at least 30 percent textile waste cut-offs from factories. The shoe features 16 percent recycled polyester and 10 percent spandex.

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Recover receives investment to scale recycled cotton output

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Recover receives investment to scale recycled cotton output

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Recover, a leading producer of sustainable, premium recycled cotton fibre and cotton fibre blends, has announced new funding to scale its operations and to grow its output over the next five years to close the loop on fashion.

The family-owned company with a 70-year long history in textile recycling technology has announced it will achieve its goals on increasing its output to 200,000 metric tons of recycled fibre per year by 2025 through a strategic partnership with Story3 Capital.

The "significant investment, resources and best-in-class operators" received from Story3 Capital will allow Recover to achieve its growth initiatives through expansion to meet the "surging demand from the global fashion industry," added the company.

As a result of the investment, Recover will expand output to save nearly three trillion litres of water each year, equivalent to the drinking water consumed by 3 billion people on an annual basis. It will also allow 500,000 acres of land to be directed away from cotton cultivation for other uses.

"My family has been innovating for generations to perfect the Recover process, which is primed to be fashion industry's biggest resource in meeting its sustainability goals," said Alfredo Ferre, chief executive of Recover in a press statement. "We're proud to offer potential partners the highest quality and lowest-impact fibre available in today's market, and we look forward to increasing our sustainability footprint thanks to our partnership with Story3 Capital."

Recover receives "significant investment" from Story3 Capital to expand output

Peter Comisar, founder and chief executive of Story3 Capital, added: "Recover is uniquely positioned to be the global sustainability leader in cotton recycling by acting as an agent of change within the industry, and quickly becoming the gold standard in closing the loop on fashion."

Ben Malka, operating partner at Story3 Capital and executive chairman of Recover, said: "We immediately saw the potential to impact the pent-up demand for recycled cotton by scaling production and working with the industry to innovate and migrate to Recover Fibres."

Recover recycles industrial and pre-and post-consumer cotton waste, replacing the need to cultivate cotton, limiting the use of dyes through its ColorBlend system, and reducing textile landfill waste.

The premium recycled cotton fibre from textile waste is ultimately spun into yarn by supply chain partners and transformed into finished apparel garments and home textiles. Recover has supplied its recycled cotton and cotton blend fibres to brands including Wrangler, H&M Group, Tommy Hilfiger, G-Star, The Northface, Billabong and Bonobo.

Recover's recycled cotton fibre has the lowest environmental impact score in the world, according to the Higg Material Sustainability Index.

It is hoped that this investment will further support its sustainable initiatives, as Recover explains that the adverse environmental impact of the fashion industry is "staggering, and the industry is lagging behind its climate action commitments and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)".

Cotton is one of the most damaging crops grown on earth, requiring large amounts of water, pesticides, and land. According to a recent study, one T-shirt requires 2,700 litres of water, equivalent to what an average person drinks in three years.

Images: courtesy of Recover

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Recover receives investment to scale recycled cotton output

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Recover, a leading producer of sustainable, premium recycled cotton fibre and cotton fibre blends, has announced new funding to scale its operations and to grow its output over the next five years to close the loop on fashion.

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Levi's has just launched its sustainable puffer jackets made from recycled plastic bottles and waste.

The creation of the puffer jacket

The jacket is made from recycled plastic bottles and waste, with the use of recycled materials the resources required to grow cotton and make polyester are removed.

The production includes post-consumer waste (PCW) being broken down with discarded polyester and then being blended into a new synthetic fibre, this is used to insulate the jacket.

This is less impactful on the environment as recycled polyester requires less energy to produce than the initial polyester, and it reduces landfill overflow and the dependence on fossil fuels.

Levi's sustainable journey

Levi's recently launched its most sustainable jeans to date. Each pair of jeans is made of 20 percent recycled denim, 20 percent sustainably sourced viscose, and 60 percent organic cotton, in addition, the denim also reduces the water, chemical and CO2 footprint during manufacturing.

The American heritage retailer also has a 2025 sustainability pledge. The goals are to achieve a 90 percent reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions, use 100 percent renewable throughout its facilities and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent through its global supply chain.

The importance of the puffer jacket

FashionUnited and Fashion Snoops previously reported that brands and retailers who are re-thinking their assortment strategies for post-pandemic life must ensure four consumer needs: touchless, resilience, sanitation, and immune boosting technologies.

Puffer jackets are one of the items of clothing that are being regarded as quintessential protective safeguards in womenswear, as they are resilient and accessible at all market levels. Which is why even in today's retail climate, the puffer will continue to perform.
Photo credit: Levi's

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Levi's has just launched its sustainable puffer jackets made from recycled plastic bottles and waste. The jacket is made from recycled plastic bottles and waste, with the use of recycled materials the resources required to grow cotton and make polyester are removed.

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Sustainability starts early with Greendigo

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Sustainability starts early with Greendigo

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Synthetic clothing is known to have a high presence of pollutants and toxins. With their delicate skin being more absorbent, allergies, skin rashes and respiratory disorders are increasingly on the rise amongst children. Furthermore, garments made of synthetic fabrics also take a long time to decompose, thereby creating long-term pollution which will have an adverse impact on our future generations.

With this background, Meghna Kishore and Barkha Bhatnagar Das, the cofounders of Greendigo, embarked upon the journey to make organic apparel the new normal. They believe that conscious decisions taken by each and every one of us will collectively move the needle on sustainability and conservation of our planet. With Greendigo, they endeavor to offer pure and gentle clothing which is not only safe and comfortable for children, but also affordable and accessible by the masses.

The brand believes that children's clothes have to be designed keeping their active lifestyle and comfort in mind. Greendigo focuses on providing everyday playtime essentials that children need in larger quantities on a daily basis. Children need a frequent change of clothes every day because of spills, dirt etc. With growth spurts, children also outgrow their clothes every few months. Greendigo addresses these common concerns by offering enduring, practical and machine washable styles for the convenience of parents while keeping the comfort and safety of children in mind. Their innovative designs such as babygrows are adjustable and great for children experiencing a growth spurt. The brand strongly believes that businesses need to run responsibly to be able to counter the environmental, political and economic challenges that plague our world today.

Sustainability is the bedrock of Greendigo and the brand has taken several initiatives to reduce its impact on the environment.

Organic Cotton: Greendigo's garments are certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) which ensures the organic status of raw materials as well as assures that manufacturing processes are environmentally and socially responsible.

Sustainable Supply Chain: Greendigo has built a completely transparent & trusted supply chain. From farm to factory, all their clothes are produced locally in India. By way of a Comparative Life Cycle Impact Assessment, their website displays the positive impact of their clean supply chain on key metrics like water savings, energy savings, emissions and land preservation.

Zero Plastic Packaging: Greendigo products come packed with love in organic cotton pouches. Not only does this eliminate the use of plastic, but these drawstring pouches are great to reuse.

Carbon Neutrality: Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels and clear-cutting forests is resulting in climate change. While Greendigo uses organic fabrics and employs sustainable manufacturing practices to significantly reduce its CO2 emissions but still there are emissions which are unavoidable. The brand tackles these unavoidable emissions by investing in offset projects such as renewable energy, forest conservation and energy efficiency. This provides crucial funding for these projects to continue to thrive. All while making all Greendigo's products carbon neutral right from the seed until the time they reach the end user. All projects are rigorously verified and certified through The Gold Standard and UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Commitment to UN SDGs: Greendigo is aligned to 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the aim to achieve better health and more sustainable economic growth for everyone. From employing underprivileged women to eliminate gender inequality and supporting local organic cotton farmers for economic growth, they also advocate use of clean, cleverly designed and long lasting products to drive responsible consumption and reduce wasteful production. Organic farming has lower emissions of greenhouse gases with additional benefits of biodiversity. Since Greendigo uses organic cotton, it helps minimise the effects of climate change too.

Responsible Disposal: Greendigo strongly believes that clean clothing is not just a privilege of a few but should be a right of all children. The brand donates their new and unused organic cotton production samples and unsold inventory to children in urban slums and economically weak villages in India. Since roughly 60% of discarded clothing reaches landfills causing long-term pollution on our planet, the brand is able to bring smiles to the faces of the underprivileged while putting unused inventory to good use.

Greendigo currently retails only through their direct-to-consumer ecommerce channel and delivers worldwide. The brand is also focusing on B2B / wholesale orders from bulk buyers in India and overseas. With certifications and ethical manufacturing practices in place, the brand aims to attract buyers from around the world who believe in responsible production, which is in line with their vision of making organic the new normal.

Read more about Greendigo on the brandpage: fashionunited.com/companies/greendigo

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Sustainability starts early with Greendigo

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Synthetic clothing is known to have a high presence of pollutants and toxins. With their delicate skin being more absorbent, allergies, skin rashes and respiratory disorders are increasingly on the rise amongst children. Furthermore, garments made of synthetic fabrics also take a long time to decompose, thereby creating long-term pollution which will have an adverse impact on our future generations.

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Planning to clear out your cupboard? This clothing brand upcycles fabric waste & can inspire you to repurpose your old clothes. #OMGIndia

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Sustainable Fashion: Recycle, Reuse & Repurpose (tips on how to make active changes in your life in regards to shopping more sustainably)

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Sustainable Fashion: Recycle, Reuse & Repurpose (tips on how to make active changes in your life in regards to shopping more sustainably)

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The subject of reuse, repurpose and recycle is not new to the fashion industry but has been gaining popularity as vintage fashion and thrifting have become increasingly trendy

The re-selling of second-hand items has also become more easily accessible as being able to download different apps like Depop, Vinted, Poshmark etc. allows you to do so at your fingertips

Being able to buy big name brands at a discounted price was the motivation when thrifting or second-hand shopping t in recent times we have seen people become more conscious about the planet and start to change the ways in which they shop, actively seeking out more sustainable brands therefore forcing brands to become more transparent about their processes and the steps they are taking to become more sustainable and positively contributing to keeping our planet healthy

Recycling

if you see an item, you like note down the brand, name and size and then use second-hand shopping sites or thrift stores to see if you can find the same/ or even something similar

Reuse

looking at what you already own and organising it (make yourself familiar with what you have) restyle them with different outfits or even utilize the fabric in other ways

Repurpose

When buying second-hand clothing your options are quite limited as you cant get multiple sizes of the same item. A good solution to this is altering the item to make it into something new

DIY and revive old clothing that you already own by personalising or even turning it into something else

Link -https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/sustainable-fashion-recycle-reuse-repurpose

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Whether you're tentatively stepping your toes into sustainable fashion, or have been championing eco brands for a while now, there's no denying the future of fashion is changing. But with so many buzzwords and different brands it can be difficult to know whether your shopping is helping the planet, or contributing to fast-fashion waste.

A recent Cosmopolitan UK Instagram poll asked followers about their shopping habits to identify the biggest questions that need answering. Respondents cited the lack of clarity around what counts as 'sustainable' and uncertainty around which mainstream brands actually meet the criteria (if any) as one of the main reasons for not considering themselves to be a sustainable shopper. In fact, one in four respondents said that they understood 'sustainable' and 'ethical' fashion to be the same thing, suggesting that the distinction is far from clear.

What does 'sustainable fashion' mean?

Not to be confused with 'ethical fashion' (although they often go hand-in-hand), 'sustainable fashion' essentially refers to how the clothing will affect the environment - in production, through sales and how it's then transported and creates waste.

Founder of ethical menswear brand Arthur & Henry and Impact Director at Common Objective, Clare Lissaman tells Cosmopolitan: "There's no set definition but we define sustainable as fashion that is beneficial - not harmful - to people and planet."

So, how do you know that that dress you've been eyeing up is really less harmful to the planet than one that's cheaper?

Lissaman says to look for brands that are "using environmentally-friendly materials, from regenerative agriculture... processed in a non-polluting way.

"Also, keep an eye out for brands are thinking about their design, production, products and sales in a circular rather than linear fashion. For example, can the product be easily deconstructed and reused or recycled?

"Realistically, most brands are still on the journey to being fully sustainable across all environmental and social metrics, so they're focusing on just one or two [elements], whether that be organic cotton or fair trade production."

Author of How To Break Up With Fast Fashion Lauren Bravo says while most brands aren't capable of getting everything right just yet, it's important to be aware of "greenwashing".

"There are so many brands around these days calling themselves 'sustainable', and it's great to see that people are becoming more thoughtful about how they spend their money and the companies they support," says Bravo. "But there's also a lot of greenwashing going on."

Of course, that often links back to the ethical fashion discussion about how employees and contractors are being treated - as we said, the two regularly go hand-in-hand.

How to shop more sustainably

If you think shopping for sustainable brands means spending more money, you're not alone - but Lissaman says first and foremost, a great way to be more sustainable is to simply work with what you already have. "Shop your wardrobe, she says. "Re-use what you have. Do clothes swaps with friends. And if you have to buy new, get informed ( Fashion Revolution has some great resources) and then seek out brands that are really trying to produce more sustainably."

Bravo agrees, "as Fashion Revolution is fond of saying, the most sustainable item is the one already in your wardrobe."

That's not to say you should stop shopping, though - it's sometimes just about thinking towards the future. "I'm a big fan of the #30Wears rule, which means before you buy anything, ask yourself: 'will I wear this 30 times?'" Bravo explains. "That doesn't have to be 30 times in a year, it could be a few years or even decades - but if the honest answer is 'no', then you probably shouldn't buy it.

"I also really recommend the site and app, which rates thousands of brands on their treatment of planet, people and animals," adds Bravo. It's such a handy way to demystify the greenwashing and check up on how sustainable a brand actually is, and the results are often really surprising."

Best sustainable fashion brands

1. Veja

Veja is all about transparency. From how much a VEJA factory employer earns to their cotton producer contracts, they disclose everything. They even developed a new material entirely made from recycled bottles picked off the streets of Rio and Sao Paulo, called B-mesh. Oh, and Meghan Markle's a fan.

2. Heist

Tights are one of the fashion buys most likely to end up in landfill, so British brand Heist is tackling the issue with their products (which include a great underwear range, too). They're aiming to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, and the fact that the tights are basically ladder-proof (speaking as a serial ripper) means you'll buy less. Simple!

3. Pangaia

We've all rediscovered loungewear during isolation, and one of the most wished-for brands around is Pangaia, which creates beautiful sweatpants, hoodies and more. Using materials such as recycled cotton, seaweed fibres and environment-friendly dyes made up of food waste, vegetables, fruits and plants, they're dedicated to caring for the environment. Word of warning, though; getting your hands on any of their stock before it sells out is a challenge!

4. Faithfull The Brand

Instagrammers such as Lucy Williams and Monikh love Faithfull, thanks to the brand's perfect summer holiday vibes. The collection is produced entirely in Bali, as co-founders Sarah-Jane Abrahams and Helle Them-Enger wanted to create close relationships with local factories and employees.

5. Allbirds

According to Allbirds, the standard trainer emits 12.5 kg CO2e. Theirs emit 7.6 kg CO2e on average, and they're working hard to reach zero. Their trainers are made from recycled materials and can be used for running, walking or fashion purposes. The company also offsets its own carbon emissions - so until they reach that zero target, they're working to lessen their impact.

6. Deakin & Blue

It's often all too easy to buy a bikini with the intention of wearing it for one season only - and many high street swimwear collections won't last past a few washes. Deakin & Blue offer cossies that are twice as resistant to chlorine, sun cream and oil as standard Lycra, and they're all made in London from waste such as old fishing nets and industrial plastic. Oh, and their products are truly made to fit many types of bodies, available up to a HH cup and size 20.

7. Mary Benson

Created by the brand's namesake, Mary hand-draws every one of her prints, and items are made to order by a small team of seamstresses in London. We're huge fans of her dresses - think Vampire's Wife vibes with an astro edge - and the wedding collection is truly something special.

8. CONTUR

This shape-enhancing activewear brand creates long-lasting leggings, sports bras and more from ECONYL (repurposed nylons), ocean plastics and recycled cotton - and they're manufactured in London, keeping that carbon footprint low. Interestingly, the materials have UV protection - UPF 50+ - so you can run and keep safe, too.

9. People Tree

Considered by many to be the original sustainable brand, People Tree has been championing sustainability since its launch in 1991. Their website gives details of fabrics used along with the name of the product, so you know straight off the bat that you're getting something that's better for the planet. Just in case you aren't yet sold, you should know that People Tree was the first fashion company to be awarded the World Fair Trade Organisation product label.

10. Ninety Percent

This British womenswear label is so-named because it shares 90 per cent of its distributed profits between charitable causes. Even better, when you shop you can vote for your chosen cause using the unique code found in your garment's care label. They use sustainable materials, such as eco-cotton and Tencel, are focused on keeping carbon emissions as low as possible and are dedicated to being transparent with shoppers.

11. Girlfriend Collective

This size-inclusive sportswear brand was launched by US-based wife-and-husband duo Ellie and Quang Dinh after they heard that there's expected to be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. The collection is made from recycled water bottles, fishing nets, and other plastic waste, and is fast becoming a gym favourite. Not only are their leggings and sports bras sustainable, they also feel incredibly supportive - we predict they're a name to watch this year.

12. Cariuma

Is it time to add some fresh canvas trainers to your wardrobe? Cariuma is all about fusing fashion's 'cool-classic' aesthetic with added comfort and conscious manufacturing. Designed to last, for every pair of these sneakers sold the brand will also plant two trees in the Brazilian Rainforest to help counter deforestation and preserve natural habitats.
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Your guide to which fashion brands are actually 'sustainable'

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Whether you're tentatively stepping your toes into sustainable fashion, or have been championing eco brands for a while now, there's no denying the future of fashion is changing. But with so many buzzwords and different brands it can be difficult to know whether your shopping is helping the planet, or contributing to fast-fashion waste.

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A Sustainable Dept. Store: Shop Ethical Fashion, Beauty & Homewares

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A Sustainable Dept. Store brings consciously created goods into one online destination. Shop luxury ethical, sustainable and beautiful items for every aspect of your home and lifestyle.

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Explore our home of materials and innovations to help us create an earth-positive future.

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Feel good about yourself; do good for the planet; and get treats along the way.
Everyone's a winner with Boots UK's new recycling scheme!
To help customers shop and consume more sustainably, Boots UK has launched a NEW recycling scheme, encouraging everyone to bring back their empty, hard-to-recycle health, beauty and wellness products.

Available in 50 stores across the country, Boots UK, in partnership with No7, is the first retailer to use Scan2Recycle technology - making it easier to recycle even the most difficult empties*.

From old mascaras and empty toothpaste tubes, to finished lipsticks and empty vitamin pots, here's how to use the most inclusive recycling scheme on the market...

1. Access the technology via the dedicated Boots Scan2Recycle website
2. Scan your empty products using your mobile phone
Did you know products from any brand can be returned as part of the new initiative?

3. Head to a participating Boots store to deposit your empty products at a recycle point
To find your nearest recycling point, click here.

4. Take a picture of your empty products and scan the deposit box in store
5. Collect your rewards!
For every five products recycled, you will be rewarded with 500 Boots Advantage Card
points, worth £5**.

6. The deposited empties are returned directly to Boots recycling partner, ReWorked, where they are formed into new products.
Using the Scan2Recycle technology, you can track how much packaging has been recycled!

* Exclusions apply - For health and safety reasons, we cannot accept the following items: aerosol cans, perfume bottles, nail polish bottles, hair dyes, brow and eyelash tints, safety razors and razor blades, disposable razors and razor heads, used PPE (disposable masks, gloves and visors), food packaging including crisps, medicine, vitamins and supplements blister packs and foils; any electrical items such as hairdryers and straighteners and any medical devices, electrical or not.

** Terms and conditions apply. Boots Advantage Card Points will be capped at 500 per day regardless of how many products are deposited.

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Boots launches new sustainability scheme rewarding customers for recycling their empties

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Feel good about yourself; do good for the planet; and get treats along the way. Everyone's a winner with Boots UK's new recycling scheme! To help customers shop and consume more sustainably, Boots UK has launched a NEW recycling scheme, encouraging everyone to bring back their empty, hard-to-recycle health, beauty and wellness products.

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UN members came together in 2017 and had set up 17 sustainable development goals to reach by/ in 2030

It is a call to action addressed to companies, institutions, governments, local communities, and individual citizens.

The fashion industry, the second most polluting industry in the world (after the oil one)

The first goal centres around ending poverty – relates to the fashion industry because of outsourcing of production to developing countries, the majority of factory garment workers are unable to afford basic necessities due to exploitation

SDG 12 – centres on responsible production and consumption which emphasises the importance of fashion brands and consumers being more aware of their roles and responsibilities and transitioning their business models to a green economy model that will help in minimising the environmental impact that the industry has

‘Brands can switch from a linear model to a circular one, limiting the use of resources and raw materials, favouring the use of recycled materials and producing resistant and long-lasting products.’

‘An awareness campaign aimed at consumers should also be carried out to make them aware that their choices have a great impact on the environment.’

SDG 13 (Climate Change) – Fashion industry produces over 8% of greenhouse gas and 20% of global wastewater

Because the pandemic has put a pause on human activities, the emission of greenhouse gasses it’s estimated to drop by 6%,

‘Fashion companies can reduce the gas emissions by adopting carbon neutral strategies and using renewable energies.’

SDG 14 (Life below water) – ‘Washing synthetic clothes release half a million tons of microfibers every year. They end up in the oceans and in seafood we eat.’

‘Fashion companies should make investments in research for finding new techniques and sustainable materials to use instead of microplastic fibre.'

Link - https://www.theidfactory.com/blog/sdgs-and-fashion-industry/

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Sustainable Fashion - Eco Design - Healthy Lifestyle - Luxiders Magazine

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Fashion’s Future: The Sustainable Development Goals | Luxiders

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The Sustainable Development Goals were developed by the United Nations in order to address global social and environmental challenges. The fashion industry can improve upon these challenges if brands, retailers, and companies use the Sustainable Development Goals as guidelines to affect positive change.

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Sustainable Development Goals | Fashion Takes Action

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Resources Fashion's Role in the Sustainable Development Goals A set of global goals was developed by the United Nations, in consultation with world leaders, international organizations and the general public, to help combat climate change. Referred to as the sustainable development goals - or SD ...

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By its very nature, the fashion industry is unsustainable. From the affordability of clothing and putting profits before quality, people and our planet, to the overconsumption culture that leads many of us to believe we need a new outfit whenever we leave our homes, at its very core fashion has an ethical and environmental problem.

These issues associated with the industry are well documented. According to the McKinsey report, globally, people consume upwards of 100 billion clothing items a year, while textiles are said to be the world's second biggest polluting industry, responsible for 92 million tonnes of waste annually. And the problems don't stop there.

On a social level, many garment workers spend their hours in unsafe conditions and remain mired in poverty owing to the fast-fashion business model of churning out cheap clothing lines at an inordinate rate.

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) put forward several recommendations in its Fixing Fashion: Clothing consumption and sustainability report, which the government rejected. Points of note included the concerns of child labour, prison labour and forced labour.

It is no secret that garment workers in countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia face unsafe conditions, with many brands ignoring illegal subcontracting and forced and unpaid overtime practices. The solution seems simple - brands must pay workers a living wage - but companies continue to ignore calls for action.
Read more:
Chances are we can all plead guilty when it comes to investing in fashion's unsustainable business model. But, with a heightened awareness of the problems it poses, it's time to make more mindful, socially responsible choices when it comes to what we wear.

Enter Fashion Revolution - a movement that highlights the problematic nature of the industry, including not only how dangerous it is to our planet, but also for the people on it. Founded in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza garment factory disaster in 2013 - when 1,138 garment workers died and 2,500 were injured - the organisation is fighting for more accountability in the industry and greater transparency in supply chains.

Every year in the week surrounding 24 April, the anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse, the non-profit hosts a campaign named Fashion Revolution Week.

This year's event - taking place from Monday 19 April to Sunday 25 April - aims to encourage people to spread eco-friendly messages and learn more about how to live sustainably. But it also holds brands accountable, asking them who makes their fabric, in a bid to open up conversations about exploitative working conditions.

You can find out more about the campaign on the Fashion Revolution website, but in a bid to help you live a more socially conscious lifestyle, we've rounded up some of our favourite sustainable fashion brands that are taking greater responsibility for the planet and its people.

You can trust our independent round-ups. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.

This brand started as a specialist in feminist slogan tees, and Birdsong now prides itself on designing and producing wardrobe staples that are ethical, sustainable and made by talented women who are paid a fair wage. It also donates to local charities that are struggling for funding.

Every piece in Franks limited-run, made-to-order collections is made using upcycled fabrics, bettering the environment and reducing unnecessary waste. Each care label details who made the item as well as the fabric composition. With plenty of swoon-worthy dresses that are made to last, this is certainly one to bookmark.

With transparency at its core, Girlfriend Collective specialises in eco-friendly, size-inclusive activewear. Using recycled water bottles and fishnets that would otherwise end up in landfill for its pieces, the brand is on a mission to reduce waste.

Rising to fame thanks to Instagram, this is a go-to brand for sustainable swimwear. The entire production happens here in the UK and each piece is hand-finished. Excess fabric is reused and turned into scrunchies and headbands, and the poly bags are biodegradable, recycled and recyclable, and made from post-consumer plastic. We've got our eye on a domino swim (£140, Hunzag.com) number for our next trip abroad, whenever that may be.

Dutch brand Kuyichi is making waves. Sharing its sustainability reports on its website, it provides transparency at every stage of production, from how and where materials are sourced to the working conditions of its employees. Doing its bit for the planet, recycled materials are used where possible, as well as eco-friendly, Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) cotton. As for its social impact, it's a member of the Fair Wear Foundation (a non-profit working to improve conditions for workers in garment factories), monitors the health-and-safety conditions within its production chains by regularly visiting them, and pays a living wage.

Specialising in all things dungarees, we're obsessed with ethical and sustainable brand Lucy & Yak. Founded by Lucy Greenwood and Chris Renwick in 2017, each piece is produced by factories in north India or Tukey, as well as at the brand's own warehouse in Yorkshire. In order to make sure all stock is sold, any piece that is less than perfect is sold at a discounted price on Depop. Plus, the brand is on a mission to prove that sustainable clothing can be affordable - we covered its products in our piece on the best ethical fashion pieces that cost less than £50.

Mud Jeans works on a circular economy, encouraging customers to return worn jeans so they can be upcycled and sold as vintage. Pairs that aren't resold are shredded, cut into pieces and blended with GOTS-certified cotton to create new denim yarn; a process that reduces water and chemical usage. Mud also offers a free repairs service and a lease programme where you can rent a pair of jeans on subscription (£6.82 per month for 12 months).

This London-based brand not only makes great, eco-friendly clothing from responsible materials, it also cares about its people, helps employees save and upskill, offers free meals and paternity as well as maternity leave, and there's also a creche on site for those who need childcare. If this isn't enough to persuade you to shop, it also donates 90 per cent of profits to charitable causes.

Using a high proportion of eco-friendly materials in its products, including GOTS-certified cotton, (which limits the amount of chemicals, water and wastewater from its denim products), Nudie Jeans also reuses most offcuts to minimise waste. As a member of the Fair Wear Foundation, it traces most of its supply chain and pays living wage as standard.

A firm favourite among the outdoorsy folk among us, Patagonia's environmental efforts led it to be named a UN Champion of the Earth in 2019 - the UN's top environmental honour - for its entrepreneurial vision. Where it differs from mainstream brands is that it'll get political when it needs to. It also donates 1 per cent of annual sales to grassroots environmental groups as part of its self-imposed "earth tax". That's not all though, as 72 per cent of its entire range use is made from recycled materials.

Founded in 2020 during lockdown by Chloe Culpin, a former denim designer and personal shopper, Pin Denim sources and sells vintage denim. Curating an edit of affordable finds, the brand helps you find the perfect pair of jeans for you, with details on how to easily get your exact measurements. A seriously cool newcomer.

Founded in 2009 when sustainability was yet to become the buzzword it is today, Reformation has gone from strength to strength thanks to its wafty feminine designs. Plus, it's recently added activewear to its offering, which, from experience, is fantastic. Within the listing of each piece, you can see its sustainability impact, with a breakdown of carbon dioxide, water and waste savings.

Creating sustainable and genderless clothing staples, Riley Studio is on a mission to make conscious consumerism the norm. The brand sources and uses recycled materials and works with ethical partners to create clothing from waste, manufacturing locally to reduce its carbon footprint.

Eco-conscious accessories brand Roop is a firm favourite - each furoshiki bag is handmade by founder Natasha Fernandes Anjo, who uses offcuts and leftover fabrics. A popular hit last summer, we expect the brand will be everywhere this year.

Meet the world's first carbon-negative fashion brand - yes, you read that right. Having pledged to mitigate 10 times the carbon footprint of every purchase, Sheep Inc on a mission to fix some of the environmental damage done by the industry. Specialising in unisex knitwear (with Tom Hardy among its fans) that is made to last, each piece comes with a lifetime guarantee and you can even discover the farm from which the wool originates.

A firm footwear favourite of ours, Veja (pronounced vay-ja) made waves after being spotted on the likes of Meghan Markle and Emily Ratajkowski and produces a collection of shoes using the most ecological materials and ethical suppliers possible. Offering full transparency about every stage of its shoe production, it also works directly with small-scale producers to cut out the middle man, and agrees on a price for cotton and rubber in advance. Want to know more? Read our Veja buying guide that covers all of your questions.
Want to learn about more brands doing good? Read our guide to the ethical and sustainable B Corp companies
IndyBest product reviews are unbiased, independent advice you can trust. On some occasions, we earn revenue if you click the links and buy the products, but we never allow this to bias our coverage. The reviews are compiled through a mix of expert opinion and real-world testing.

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The sustainable clothing and accessories brands to know

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By its very nature, the fashion industry is unsustainable. From the affordability of clothing and putting profits before quality, people and our planet, to the overconsumption culture that leads many of us to believe we need a new outfit whenever we leave our homes, at its very core fashion has an ethical and environmental problem.

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There's a powerful message resounding from such big brands as Eileen Fisher and Patagonia, along with a growing cadre of smaller thrift and resale shops: Let's make do, reuse, recycle.

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It's back-to-school time, which means the advertisements are everywhere: Buy! Buy! Buy! Pencils and gadgets. Backpacks and sneakers. And, yes, heaps and piles of brand-new clothes.

But this year, those ads are running up against another powerful message, resounding from such big brands as Eileen Fisher and Patagonia, along with a growing cadre of smaller thrift and resale shops: Let's make do, reuse, recycle.

Fast-fashion trends, driven by consumer taste and innovations in textile manufacturing, have overstuffed American closets. Clothes shopping has emerged as a weekly habit, and people are constantly clearing out and buying new.

35 billion

Pounds of textiles Americans will throw away in 2019, according to the Council of Textile Recycling.

98 million

Estimated tons of resources the global textile industry uses per year, chiefly water and energy.

It's a big problem. In 2019, Americans will throw away more than 35 billion pounds of textiles, according to the Council for Textile Recycling. That's nearly double the number from 1999.

It's more important than ever, environmental advocates say, to keep that clothing out of landfills.

"We're trying to take responsibility," said Eileen Fisher, whose eponymous fashion brand buys back its garments from customers at $5 each and reworks the material into new merchandise, under its Renew brand, at factories in Irvington, New York and Seattle. It bought back its millionth garment in May.

Fisher lives near the former printing warehouse in Irvington that the company converted into its Renew sewing factory. She walked through its clothing-intake center, wearing a gray and white kimono coat made from patches of Eileen Fisher clothing scraps that were turned into felt.

At an early stage in her 34-year-old company, Fisher said she and her co-workers grew alarmed at the environmental toll of clothing manufacturing - from depleted farm fields to dye pollution in rivers. Her company's reuse efforts have expanded into its Circular by Design mission, in which today's clothes become tomorrow's raw materials.

"We need to move from a use-and-discard economy to a reuse economy," she said. Its remade clothes are specially tagged and sold in Eileen Fisher stores, in pop-up shops and in several Nordstrom locations. A $250 jacket gets a second life at $90. "As manufacturers, we want to treasure the resources we're using, to make clothing that lasts and can be repurposed. We want customers to value our clothes."

Patagonia, the Ventura, California-based outdoor clothier, has for decades been a worldwide leader in this closed-loop system of manufacturing and reuse.

"As individuals, the best thing we can do for the planet is to buy less and keep our stuff in use longer," said Rose Marcario, Patagonia's president and CEO. "The simple act of extending the life of our garments through proper care and repair reduces the need to buy more over time."

98 million tons

It's estimated that the global textile industry uses 98 million tons of resources a year, chiefly water and energy. Fabric dyes have polluted major rivers in India, Bangladesh, China and other countries.

The plight of underpaid workers producing fast fashion in unsafe factories has sparked outrage expressed in documentaries and books.

The large and ambitious buyback, repair and repurpose operations signal a fundamental shift in consumers' relationship with clothing.

One vision of the future works like this: Brands manage the products they make after consumers use them. Consumers buy garments with the idea of keeping them as long as possible, and then the brand repairs and resells them.

If garments are too damaged to be donated or resold, they will be "upcycled" into new clothing or recycled into fibers. So, for instance, a favorite shirt may one day provide the fiber that insulates a home. Or the fabric of a sofa. A garment might have six or seven life cycles.

Repurposing "can be made into a business that's profitable," Fisher said, noting that her company's Renew operation brings in $3 million of the company's $450 million in annual sales.

To amplify the philosophy that resource stewardship can be profitable, the Eileen Fisher company is an active member of Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy and the American Sustainable Business Council, joining like-minded ventures such as Nike, Seventh Generation and Starbucks. "We don't want sustainability to be our edge," Fisher said. "We want it to be universal."

Patagonia facility

At its huge service center in Reno, Nevada, Patagonia houses a repair facility where 70 full-time employees replace zippers, patch rips and renew and return items that customers may have bought decades before.

The company's Worn Wear program, begun in 2005, includes cute clapboarded rigs that make regular tours to U.S. college campuses and ski resorts and to international locations, teaching customers how to repair items. Shoppers can sell used Patagonia items in good condition back to the company and buy "certified, pre-owned" Patagonia gear at discounted prices online.

To further the cause, Cynthia Power, facilities manager for Eileen Fisher's Renew, is kept busy showing other clothing manufacturers how its 40 employees mend, overdye, resew or felt (a way of processing fabric) buyback silk, wool, cashmere and cotton.

"This is where our industry is going," Powers said, watching as head designer Carmen Gama pinned a jumpsuit for Renew's fall 2019 line using fabric from five pairs of used black jeans. The recycled textiles also are turned into wall hangings, pillows, coats, vests and kimono jackets.

"Waste can be art," Eileen Fisher designing artist Sigi Ahl said.

The pillows are sold at ABC Home stores, and a Paris gallery sells the wall art. Both types of product were displayed in June at the American Institute of Architects' sustainable exhibit at the Javits Center in New York.

Fiber studied

The Renew program also studies fiber wear and clothing-construction techniques to generate performance data - such as how well a particular material held up - that it puts on Excel spreadsheets, Fisher said. The information "inspires the main fashion line" to do better, she said.

Todd Copeland, Patagonia's environmental-responsibility manager, said the company, a founding member of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, has long turned yarns made from plastic bottles into fleece, for example, and made fabric from plant fibers such as eucalyptus.

He said Patagonia has relationships with at least 85 finished goods factories in 17 countries, at least 150 material suppliers in 25 countries and at least 200 farms, and the company examines them all for business capability, quality, environmental impact and social impact.

He said the efforts help the company: "Customers are looking for a brand with values that resonate with them."

It's back-to-school time, and Kidding Around, a children's resale shop in Clive, Iowa, has been hopping for weeks. July, August and September are the store's busiest months, and there is brisk turnover of the 18,000 secondhand clothing items for sale.

The 4,000-square-foot store, outside Des Moines, is open seven days a week. A staff of nine keeps up with the flow of garments coming in and going out. Parents drop off lightly worn clothing and never-worn garments - "new with tags" in resale parlance - and receive cash or store credit.

The appeal of resale?

"People have so much stuff it's unbelievable," owner Diane Fitzgerald said. "And they like the concept that they can reuse and recycle their items."

The number of thrift, consignment and resale businesses has exploded in recent years, growing by 7 percent annually, according to trade association figures.

Online, a new crop of resale shops such as ThredUp and Vinted has emerged, as well as internet-only sales platforms sponsored by traditional thrifts such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army.

These time-honored nonprofits face increased competition because of the nationwide expansion of for-profit chains such as Clothes Mentor, Buffalo Exchange and Plato's Closet.

Clothing-rental companies such as Rent the Runway, another form of recycling, have also been booming.

Now, one out of six Americans shops for resale clothing. But only about 15 percent of clothing in America is recycled.

At a textiles summit in New York in October, Ben Rose, representing the city's Sanitation Department, disclosed a stunning figure. Each year, on the day of the New York City Marathon, runners shed as much as 100 tons of clothing. His department places collection bins inside apartment buildings. Most of the textile waste it collects goes to salvage and is turned into such products as wiping cloths, auto insulation and carpet padding.

Industries stepping up

Worldwide, less than 1 percent of the material used to produce clothes is eventually recycled, according to an Ellen MacArthur Foundation report. The waste causes major environmental damage and the annual loss of about $100 billion of potentially useful textiles that are burned or buried in landfills.

Some industries are stepping up. Airlines such as Southwest, Jet Blue, Delta and KLM are recycling uniforms, blankets and cushion fabrics, which are turned into totes, luggage tags and stuffed animals.

Unlike recent changes in the food industry, where restaurants and corporations responded to consumer demands for more healthful food, much of the initiative on combating textile waste is coming from forward-thinking clothing companies and industry associations.

The summit in New York on innovations in textile manufacturing, waste reduction and reuse brought together a large roster of groups working on the problem, including the Product Stewardship Institute, Textile Recovery, the New York state Pollution Prevention Institute and the New York Product Stewardship Council.

College students have been early adopters of the waste-reduction issue. A campus-based nonprofit, the Post-Landfill Action Network, has chapters at about 100 universities across North America.

The group promotes plastic-free campuses, food recovery and composing programs, efforts to salvage items students discard when they move out at the end of the year and campus thrift stores.

"It's a young people's movement," said Ahl, the designing artist at Eileen Fisher. "They're rethinking consumerism. Just like in fast food, things must change."

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Fashion brands create programs to recycle, repurpose clothing

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There's a powerful message resounding from such big brands as Eileen Fisher and Patagonia, along with a growing cadre of smaller thrift and resale shops: Let's make do, reuse, recycle. Share story It's back-to-school time, which means the advertisements are everywhere: Buy! Buy! Buy! Pencils and gadgets. Backpacks and sneakers.

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CLOTHES COLLECTING-JOIN LIFE | ZARA United Kingdom

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"At Nike, we believe in the unlimited potential of athletes. We have an obligation to consider the complete design solution, inclusive of how we source it, make it, use it, return it, and, ultimately, how we reimagine it.

Inspired by Global Fashion Agenda, we have created Circularity: Guiding the Future of Design. The guide and its related workbook share principles that support a universal call to action for our industry: We must all come together and have a more positive impact on our planet.

Design has the opportunity to take on a powerful role in making the world a better place. Circularity puts us on a journey that focuses on achieving progress hour by hour, day by day, week by week, year by year.

By focusing on progress and not perfection and by making better choices, we embrace the chance to reconsider our craft in hope that it forms a ground swell of change." - John Hoke, Chief Design Officer Nike

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Home / Knowledge / Article / Textile / Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Cotton

By: New Cloth Market

The Global Organic Textiles Standard (GOTS) prohibits all "genetically modified organisms (GMO's) and their derivatives". According to the Organic Exchange, none of the organic growing standards established by any government allows for GMO crops. In April, 2009, Germany announced a plan to ban all GMO crops in the country, citing concerns of the environmental impact, making Germany the latest in a string of EU countries to outlaw GMO crops. And during a public comment period in 2000, the Organic Trade Association generated 275,000 letters against GMOs being included in the National Organic Program (NOP).

Why the fuss? After all, GMO crops were developed to help us meet the demands our burgeoning population makes on our limited resources. How can that be bad?

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are plants, animals and microorganisms which have been altered genetically. Here's how the National Organic Standards Board puts it: "Genetically engineered is defined as: made with techniques that alter the molecular or cell biology of an organism by means that are not possible under natural conditions or processes. Genetic engineering includes recombinant DNA, cell fusion, micro-and macro-encapsulation, gene deletion and doubling, introducing a foreign gene, and changing the positions of genes."

The benefits of genetic engineering in the agriculture sector is great, according to its proponents. GMO crops have been hailed as a way to increase yields by protecting against pests, drought and disease. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has put forward the arguments for GMOs in agriculture, (such as increased yields and better resistance to pests and other stresses - which reduces dependence on chemicals needed for crop protection, They also list the arguments against GMO crops. There is great debate about the pros and cons of this relatively new product.

But before looking at some of the reasons so many are opposed to genetic engineering, let's look at the issues pertaining to fiber crops only - and to cotton specifically:

Shortly after GMO cotton was introduced, GMO cotton producers, citing advances based on new GMO cotton and supported by a series of Cotton Incorporated conferences on sustainable cotton, portrayed conventional cotton as the new "sustainable" choice and organic cotton as an old and inadequate solution that is "as out-dated as last year's fashions."

GMO cotton was quickly adopted by cotton farmers, and millions of hectares of GMO modified cotton has been planted worldwide since its introduction in 1996.

Why did so many farmers pay for GMO seed - which cost more - and plant this new crop? Bottom line: they were told that there was more money to be made from GMO cotton. GMO cotton was supposed to have higher yields at the same time it was helping to reduce costs. Cost savings in chemicals and manual labor was estimated at between 15 - 30%. How did it reduce dependence on chemicals:

GMO cotton was engineered to reduce insect pests so farmers could reduce their chemical dependence on pesticides, and buy less of them. The gene coding for Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) was inserted into the cotton. Bt is a protein that acts as a natural toxin to the larvae of certain moths, butterflies, beetles and flies (including the dred bollworm) and is harmless to other forms of life. When the larvae feed on the cotton they are killed by the Bt protein - thereby eliminating the need for a broad spectrum insecticide, GMO cotton was designed to be resistant to herbicides so that weed killers could be liberally sprayed on crops without worrying about killing the cotton plants. It was genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate (marketed as Roundup in the USA and manufactured by Monsanto) which is a broad-spec trum herbicide, and toxic to humans at concentrations far below the recommended agricultural use levels. Studies link glyphosate to spontaneous abortions, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and multiple my eloma.

Not only could they make more money, but GMO cotton crops were also promoted as helping tackle world hunger and poverty, and helping small farmers. If you were a cotton farmer, how could you resist? They didn't: Today 86% of all United States cotton, 68% of all Chinese cotton, and 76% of all Indian cotton (three of the major cotton growing countries) is now GMO cotton.

Requirements for analysis of GM cottonseed in Australia
currently exports more than 90% of its cotton, primarily for use as fibre, although significant quantities of cottonseed are also exported to European countries. GM cotton was first grown in Australia in 1996 and since then, the percentage of the Australian cotton crop that is genetically modified has been steadily increasing. In order to meet the requirements of export markets such as European countries where GM cottonseed is not approved, stringent controls and quality assurance systems together with accurate and reliable GM testing, are needed to monitor for adventitious contamination of non- GM seed with GM seed. Furthermore, to ensure comparable and reproducible biological measurement between laboratories and countries validated test methods and appropriate reference materials are necessary.
Australia

The National Measurement Institute (NMI) of Australia has developed and validated a procedure to screen for the presence of GM cottonseed in a sample of 3000 seeds. The method, which includes grinding and homogenising steps that ensure a representative sub-sample is used for analysis, is capable of detecting down to a single GM seed in a sample containing 3000 seeds.

Initial results seemed that all they promised was true - early studies in 2002 - 2003 reported that pesticide and herbicide use was down and yields were up (by as much as 80%) for GMO cotton. But these results were short lived. Recent reports are full of data on GMO crops requiring ever more doses of chemical pesticides and herbicides to control pests which are mutating faster than even their worse case scenarios had envisioned; and becoming resistant to the genetic modifications found in GMO cotton. A study published by the Institute for Science in Society reports that Bt cotton fields rarely have studies done on what the crops do to the soil itself; they found that soil growing Bt cotton had significantly fewer beneficial soil enzymes in the soil (which makes nutrients available to plants) and total biomass was reduced 8.9%. This, they conclude, could even lead to dead soils, unable to produce food.

What about the promise of reduced chemical dependence on pesticides and herbicides?

It was always thought that pests would eventually evolve and develop a resistance to Bt. It wasn't a question of whether resistance would happen, but how quickly it would evolve. The Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) in India published the (then currently held) opinion that, "with the current rate of increase in the area under Bt cotton, it is likely to take about 11 - 12 years for the pest to develop resistance to Bt cotton. However, with implementation of proper strategies as suggested by CICR, it is possible to delay resistance by at least 30 - 40 years if not more:' Worse case scenario was thought to be three years.

Yet in 2008 the University of Arizona published some of the first documented cases of bollworm resistance to Bt. Professor Bruce Tabashnik, a renowed insect researcher and the primary researcher of this study,said "our results contradict the worse-case scenarios of some experts under which resistance to Bt plants was expected in three years. It is no surprise that, after a while, pests can develop biological strategies against insecticidal agents and become thereby insensitive: as a rule, even advantages that have been established in a plant by conventional breeding methods only have a limited time span of effectiveness."

According to a 2008 study by Friends of the Earth, independent studies have demonstrated not only that pesticide reduction claims are unfounded, but that GM crops have substantially increased pesticide use, particularly since 1999. Dr. Charles Benbrook, a leading U.S. agricultural scientist, conducted an "exhaustive analysis of USDA data on pesticide use in agriculture from 1996 to 2004. His conclusion is that over this 9 year period, adoption of GM soy, corn and cotton crops has led to use of 122 million more pounds of pesticides than would have been used had GM crops not been introduced.

With regard to herbicides, GM cotton crops were engineered to have a resistance to glyphosate - the primary component in Monsanto's patented week killer called Roundup. Roundup is Montsanto's biggest product, accounting for about 40% of their estimated 2002 revenue of $4.6 billion. Monsanto sold its GMO seeds under the brand name, "Roundup Ready" because farmers could spray the herbicide directly onto their fields and not have to worry about killing their crop. The popularity of Roundup Ready crops skyrocketed, and the use of Roundup also skyrocketed. In the U.S. alone, glyphosate use jumped by a factor of 15 between 1994 and 2005, according to the Center for Food Safety. That led to a host of "superweeds" developing a resistance to Roundup. Farmers were told that in order to combat glyphosateresistant weeds they'd have to apply other chemicals, often in combination with higher rates of glyphosate. In 2005, Monsanto recommended farmers use several additional herbicides with Roundup, including Prowl (pendimethalin), metolachlor, diuron and others. In fact, recent data shows resistance to herbicides in general, and herbicides used in GMO crops in particular, has escalated at exponential rates, according to the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds.

According to the Friends of the Earth study, cited above: " When forced to admit that herbicide-tolerant crops increase overall pesticide use, biotech industry apologists quickly fall back on a second claim: the increasing use of glyphosate has reduced use of more toxic herbicides, and so is a benefit to the environment. While this was true in the first few years of Roundup Ready crops, a look at recent trends in herbicide use undermines this claim." For instance, 2,4-D is the second most heavily used herbicide on soybeans; it is a herbicide that formed part of the defoliant Agent Orange, and has been associated with health risks such as increased risk of both cancer and birth defects - and use of 2,4-D more than doubled from 2002 to 2006. Likewise, use of atrazine (which is linked to endocrine disruption, neuropathy, breast and prostate cancer and low sperm counts) rose by nearly 7 million Ibs (a 12% increase).

And according to the Friends of the Earth study, "It is important to understand two key facts about weed resistance. First, resistance is defined as a weed's ability to survive more than the normal dose of a given herbicide rather than absolute immunity. Higher doses of the herbicide will often still kill the resistant weed, at least in the short term. The second fact follows from the first. Weed resistance is not only the result of using an herbicide excessively, it often leads to still greater use of that herbicide."

And the promised yield increases? Often, the answer depends on weather and growing conditions rather than types of seed planted. Average cotton yields in the United States were stagnant from 1996 (when GM cotton was introduced) to 2002 (when it made up 76% of cotton acreage); there was a record yield in 2004 and 2005 but these increases were chiefly attributable to excellent weather conditions. In fact the question is really whether the yield for U.S. cotton is lower than it would have been had it not been Roundup Ready seed! Other parts of the world had similar or worse results.

Another facet of this discussion should include the fact that GMO seeds are expensive: in India, Monsanto's Roundup Ready cotton seed was selling for twice the price of non-GMO seeds. GMO seeds cannot be saved and used for next season's crop. The high price for the seed led to farmers in India often having to take out loans from moneylenders who charged exorbitant interest rates. In a poignant article in the New York Times, Somini Sengupta published a discussion about the rash of suicides by Indian farmers 17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003 - and lays the blame on a combination of rural despair and American multinational companies peddling costly, genetically modified seeds.

According to the Friends of Earth ,GM crops do not fulfill their promise.

1. GM crops do not tackle hunger or poverty.

2. GM crops increase pesticide use and foster the spread of resistant "superweeds".

3. GM crops do not yield more and often yield less than other crops. (7)

4. GM crops benefit the biotech industry and some large growers, but not small farmers.

But why is the Organic Trade Association and GOTS so adamantly opposed to GMO crops? Why are European countries like Germany banning the sale and planting of GMO crop? And why did the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) release a position paper calling for a moratorium on genetically modified foods? These are some of the questions that need to be investigated before coming to any conclusion regarding the use of GM crops.

Originally published in New Cloth Market: May 2010

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Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Cotton

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Read article about Article By New Cloth Market On Genetically Modified Organism (Gmo) Cotton As The Global Organic Textiles Standard (Gots) Prohibits All Genetically Modified Organisms (Gmos) And Their Derivatives, More At Fibre2fashion.Com and more articles about Textile industry at Fibre2Fashion

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How did the clothing industry get to the point of being able to produce fast & cheap? The fast-fashion impact goes far beyond profits... discover what's the real deal of the world's second-largest polluter.

Fashion goes fast. 50 years ago women had only two dresses. Today there is no more such as 4 seasons. In the western world, there are 52 seasons in fashion; one season for each week of the year.

But have we ever thought about the real impact of the fashion industry? Who produces them and how? How connected are we really to other humans in regards to clothing?

Fashion brands want consumers to buy as much clothing as quickly as possible. The reality is that you go shopping one week and the following one you are already out of date, as there will be something new in the shops again. From the consumers' perspective, we can easily have a wardrobe full of clothes and still feel like you have anything to wear.

So what is fashion? It is the concept that you should throw clothes away not when they are no longer usable, but when no longer has the social value or is no longer fashionable.

Brands can offer cheap clothing, which allows us to throw away clothes without thinking about the consequences. As well, the fast fashion industry makes us believe we are wealthy or rich because we can buy a lot, by getting a $5 t-shirt or a $20 pair of jeans.

How is the clothing industry able to produce fast and cheap fashion?

The first reason is that we no longer produce our clothing in Europe or the United States. While in the 60's the US was still making 95% of the clothes, today the number has dropped to only 3%. The remaining 97% of outsourcing is going to developing countries around the world. (Source: True Cost Documentary)

Multinational companies arrive in countries such as India, China or Cambodia, where the workforce is already very cheap. Then, they ask local businesses and factories to get even cheaper production so they can offer more competent prices.

Here's an example: Brand X sells their T-shirts for $5, but the brand Y sells them for $4; so, brand X will come next and say "Hey, brand Y is selling them for $4, we need them cheaper". The business owners in underdeveloped countries are always finding themselves in the situation of squeezing their prices.

If the country doesn't accept these terms, they are risking the industry to leave and be poorer. Underdeveloped countries want the business so badly there's no other option.

The disasters of the Fast Fashion industry

Also, local businesses have to cut corners in management and safety to reach the requested threshold, which has lead disasters such as the one happened in 2013 in Rana Plaza (Bangladesh, India).

Over This is without a doubt 1,129 people died. A long time before this disaster occurred, some workers had pointed out to their managers that there were cracks in the building. Yet they were still were forced to go back inside to work. the worst garment industry disaster ever.

However, there's been few more such as Ali Enterprises, with 289 dead. Or Tazreem Fashion factory, where 112 more people died. It seems that working under these conditions has become something accepted and common in underdeveloped countries.

# Fashion Revolution 2019 # A snapshot of modern slavery in the fashion industry

The reaction of the fashion multinationals?

Fashion industries and entrepreneurs defend this situation with arguments such as: "sewing is not a dangerous job," or "at least they have a job", or "the jobs Americans and Europeans are offering to people in underdeveloped countries are a much better option than the alternatives available in their own country."

So the factory disasters, low wages, children, and worker exploitation... These are ok to forgive, just because of the jobs multinationals create for people with no other options than sewing the clothes. Again, those who are the most vulnerable are also the worse paid.

Fashion, a $1.7 Trillion industry

"One of the biggest and most profitable industries in the world, why is it that it's not able to guarantee their safety, which is an essential human right?" Lucy Siegle, The True Cost

Fast fashion wants to produce fast, so the garment worker has to do it quicker and cheaper; their job is vital for this industry to exist. But the employee is the only point of the supplying chain where brands squeeze their margins.

The city of Phom Denh in Cambodia sadly became famous because of the protests occurred in 2014. While they were claiming a minimum wage of 160$/month (Cambodians considering this to live with dignity!), multiple police attacks happened to stop them and converting the place in a battleground for days: 5 killed worker, 24 people arrested, and over 40 injured.

The Government and the population are desperate for the work that multinational retailers bring. Because of the constant threat from the large corporations of taking all the production to other low-cost countries, the Governments hold down the wages consistently (which will ultimately avoid the enforcement of local labor laws).

Who is making the laws in the underdeveloped countries?

Barbara Briggs, director of the Institute for Labour Rights, explains during her interview in The True Cost documentary:

"If you contact any of those companies they will send you their code of conduct. And it is beautiful: it says "oh yes, we take responsibility for the conditions under which our product is made. The product that you buy, all the factories where we produce, we require them to respect the minimum wage laws, to respect women, to not hire children, no forced labour, no excessive overtime hours".

"But when a few years ago we submitted a proposal to Congress named The descent working conditions and fair competition act, the companies responded in one voice: "Oh, no! That would be an impediment to fair trade; we can't have these rules". They have fought (and WON) for the law that allows them to keep everything in voluntary codes of conduct, which only protects companies' interests."

To make it easy to understand, the brands don't officially employ the workers neither, and they neither own any of the factories in which they produce. The outcome for these companies is that they can profit hugely, all while remaining free of responsibility and the consequences of poverty wages, factory disasters and the on-going violent treatment of co-workers.

The Fast Fashion Impact

The Fast Fashion impact is HUGE. Around 40 million people are working at the garment factory, from which 4 million people are located in Bangladesh. Here, more than 5,000 factories produce for western brands.

Also, over 85% are women, with a minimum wage of $3/day (the lowest paid garment workers in the world). One every six people in the world today work in the global fashion industry making it the most labor-dependant industry on Earth.

Workers should be rewarded instead of exploited

Without human capital, cheap labor, cheap female labor, the fashion industry would be far off generating such large profits.

Tansy Hoskins - author of "Stitched-up," reckons that:

"Fashion retailers don't go to Bangladesh for any other reason than pushing wages down and getting the cheapest labour as possible. In Bangladesh, there's no such as collective rights, no trade union, very low minimum wage, no maternity benefits, no pensions. That's why the Fashion Industry is in Bangladesh."

What's the true cost of fast fashion on the Earth?

We purchase over 80 billion pieces of new clothing each year.

We buy a 400% more than two decades ago.

Only Americans throw the rubbish 82 pounds of textile waste each year. Massive amount regarding that 11 million each year of textile waste is from the U.S.A only.

Most of this waste is non-biodegradable sitting in the landfill for 200 years or more, releasing harmful gases into the air.

But to what other consequences is the fast fashion industry-leading? Are we accounting for the costs clothes have in the use of resources such as water, land, chemicals, or gas emissions?

Now we move to Texas, in the USA. Here there are fields of over 3,6 million acres, forming the most significant cotton patch in the world. In the past 10 years, 80% have turned out to be GMO (Genetically Modified) cotton.

As well, the farms instead of spot spraying the weed occasionally, or hiring laborers to walk the field and eliminate the weeds, they are now spraying the whole fields. There's no natural growth of the plant, but the land becomes a factory: treating all the acres the same, putting a dose of chemicals on it all.

This is an intensification of agriculture, and what kind of impact is that having on our soil? What kind of impact is that having on our people, in our communities?

Fertilizers or pesticides are equal to ecological narcotics. The more fertilizers you use, the more you need to use them. This is equal to soil contamination.

And the effects of these chemicals on humans' health?

Dr Priptal Sing, director Faridkot Center India, mentions in the True Cost Documentary that studies show there's a dramatic rise in congenital disabilities, cancers and mental illness.

"Between 70 to 80 kids in every village, such as Punjab, they found severe mental retardation and physical handicaps. And mothers and families are patiently waiting for their children to die, as they cannot afford a treatment either".

The fertilizers and pesticide companies are utterly refusing this being a consequence of the use of their products. In fact, the businesses that are doing GMO seeds are the same one that is doing the chemicals, as well as the medicines they are now patenting.

"So you get cancer, there are more profits. For them it's a win win win win..." Vandana Shiva, Environmental Activist.

People of the towns, farmers and poor people just loose. Then it comes the day where they cannot afford the debts for purchasing the expensive GMO seeds, and the company goes to the farmer and claims the land in exchange. "That day the farmer will go into his field, drink a bottle of pesticide and end his life," tells Vandana Shiva.

In the past 16 years, there have been recorded over 250,000 farmer suicides in India. That's about 1 farmer every 30 minutes, the most extensive record of suicides in history.

But there's more. Other consequences are the contamination of rivers. In Kanpur, India (the most prominent export capital), the river Ganga (the holiest river, important for 800 million Hindus) is contaminated with Chromium, a component that attacks the liver directly, making the water not drinkable.

But the vegetables are produced with contaminated water. We need to step back and think about it.

Donating clothes to charity doesn't solve excess of fashion. It turns out that only 10% of donated clothes get sold. If the charity cannot sell them, they pack and ship them to third countries. Most of them end up in Haiti, which has caused their clothing industry to disappear.

We cannot afford to keep ignoring others' peoples' lives, social injustices and environmental destruction. Shall we share the benefits of the industry globally?

A positive fact is that there is a considerable amount of brands emerging to work towards sustainable and ethical fashion, which hopefully will lead to creating the change the world needs.

If you want to learn more about this, we highly recommend you to watch the True Cost movie available on Netflix, which has inspired us to take action to inform all the consumers about the reality behind the fast fashion industry.

Also, there are heaps of alternatives on more sustainable fashion brands find them all here.

What positive changes are you making to be more sustainable in fashion?
Other articles you'll love:

1. The benefits of implementing circular solutions in fashion

2. #WhoMadeMyClothes | The Fashion Revolution Week for everyone!

3. The revolutionizing fashion recycling app to ReGAIN with discount codes

4. A snapshot of modern slavery in the fashion industry

5. The positive impact of Gen Z on sustainable fashion

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The real impact of the fast fashion industry in the world

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Fashion goes fast. 50 years ago women had only two dresses. Today there is no more such as 4 seasons. In the western world, there are 52 seasons in fashion; one season for each week of the year. But have we ever thought about the real impact of the fashion industry?

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This is where you will find me most of the time, as I get a kick out of finding a hidden gem in amongst a lot of undesirables. But thrifting doesn't have to be a dirty word. Op shops such as Vinnies, Salvos, Red Cross & Lifeline are actually extremely organised and very selective, displaying only good quality items. Salvos actually has their very own ambassador and eco stylist ' Faye Delanty ' who curates and styles boutique sections of their stores! Everything is clean and often colour coded and the prices are low however these stores are getting more switched-on with what's trending and what's valuable, so sometimes you'll find that the really special items are marked up just a tad.

Smaller, independent Op Shops like those run by local churches or animal rescues don't have the man-power to effectively sort through the piles of donations, so they require you to really dive in and get treasure hunting which usually means you will have far more to look through with far less competition. You will strike gold if you have what it takes to persist!
Flea Markets And Car Boot Sales
This is an awesome option for finding those rare pieces that have been sitting in the back of someone's closet for years (or even decades). Prices are usually fair and sellers are normally open to negotiation. Be prepared to get in early, roll up your sleeves, possibly fight other vintage fashion lovers off and get Y2K Christina Aguilera DIRTY!

Second Hand Fashion Markets

Events for second hand fashion are poppin' off in Australia and they're all the rage! Organised fashion markets such as HerWardrobe, Round She Goes and Hunter Markets are a great place to score more 'on trend' pieces or curated Vintage from women you can relate to. These markets are different to Flea markets as they only support second hand clothing as opposed to 'bric a brac', not to mention that you're actually buying the wardrobe of the seller or at least a collection that the seller has personally put together.
For The 'Need It Now' Shopper eBay
An oldie but a goodie. eBay can be great for finding second hand items and rare vintage pieces as sellers tend to use the platform professionally. eBay has protection for buyers which means it's a good place to dip your toes into the second hand world. The search filters also help you find exactly what you're looking for, down to the size and colour. When buying online, be sure to carefully check the measurements of the items before hitting the Buy Now button - this is particularly important for genuine vintage items as sizing standards have changed over the years.
Facebook Marketplace
You either love it or hate it but the FB Marketplace has become a great platform to find modern brand, mid-range clothing items in a good-to-perfect condition. The free platform makes it so quick and easy to list and find deals where both buyer and seller can effortlessly communicate. You could be in for a real treat if a seller is keen to just 'Marie Kondo' their life. Due to Facebook Marketplace being locally focused (within a certain radius set by you), you can often meet up with sellers prior to purchase so you can view the item in person to ensure it's in good condition and fits.

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Second-hand Clothing & Thrifting is the Future of the Fashion Industry

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This is where you will find me most of the time, as I get a kick out of finding a hidden gem in amongst a lot of undesirables. But thrifting doesn't have to be a dirty word.

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By Sunaina Jacob

There are plenty of benefits that come from thrifting - it's undoubtedly better for your purse strings and arguably more sustainable. As a result, it's become almost a cult-like trend, with many major influencers ditching the "new in" collections for vintage pieces they've snapped up from their local charity shop (at least when another savvy thrifter hasn't beat them to it!). But thrifting has come under intense scrutiny in recent years - and for good reason. Mass thrifting is driving up prices and creating a scarcity of good items in second-hand shops. This rising popularity is depriving underprivileged locals from getting their hands on affordable (and sustainable) garments. The argument runs like this: for them, thrifting isn't a hobby, but a necessity.

But it was only a few short years ago that shopping second-hand was something to be looked down on. It was a sign of poverty; the privileged wouldn't, couldn't, dare to buy a vintage Burberry trench coat (that was almost certainly a knock-off, but my god did it look real to us) from the charity shop at the end of your street that smelled like dust and smoke. If we did, we would be called a "chav" which, as Owen Jones points out in his 2011 book, "draws on a long, ignoble tradition of class hatred." Fast-forward nine years since its publication, thrifting is more common than ever in the UK. We now face a sad inversion - the same wealthy class that sneered at poorer people buying from thrift shops have now moved in, bought all the good clothes, and are sneering that poorer people are being 'unsustainable'. One only needed to see the reaction on Twitter when shops reopened to see that there was an unmistakable element of class hatred emanating from those condemning the queues outside Primark.

During lockdown, for example, online sales of used goods on eBay were up 30% in the UK, and rival fashion resale site Depop said it has also seen record sales in the UK, US and Australia, signing up 20 new users a minute in July with traffic on its app tripling year on year. Oxfam also said that sales at its online shop were up 111% in the last week of August, compared with the same week last year.

However, as a result of booming interest in the second-hand sector, the average price of buying second-hand has increased, potentially pushing those that were once reliant on second-hand clothing industry out of the charity shops, right into the grip of fast fashion. Indeed, some thrift stores have increased their prices to be level with that of other high street stores. Worse, an 'upcycling' industry has sprung out of this new trend, with people buying cheap vintage clothing and then selling it on at a massive mark-up. These forces are combining to price out those with less disposable income, and thus often, its cheaper to buy at the Boohoos of the world than it is to buy from your local Oxfam. For the working class, low-income families of this country and around the world, the more sustainable option for shopping has now almost completely slipped out of reach.

These changes in the second hard market now mean that the environmental argument for thrifting may also be questioned, when the market is now saturated with fast-fashion goods. Being sustainable has become the mainstream culture, and is particularly popular with Millennial and Gen Z consumers. More often than not, sellers on Depop and other such sites sell clothes from brands like Topshop and Zara, produced less than a year ago, as "vintage" items. This false advertising of cheap quality clothes means that the product will definitely not last more than a year or two, eventually going back into the dump of clothes to give away, or even worse, be thrown away. The rush to be 'sustainable and socially conscious is in fact eating away at the claims of second hand shopping to be either of those things - pricing out poorer people who need it, and reducing the claims of the second hand sector to be sustainable.

So, what is to be done? Is there a right way to be ethical when it comes to shopping? Yes to both, but it requires a little thought. Instead of considering sustainability a bandwagon we can jump on to look good, we can be more helpful by being conscious of the factors impacting secondhand shopping, in the same way one might critique the fast fashion industry. Begin, perhaps, by researching thrift stores around you a bit more. Are there thrift stores that are slightly more expensive, but still cheap enough for your budget out there? This can mean that people who need cheaper clothes still have the option of buying great items for themselves, while you can still be trendy and sustainable.

Finding out how your thrift stores give back to the community is essential to being sustainable, as well. There are many thrift stores out there helping fight poverty and other essential causes, but there are also some capitalising on the new market. Knowing where your money goes is always a good idea. The biggest way to give, though, is donating high-quality unused clothes to thrift stores and charity shops. They are constantly in need of items to add to their stock since more people tend to buy, rather than give.

If being sustainable and ethical is what you're hoping to achieve, and you have a little more disposable income, try shopping locally, or with smaller, sustainable brands. The items may be pricier, but they leave a better carbon footprint, they pay their workers a proper wage, ensure that modern slavery does not occur. Often they'll use locally sourced materials of good quality to produce clothes that will last you a long time, and offer you that guilt-free feeling!

In short, like many modes of consumption, secondhand shopping can have its drawbacks. That's not to say it's bad, or you shouldn't do it. But as with all things when you're trying to make ethical choices, you just need to give it a little thought. Secondhand shopping isn't a panacea for the issues the fashion industry faces. Thus we need to apply the same critical eye we do when browsing the local thrift store for a nice top, to what's happening within the broader industry and our communities.

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The Gentrification of Thrifting - Fashion Roundtable

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Thrifting has come under intense scrutiny in recent years - and for good reason. Mass thrifting is driving up prices and creating a scarcity of good items in second-hand shops. This rising popularity is depriving underprivileged locals from getting their hands on affordable (and sustainable) garment

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I was born in 1995. If you ask some, I am a member of Generation Z. Others will say that I am more of a millennial. No wonder I've always felt like I straddled the line between the two. While technically I'm a member of Gen Z, before the time when "generational experts" and marketing firms started targeting my cohort, I played the part of a millennial, doing all the things that those same marketers labeled as being peak millennial behaviour. This means: I got my fashion tips from Tumblr, started a style blog on Blogspot, and dressed like every other person my age in middle school (first, at Abercrombie; then, Urban Outfitters and Free People). It wasn't until college that I even thought to try vintage shopping. Once I had, it was years before I learned the ins and outs of the trade - which days my local charity shops got new stock, what's salvageable and what's not, and how much is too much to spend on a pair of vintage Levi's. Vintage shopping now feels like one of the most Gen Z things I do, and it's no wonder: For Gen Z, thrifting isn't just a way to shop - it's a lifestyle.

Olivia McCafferty-Cable,17, from Santa Barbara, California, has been thrifting regularly since she was 13. "Thrifting allowed me to find things at very affordable prices that no one else I knew had," she tells Refinery29. "I like standing out with my clothes, especially at school, because I tend to be a very quiet person, and [thrifting] was a way for me to express myself and push myself outside of my comfort zone."

Hannah Valentine, a 19-year-old from St. Louis, Missouri, doesn't even remember her first thrifting experience. "Thrifting has been a constant in my life for years," she says. "I'll never stop loving the rush of adrenaline that I get when I enter a thrift store not knowing what I'm going to find that day." While Valentine fell for thrift shopping because of the search aspect, over time, it turned into something else entirely. "Now, I thrift because I want to help save clothing from being thrown away, while also providing an easy and accessible way for people to shop secondhand so that they're not instead shopping on fast fashion websites," Valentine says. The way she does the latter is through Depop, an online marketplace where many members of Gen Z have set up shop. (According to The Wall Street Journal, of Depop's 15 million users in 2019, 90% were under the age of 26.) Valentine's Depop page is scattered with floral maxi dresses, '90s sportswear à la Princess Diana, and retro pins from Steak & Shake. She offers sizes up to 3X and uses her platform on the app to advocate for people with disabilities. "I think of my job as a second-hand clothing rehoming service," she says.

Another seller on Depop, 23-year-old Monique Miu Masuko, started her thrifting journey in middle school. Ever since her mom told her when she was a kid that buying secondhand was the easiest and most affordable way to stay on-trend, Masuko hasn't stopped thrifting. Like so many others before her, took her favourite pastime and built a career out of it. Now her Depop shop has 2.8k followers. "[Thrifting] is more affordable, accessible, and eco-friendly - all three of which go hand in hand with sustaining Gen Z's future," she says.

According to Deloitte, Gen Z's interest in thrifting could have something to do with having entered adolescence during the recession of 2007 to 2009, when the oldest members of Gen Z were between 12 and 14 years old. Many grew up experiencing financial hardship, and so it makes perfect sense that they'd be searching out economically friendly ways of staying in fashion.

Gen Z isn't the only demographic actively shopping secondhand right now. Fashion search engine Lyst reported that, in September, there was a 104% increase in online fashion searches for secondhand-related keywords like "vintage fashion" and "slow fashion," the latter of which was responsible for more than seven million social impressions. But they are the largest demographic: An estimated 46% of Gen Z shopped secondhand in 2019, according to Medium, compared to 37% of millennials and just 18% of Gen X. Since Gen Z has matured into its spending power, the resale market has grown significantly. In fact, it has grown 21 times faster than traditional retail over the past three years to be worth $24 billion in 2019. It makes sense. Unlike millennials, who are said to " seek validation through purchases," members of Gen Z are obsessed with being different from their peers. Ask the question of "why thrift?" for instance, and itwill result in a wide variety of answers. (I'd know, I talked to over 30 of them.)

Some listed being able to look unique and build a more personalised sense of style as one of the reasons for thrifting. Tori López, 24, from Brooklyn, New York, says she found an "inexplicable sense of empowerment and independence" in wearing pieces that felt made for her, even if they were previously owned by someone else. "Wearing 'one-of-a-kind' clothing makes me feel special; it makes me feel unique; it makes me feel happy - and if that outfit costs you $30, all the better."

Elena Dunn-Barcelona, a 24-year-old from Harlem, fell in love with thrifting during her senior year of high school because it allowed her to compete with her classmates style-wise "for an eighth of the price," she says. "I was one of a handful of Black kids at a predominantly white boarding school," she tells Refinery29. According to Dunn-Barcelona, everyone there wore the same things from the same brands ("Sperrys, J.Crew, Free People, Vineyard Vines, etc."), none of which her parents were willing to buy for her: "There was no way they were going to hand me $60-plus for a top that would be out of style before the school year was over." Thrifting made it possible for Dunn-Barcelona to build confidence in her style without overspending. It also allowed her to find options that fit when off-the-rack styles wouldn't because of her scoliosis. "I have a shortened torso, and stand at only 4 feet and 4 inches, which makes shopping for clothing a constant struggle for me. But after a while, when I'd find cute things that didn't fit me, I realised that someone else might love them, so I turned it into a business," she says. Her Depop shop, Mighty Thrift, sells clothing in sizes 0 to 5X and has over 5k followers. By August 2021, she says thrifting will be her sole way of supporting herself.

There is also the matter of the climate crisis looming, which many listed as a major motivation for thrifting. "Thrifting taught me that I can positively impact this world in more ways than one," Lopez says. "It's granted me an entryway into a new way of living that feels more productive and purposeful." She explains that what started as a mode of expression has since catalysed a more intentional lifestyle, where, across categories, she's more considerate about her purchases: "Now that I'm older, I find myself frequenting more local businesses, paying attention to companies' stances on current political issues, and buying quality over quantity."

During the lockdown, many young people took to TikTok for entertainment. In the process they also learned about the damaging effects that fashion - and other powerful industries - has on the environment. Of TikTok's 800 million worldwide users, 60% are members of Gen Z, many of whom are using their fast-growing platforms to promote thrifting as an alternative to fast fashion and an easy way to minimise waste. The numbers don't lie: #ThriftStore has 92.7 million views on the app, while #Secondhand has 90.8 million views. "So much of our clothes get worn a couple of times, then head to the landfill, which is really gross considering how many resources go into producing clothes," says 24-year-old Lily Fulop, the author of Wear, Repair, Repurpose: A Maker's Guide to Mending and Upcycling Clothes and a designer at Refinery29. "We need to produce less clothing, and make use of the clothes that are already in existence," she says. One of the easiest and most affordable ways to do that is by thrifting: "It saves water, reduces microplastics and petroleum use, cuts down on pollution from pesticides, dye, and shipping... the list goes on."

According to Emily Reyes, a 21-year-old living in New York City, Gen Z YouTube influencers like Emma Chamberlain are in large part responsible for showing young people that, unlike what their older family members or friends would have them believe, fast fashion isn't the only way to find on-trend clothing at an affordable price. The 19-year-old YouTube celebrity - who has 9.6 million subscribers on YouTube and 8.3 million followers on TikTok - is known for frequenting Goodwill. Chamberlain's thrift hauls, videos in which she goes through the items she recently thrifted and styles them on herself, are among her most popular videos on both platforms. Thrifting feels emblematic of the way that Gen Z prefers to stray from the beaten path - a path beaten to death by millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers, that doesn't even seem to be going anywhere anymore. They want to be independent. They want to save the planet. They also want to save money - and make money. And they want to do it all in a cute outfit, probably one that costs less than $10. Thrifting makes all of that possible. Now that I know this, I look forward to making up for lost time.

It's a cliché, but this year was supposed to be our year - full of independence, opportunity, or at least a few weekend afternoons spent with more than 10 friends with fewer than six feet between us. But with COVID-necessary social distancing, a shitty job market, and closed campuses, 2020 hasn't given us much to work with. Past generations have had to deal with a recession, social upheaval, and changing norms: We've had to deal with all of it at once.

So, what now? What do we do with our careers, our relationships, and our lives? How do we move forward when we're still stuck in our high school bedrooms? These stories are for us - filled with the resources, blueprints, and people who are finding ways to turn all this garbage into something like lemonade.

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For Gen Z, Thrifting Isn't Just A Way To Shop, It's A Lifestyle

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I was born in 1995. If you ask some, I am a member of Generation Z. Others will say that I am more of a millennial. No wonder I've always felt like I straddled the line between the two.

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Clothing retailers like Zara, Forever 21, and H&M make cheap and fashionable clothing to satisfy the needs of young consumers. Yet, fast fashion has a significant environmental impact. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the industry is the second-biggest consumer of water and is responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions - more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. Unfortunately, fast fashion problems are often overlooked by consumers.
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What Is Fast Fashion?

The term ' fast fashion ' has become more prominent in conversations surrounding fashion, sustainability, and environmental consciousness. The term refers to 'cheaply produced and priced garments that copy the latest catwalk styles and get pumped quickly through stores in order to maximise on current trends'.

The fast fashion model is so-called because it involves the rapid design, production, distribution, and marketing of clothing, which means that retailers are able to pull large quantities of greater product variety and allow consumers to get more fashion and product differentiation at a low price.

The term was first used at the beginning of the 1990s, when when Zara landed in New York. "Fast fashion" was coined by the New York Times to describe Zara's mission to take only 15 days for a garment to go from the design stage to being sold in stores. The biggest players in the fast fashion world include Zara, UNIQLO, Forever 21 and H&M.

The Dark Side of Fast Fashion

According to an analysis by Business Insider, fashion production comprises 10% of total global carbon emissions, as much as the European Union. It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year. Even washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibres into the ocean each year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.

The Quantis International 2018 report found that the three main drivers of the industry's global pollution impacts are dyeing and finishing (36%), yarn preparation (28%) and fibre production (15%). The report also established that fibre production has the largest impact on freshwater withdrawal (water diverted or withdrawn from a surface water or groundwater source) and ecosystem quality due to cotton cultivation, while the dyeing and finishing, yarn preparation and fibre production stages have the highest impacts on resource depletion, due to the energy-intensive processes based on fossil fuel energy.

According to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, emissions from textile manufacturing alone are projected to skyrocket by 60% by 2030.

The time it takes for a product to go through the supply chain, from design to purchase, is called a ' lead time '. In 2012, Zara was able to design, produce and deliver a new garment in two weeks; Forever 21 in six weeks and H&M in eight weeks. This results in the fashion industry producing obscene amounts of waste.

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You Might Also Like: The 9 Essential Fast Fashion Statistics
Fast Fashion and Its Environmental Impact

1. Water

The environmental impact of fast fashion comprises the depletion of non-renewable sources, emission of greenhouse gases and the use of massive amounts of water and energy. The fashion industry is the second largest consumer industry of water, requiring about 700 gallons to produce one cotton shirt and 2 000 gallons of water to produce a pair of jeans. Business Insider also cautions that textile dyeing is the world's second-largest polluter of water, since the water leftover from the dyeing process is often dumped into ditches, streams or rivers.

2. Microplastics

Furthermore, brands use synthetic fibres like polyester, nylon and acrylic which take hundreds of years to biodegrade. A 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that 35% of all microplastics - tiny pieces of non-biodegradable plastic - in the ocean come from the laundering of synthetic textiles like polyester.

According to the documentary released in 2015, The True Cost, the world consumes around 80 billion new pieces of clothing every year, 400% more than the consumption twenty years ago. The average American now generates 82 pounds of textile waste each year. The production of leather requires large amounts of feed, land, water and fossil fuels to raise livestock, while the tanning process is among the most toxic in all of the fashion supply chain because the chemicals used to tan leather- including mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives and various oils and dyes- is not biodegradable and contaminates water sources.

3. Energy

The production of making plastic fibres into textiles is an energy-intensive process that requires large amounts of petroleum and releases volatile particulate matter and acids like hydrogen chloride. Additionally, cotton, which is in a large amount of fast fashion products, is also not environmentally friendly to manufacture. Pesticides deemed necessary for the growth of cotton presents health risks to farmers.

To counter this waste caused by fast fashion, more sustainable fabrics that can be used in clothing include wild silk, organic cotton, linen, hemp and lyocell.
You might Also Like: How to Recognise Fast Fashion Brands and Which Ones to Avoid
The Social Impacts of Fast Fashion

Fast fashion does not only have a huge environmental impact. In fact, the industry also poses societal problems, especially in developing economies. According to non-profit Remake, 80% of apparel is made by young women between the ages of 18 and 24. A 2018 US Department of Labor report found evidence of forced and child labour in the fashion industry in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam and others. Rapid production means that sales and profits supersede human welfare.

In 2013, an eight-floor factory building that housed several garment factories collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing 1,134 workers and injuring more than 2,500. In her project An Analysis of the Fast Fashion Industry, Annie Radner Linden suggests that 'the garment industry has always been a low-capital and labour intensive industry'.

In her book No Logo, Naomi Klein argues that developing nations are viable for garment industries due to 'cheap labour, vast tax breaks, and lenient laws and regulations'. According to The True Cost, one in six people work in some part of the global fashion industry, making it the most labour-dependent industry. These developing nations also rarely follow environmental regulations; China, for example, is a major producer of fast fashion but is notorious for land degradation and air and water pollution.
You might also like: The Danger of Sweatshops
Is Slow Fashion the Solution?

Slow fashion is the widespread reaction to fast fashion and its environmental impact, the argument for hitting the brakes on excessive production, overcomplicated supply chains, and mindless consumption. It advocates for manufacturing that respects people, the environment and animals.

The World Resources Institute suggests that companies need to design, test and invest in business models that reuse clothes and maximise their useful life. The UN has launched the Alliance for Sustainable Fashion to address the damages caused by fast fashion. It is seeking to 'halt the environmentally and socially destructive practices of fashion'.
You might also like: What Is Slow Fashion and How Can You Join the Movement?
One way that shoppers are reducing their consumption of fast fashion is by buying from secondhand sellers like ThredUp Inc. and Poshmark, both based in California, USA; shoppers send their unwanted clothes to these websites and people buy those clothes at a lower price than the original. Another solution is renting clothes, like the US-based Rent the Runway and Gwynnie Bee, the UK based Girl Meets Dress, and the Dutch firm Mud Jeans that leases organic jeans which can be kept, swapped or returned.

Other retailers like Adidas are experimenting with personalised gear to cut down on returns, increase customer satisfaction and reduce inventory. Ralph Lauren has announced that it will use 100% sustainably-sourced key materials by 2025.

Governments need to be more actively involved in the fashion industry's damaging effects. UK ministers rejected a report by members of parliament to address the environmental effects of fast fashion. On the other hand, French president, Emmanuel Macron has made a pact with 150 brands to make the fashion industry more sustainable.
Featured image by EO Photographer Chin Leong Teo
The best advice on reducing the environmental impact of fast fashion comes from Patsy Perry, senior lecturer in fashion marketing at the University of Manchester, who says, "Less is always more."

This story is funded by readers like you

Our non-profit newsroom provides climate coverage free of charge and advertising. Your one-off or monthly donations play a crucial role in supporting our operations, expanding our reach, and maintaining our editorial independence.

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Fast Fashion: Its Detrimental Effect on the Environment

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Fast fashion has a massive environmental impact, it is the second-biggest consumer of water and is responsible for nearly 10% of global carbon emissions.

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Ralph Lauren: An icon of today, made for a better tomorrow 

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Ralph Lauren: An icon of today, made for a better tomorrow 

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Pay later with Klarna | Learn More

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The Earth Polo

An icon of today, made for a better tomorrow

Our goal is to use 170 million recycled plastic bottles in our products and packaging by 2025

Each Earth Polo is made using an average of 12 recycled plastic bottles

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Designed with Mother Nature in mind

High-quality craftsmanship and a soft touch feel

Colours of the Earth

A spectrum of new hues inspired by nature and dyed using a completely waterless process. We're committed to reducing water usage by 20 percent across our business by 2025

THE POLO SHIRT

With a Purpose

Select Ralph Lauren Polo shirts support causes ranging from climate change to cancer research, human rights, and more

From discarded bottle to timeless style-explore the making of The Earth Polo

Imagine it. A desolate beach, waves crashing in the distance. On the shore washes up a most unseaworthy vessel, a sight not properly found in nature: a plastic bottle, briefly home to a carbonated beverage, used once and then thoughtlessly discarded, only to reappear in Haiti, or in Taiwan, or some other spot far from where the bottle originated. Across the world, more than 1 million plastic bottles are purchased every minute worldwide, and it's virtually impossible for recycling efforts to keep pace. The end result is a swirl of plastic in the ocean, with mountains of wasted bottles piling up on beaches far and wide.

In this bleak scenario, Ian Rosenberger saw an opportunity to help. He was in Haiti, assisting cleanup efforts after the earthquake of 2010. Well-intended organisations had donated bottled water for those affected by the disaster, but that had the unintended consequence of a vast increase in plastic waste, which overwhelmed the island nation's sanitation services. Heaps of trash wound up on Haiti's beaches. "If Haiti could turn trash into money, that = good," Rosenberger wrote in his journal at the time, and he immediately went about making that thought a reality. His concept? Employ local people to collect the waste, and then turn that waste into something useful-like fabric.

He called his organisation First Mile, which has diverted 4,702,550 pounds of plastic since its launch. This isn't just good for the planet, it puts resources into the local economy as well. And it's this company that Polo has turned to for its groundbreaking Earth Polo shirt, first released last year and now available in 19 colourways for men, seven colours for women, and nine for kids, not to mention print options.

The shirt began with a deceptively simple concept: Remake the iconic Polo shirt with as little environmental impact as possible, while preserving the quality and feel that made it an icon in the first place.

The First Mile initiative refers to the so-called first mile of the supply chain-essentially where fabrics are sourced. Even companies that use recycled fabrics might not disclose who is collecting the materials, which tends to be a dangerous job-and one done by the most impoverished members of a society. As First Mile's director of partnerships explains, this focus was an obvious opportunity. "Within business case studies, a lot of attention is paid to the last mile-getting products to the consumer," says Kelsey Halling. "And in fashion, a lot of attention is paid to cut-and-sew facilities [where products are made]. As you get further down the supply chain, there are so many steps, it gets removed from the brand's level-even in recycling, if you know where the material is coming from, you wouldn't know how it was collected. So that's where we invest our time and energy: running impact programming to ensure a social safety net for people who are working with us."

Specifically, First Mile commits to total transparency as to where and how materials are sourced (and by whom)-with The Earth Polo, Polo could even, in theory, tell you the individual who collected the bottles. First Mile also offers workers a living wage, and even offers loans to partner companies to ensure they have the financial stability to succeed. Through its business, it can also create demand where previously there was none-again, using Haiti as an example, what once was a problem (excess plastic trash) becomes an enterprise opportunity (selling that plastic to companies that will convert it into something useful). For better and for worse, it's a source that promises to be around for awhile. "People often ask us, 'What happens when you run out of plastic?'" says Halling. "I just don't think that will happen in my lifetime." In the case of The Earth Polo, First Mile sourced plastic from its partners in Taiwan. This plastic was turned into a soft mesh

good enough to surpass Polo's exacting standards for quality. (Indeed, some members of the Polo team were unable to determine which fabric was which in a side-by-side comparison.) Each shirt is made from on average 12 plastic bottles, and even the labels and hangtags are made from recycled materials. It's also made to be fully recyclable if and when you're ready to part with it. Adding to its eco-friendliness, the shirt is dyed using a unique carbon dyeing process that uses no water in the application of the dye. And while it might seem daunting to take on an icon like the Polo shirt, the team at First Mile felt like it was an obvious winner.

"Typically you don't want to innovate with something that already works,"says Halling.

"That was a very cool decision on the part of the brand. One reason sustainability gets tripped up is that it gets put into niche products or small capsule collections. It's not like this is a new weird hippie sustainable product; it's an iconic one." The next challenge: Deciding which other Polo products should get the Earth Polo treatment. The brand has committed to saving at least 170 million bottles from polluting our planet by 2025, in addition to converting the use of all virgin poly-fiber to recycled poly-fiber and achieving at least a 20 percent reduction in total water use across its key operations and value chain by that same date. "Plastic waste is a major issue threatening the environment

-we want to be part of the solution and utilize an innovative approach to create something valuable," said David Lauren, Ralph Lauren's chief innovation officer. Our sources are tight-lipped on what might come next, but judging by the standard set by The Earth Polo, it will be worth the wait.

PAUL L. UNDERWOOD is a former editor at Ralph Lauren. He is based in Austin, Texas, where he lives with his wife and two children.

Images courtesy of Ralph Lauren Corporation and First Mile.

*The Earth Polo shirt's innovative fabric is made entirely from recycled plastic bottles.

Our products have always been created with a sense of timelessness. They are meant to be worn, loved, and passed on to the next generation, and it is with this spirit that we approach sustainability at Ralph Lauren. The Earth Polo is one example of how this commitment is coming to life in our products, and is part of our broader commitment to reducing our environmental impact and enriching the lives of the people and communities we touch across our entire value chain.
To learn about Citizenship & Sustainability at Ralph Lauren, click here.

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Patagonia is no stranger to the difficulty of throwing stuff away. We take back 100 percent of the gear you return for recycling through our Worn Wear program. In 2018, we recycled 6,797 pounds of products. But we can't recycle or repair everything you send us. Some of it was just too well-loved during use (you're totally using it right-keep at it). Other products smell too bad to be repurposed (thank you, dirtbags, for keeping the spirit-and bacteria-alive). If we can't find a market or if there isn't yet a technology to repurpose this gear, we have to choose between sending it to a landfill, sending it to the incinerator or holding on to it until we find a better solution. Since we chose the latter, our stockpile is taking up a room in our Reno warehouse. A lot of room, actually.

Our own pile of unusable clothes could very well be a metaphor for the ocean of trash we're drowning ourselves in as a global community. In 2015, in the United States alone, we generated 262 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW). That's the equivalent of 17.5 million conventional school buses packed at full capacity with passengers. Only 91 million tons, or 34.7 percent, of that was recycled and composted. The rest ended up in landfills and combustion energy recovery, a dirty process that turns waste into heat, electricity or fuel. And in the past year, we've seen how China's ban on importing most recyclables has revealed the blue bin as magical thinking.

Typically, everything that you put into your blue bin gets collected and sent to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) where it gets sorted, compacted, shredded or melted, then turned into bales heading for domestic or foreign mills. Unless there's a nearby mill that's willing to accept your MRF's recyclable materials, it's heading somewhere else. Until recently, one of those "somewhere else" places was 7,000 miles away in China. But in January 2018, China stopped importing 24 kinds of solid wastes, including postconsumer plastics, unsorted wastepaper and waste textile materials. India followed suit, and in March 2019, completely banned solid plastic waste and scrap imports.

The bans had an immediate seismic effect: Western countries started stockpiling recycled waste, diverting it to landfills and incinerators, or shipping it to countries in southeast Asia, like Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as Turkey and South Korea. The increase in incineration of "recycled" stuff added to last year's record-high, human-caused carbon emissions. Animals and birds ranging from ravens and gulls to baboons and bears have all noticed, too, drawing closer and closer to cities to dig through our growing pile of trash.

Fixing the problem
There's a hidden footprint to every product that is being made, bought and then thrown away. According to the World Resources Institute, for every can of garbage at the curb, there are 87 cans' worth of materials that come from the extraction industries-such as timber, agriculture, mining and petroleum-that turn natural resources into finished products.

Annie Leonard, Greenpeace USA executive director and creator of The Story of Stuff, an award-winning documentary about our consumption-crazed culture, believes we need to think beyond recycling.

"That's not to say we shouldn't recycle," says Leonard. "But we can no longer look at it as the fix-all.

"Recycling is what we do when we're out of options to avoid, repair or reuse the product first," says Leonard. "First, reduce: Don't buy what you don't need. Then, repair: Fix stuff that still has life in it. Also, reuse and share. Then, only when you've exhausted those options, recycle."

Some people and cities are living that ethos by going zero waste. The city of San Francisco is striving to become zero waste by 2030 through programs like the mandatory composting collection and a zero-waste textile initiative that turns used clothes into toys, insulation and carpeting. But living a zero-waste life can be more difficult than it should be. And not for the reasons you might think.

Take an everyday product we're all familiar with: toothpaste. In 2018, one company alone sold 80.7 million tubes of toothpaste in the United States, according to Statista. But these toothpaste tubes (like similar squeeze tubes) are made up of at least three different materials-such as plastic, paperboard, aluminum or another metal-that are hard to separate. The result? They can't be recycled through your basic municipal recycling systems.

If you don't want your toothpaste tube to end up in a landfill, you could check Earth911.com to find a recycling solution in your area. Or you could start making your own toothpaste with help from zero-waste communities online. Or you could question where all the goods and services you use come from and make better choices.

Monica Wilson, associate director at GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives), thinks we should be demanding more from our favorite brands. "If a product is designed to be used over and over, that's what will happen. If it's designed to be used, thrown away, trashed and then burned, then that's the fate it will have," she says.

Wilson is not alone in her thinking. Zero-waste designers believe product design should be inspired by nature, where materials are recycled in a circular loop. But so much of what is being made today is built to be used and then thrown away. In 2016, the average person bought 60 percent more items of clothing and kept them for about half as long as 15 years prior, according to a study by McKinsey.

"Designers need to think about what happens to a product at the end of its life," Wilson says. "Companies are saying they are investing millions of dollars in recycling. Wouldn't it be better if they designed their products better?"

So far this year, none of the gear you sent back to Patagonia for fixing or recycling ended up in the recycling bin. And that's a good thing. We repaired, upcycled, used toward DIY-repair education workshops, donated or resold on Worn Wear all your previously loved gear. And still, that's not enough. Just take a tour of our Reno warehouse.

To considerably shrink our stockpile of unusable gear in Reno, we are also investing in solutions that close the loop in the garment industry supply chain. The toughest nut to crack is the process of mechanically or chemically recycling products made of mixed fabrics (like a cotton and spandex T-shirt) into materials that can be given a second life. Our goal is to use only recycled and renewable ones (any natural material that can be grown or harvested on an annual basis, like wool or organic cotton) in our products by 2025.

Should we continue to recycle? Wilson says we definitely have to keep at it, but there are other things we need to do, too: "More people need to get involved in demanding better systems and asking more from brands."

Michele Bianchi

Michele Bianchi is a writer/photographer living in Mazama, Washington. A former Patagonia editor, she now spends as much time as possible in the North Cascades, trying to understand the language of ravens and predicting where/when the next rainbow will show up.

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Recycling Is Broken. Now What? - Patagonia

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Patagonia is no stranger to the difficulty of throwing stuff away. We take back 100 percent of the gear you return for recycling through our Worn Wear program. In 2018, we recycled 6,797 pounds of products. But we can't recycle or repair everything you send us.

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Upcycling has been the biggest trend of spring/summer 2021, with the likes of Balenciaga (see the shaggy coat made from ' shoelace fur '), Marni (where patchworked outerwear was created from existing garments) and Coach (note the reworked 1970s bags) all exploring how they can reuse materials. Miu Miu, meanwhile, announced in October that it's launching a new Upcycled collection - an exclusive capsule of 80 one-off dresses, refashioned from antique pieces that have been carefully sourced from vintage stores and markets worldwide.

While young designers such as Priya Ahluwalia, Bethany Williams and Emily Adams Bode have made their names by repurposing textiles that already exist, seeing major luxury brands embracing the practice marks a significant shift within the industry. "The first time we used deadstock and talked about it was in 2017," Gabriela Hearst, whose SS21 collection contained 60 per cent upcycled pieces, tells Vogue via Zoom. "It was like using a bad word: 'You don't say that word in the luxury vocabulary.'"

But the restrictions imposed by the pandemic have led to designers turning to materials they already have to hand in the studio, instead of shipping in new fabrics. JW Anderson recently launched a new capsule collection, Made in Britain, comprising six pieces made purely out of leftover fabrics and trims from previous seasons. "Made in Britain came from this idea during lockdown of creating fashion from what we already had and working locally," creative director Jonathan Anderson, who has also upcycled pieces for Loewe's Eye/ Loewe/ Nature collection, explains. "I think we'll see more and more upcycling in the future."

The devastating effect of excess inventory

It's no surprise that more designers are now embracing upcycling, considering the pandemic has led to an eye-watering €140 billion to €160 billion (£125 billion to £142 billion) worth of excess inventory from spring/summer 2020 collections - more than double the average. In the past, unsold goods would have been burned or thrown away by luxury brands in a bid to preserve their value, as part of a shocking practice that has since been banned in France. As customers become increasingly conscious of wasteful behaviour, it's more essential than ever that the industry addresses this backlog of garments in a sustainable way.

Duran Lantink, who reassembles deadstock garments from brands including Gucci, Prada, and Off-White into new high-end pieces, has seen a rise in enquiries from major retailers and brands looking to collaborate with him since the pandemic began. "There's been a lot of interest," the Dutch designer says via a call from Amsterdam. "It's kind of scary at the moment - it's necessary for retailers to think about what to do with deadstock."

Naturally, eco-minded designers such as Hearst have taken the problem of excess inventory into their own hands. The New York-based designer recently created the exclusive Retro Fit collection for London's Selfridges using existing stock - think reworked cashmere, newly dyed shirt dresses and patchwork bucket bags. "When the stores were hit by the pandemic, we started to think, 'How can we reinvent the inventory that we already have?'" Hearst says.

A new way of working

There are, of course, challenges in factoring in upcycling into the design process. Marine Serre had to completely rethink her production timeline for spring/summer 2021 after realising it was taking much longer to fulfil orders for her upcycled pieces. "We started working on the garments for the SS21 collection in October 2019, making sure we would have had enough time to produce them properly without squeezing production time," the French designer told .

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Upcycling Is The Biggest Trend In Fashion Right Now

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Upcycling has been the biggest trend of spring/summer 2021, with the likes of Balenciaga (see the shaggy coat made from ' shoelace fur '), Marni (where patchworked outerwear was created from existing garments) and Coach (note the reworked 1970s bags) all exploring how they can reuse materials.

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The rate at which we produce and throw away clothes is leading to inconceivable amounts of textile waste. You might imagine that any clothes the charity shops are unable to sell will simple be turned into recycled textiles. According to the 2017 report by Pulse of the Fashion Industry, only 20% of discarded clothing actually gets reused or recycled. A huge majority ends up in landfills or gets incinerated. The reports says that based on the current rate at which waste is being produced by the fashion industry - from garment manufacturing to end of life - in 2030 alone, 148 million tonnes of solid waste will be produced.

To try and get a sense of this amount, that means that in one year, minus the 20% that gets reused, we'll produce the equivalent of 9.4 million London buses of waste. Visualise that even further... If each bus covers 28.3 square metres, that's the equivalent of covering 102 square miles (the size of the city of Edinburgh) in bus high fabric mountains. In ONE YEAR. As if plastic pollution wasn't worrying enough...

All I can think is, whoever works out how to turn all that waste into carpets, bricks, roads or something else the world really needs, is going to be very rich indeed. Feeling inspired? Start by taking a look at these designers, who have found creative ways to transform recycled textiles into covetable homeware.

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Chair covers made from surplus textile

I can only imagine that sitting in this chair is like having a big hug from Sesame Street's Mr. Snuffleupagus. The hairy chair cover is by a Finnish company called Ragmate who make use of surplus waste from the textile industry in Turkey, whilst employing Syrian refugee women who live there to make them.

The project started with a successful Indiegogo campaign called Ragamuf. They made a series of chair rug covers which because of their stretch, were able to fit a number of dining chair or armchair styles. They now offer a large range of one-of-a-kind designs, with no two rugs the same.

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Quilts made from recycled denim

One of the more traditional applications for recycled textiles is quilting. Maura Grace Ambrose is a contemporary quilter based in Austin, Texas. This is the Arkansas Quilt, #4 in her '50 American States Series'. The design is inspired by Arkansas' split topography of highlands in the northwest and lowlands in the southeast. It's made from repurposed denim fabrics and on the backside is a whole cloth of striped vintage mattress ticking. Here is her tutorial on how to make your own quilt from denim offcuts on Mollie Makes.See more of her quilts on Folk Fibers.

Stacey Sharman is a California-based textile artist who makes traditional and modern quilts from vintage and new fabrics. This quilt is called Basketweave and is made of linen, denim and cotton. Stacey also holds classes in DIY quilting. See more of her designs on her blog On the Design Wall. You can also purchase her quilting patterns on Etsy*

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Rugs made from second hand clothing

In 2012, Stockholm designers Katarina Brieditis and Katarina Evans set themselves the challenge of transforming old jumpers and t-shirts from the Salvation Army into beautiful rag rugs. The project ' Re Rag Rug' involved producing one rug design from recycled textiles per month for a year, using various knitting, sewing and crocheting techniques. Kasuri pictured above has now gone into production, in collaboration with artisans in India.

The Confetti rug is made from tiny triangles of waste fabric stitched together. This year they collaborated with Muji on a stunning installation in Tokyo called Handscape made from Muji's fabric scraps.

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Crochet homeware made from recycled t-shirts

Lumikello is a German brand by Eva Kaiser who creates stylish textiles for the home. Rugs and cushions come in tempting candy colour combinations and are crocheted by a small team using discarded t-shirts, night gowns and sheets that are unfit for use.

The cushions are highly durable and the mini pillows can even be washed in the washing machine. Lumikello also run workshops teaching you how to make your own.

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Accessories made from recycled marine rope

Serpent Sea was founded by New Yorker Sophie Aschauer in 2011. After a sailing trip to Nantucket, she began to make colourful mats out of recycled marine rope. Using ropes that showed no signs of wear, she weaves the mats using four kinds of knot called Bonny, Drake, Morgan and Killigrew which are named after infamous 17th-century pirates. In addition to floor mats, she creates jewellery and accessories using the same technique, with each piece named after a sea nymph from Greek mythology.

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Furniture made from upcycled clothes and resin

The Rememberme project by German designer Tobias Juretzek involves a process of dipping around 13lbs worth of discarded clothes into resin and compressing them into a mould. The result is a sturdy chair with smooth edges in a myriad of colour options. The collection, which also includes a Rememberme table, is inspired by the memories associated with clothing and preserving things we wear during significant life events.

"Rememberme Chair wants to achieve more than pure functionality. Instead of being a dumb servant, it tells an individual story. Every chair is unique through its material and gets its own expression. The characteristics of the clothes thereby convert to a language. Clothes carry numerous adventures and stories. The chair transports these to a new expression. This illustrative exposition invites the spectator to exciting stories."

Tobias Juretzek

The Rememberme chair and table are available to buy from Made in Design*

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Chairs upholstered with jumpers

Based in the rural idyll of Shropshire, The Chairhouse have upcycled otherwise discarded chairs with vintage pure wool jumpers to create the Ganzie. The Ganzie is defined by the Urban Dictionary as "Shetland dialect for a heavy woollen jumper or allover". Jumpers are sourced for their quality and personality and chairs are produced in small batch runs.

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Lighting made from socks

The socks used in Jay Watson 's initial design for Sock Lights were sourced from the back of his own wardrobe. They have been treated with eco resin, derived from sunflowers and LED lights illuminate the ridges, colours and patterns in the textile. Other items in his portfolio include a table made from old Corian samples and seating made from woven newspaper.

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Seats stuffed with recycled textile shreds

This is a project from 2011 by Belgian design studio Atelier Belge. 'Plof' was designed as a solution for various types of production waste. The furniture bench is made from recycled textile leftovers which are shredded down and upholstered with PE foil. Several knots are added for comfort which also creates a tailored look. The result is an eye catching and colourful patterned seat whereby the design can vary depending on the textiles used inside.

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10 designers making unique furniture and decor from recycled textiles - Upcyclist

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Innovative artists and designers are giving new life to recycled textiles in unique furniture and home decor

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DHAKA, Feb 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Major fashion brands, including H&M, M&S and C&A, are getting behind an initiative in Bangladesh that aims to use more recycled materials in clothing production and significantly cut planet-heating emissions from manufacturing by 2030.

The Circular Fashion Partnership, announced this week, brings together more than 30 international brands, Bangladeshi recycling firms, and garment manufacturers in a push to reuse textile waste from clothing factories to create new products.

If successful, the initiative could be replicated in other countries, such as Indonesia and Vietnam, and help cut the broader fashion industry's emissions, said the Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), a nonprofit body that is leading the new scheme.

In 2018, the sector's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were just over 2 billion tonnes, a figure that needs to be halved by 2030, to be in line with global climate goals, said the GFA.

"Reducing environmental impacts such as GHG emissions and circularity go hand in hand," said GFA spokeswoman Alice Roberta Taylor in emailed comments.

The partnership would cut carbon emissions from clothing production and demand for raw materials, which include fossil fuels, by slimming down the amount of waste and increasing the use of recycled materials over virgin materials, she noted.

Under the 2015 Paris climate accord, nearly 200 countries agreed to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by mid-century and limit global average temperature rise to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.

Related Stories 'Pervasive' Microplastic Pollution in Arctic Ocean Points to Fast Fashion

According to 2020 research by the GFA and McKinsey & Company, the fashion industry produces 4% of global climate-warming emissions - equal to the combined annual emissions of France, Germany, and Britain - and needs to intensify its efforts to align with the Paris Agreement goals to curb climate change.

The UN Environment Programme in 2019 put the fashion industry's share of global carbon emissions at 10% - more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined - and said it was the second-biggest consumer of water.

Bangladesh - a low-lying nation considered highly vulnerable to climate change impacts such as intensifying floods, storms and sea level rise - is the world's second-largest producer of clothes and its economy depends heavily on the garment industry.

But most waste from the industry is either exported or downcycled for less valuable uses, said the GFA, adding the circular plan aims to change that by increasing the value of the waste.

Miran Ali, a director at the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said it was time for the fashion industry to move away from a linear business model of "take-make-dispose" and towards a circular approach.

As Bangladeshi factories produce items in large volumes, their waste is standardised, making it relatively easy to deal with, he noted.

"Therefore, Bangladesh can be a global leader in the area of circular economy," he said in a statement.

The Green Climate Fund, set up to help developing nations adopt clean energy and adapt to climate change, approved a separate project last year to help cut emissions in Bangladesh's garment sector by enabling more efficient energy use.

H&M, one of the Bangladesh industry's biggest clients, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it is working on transforming its whole business to become "fully circular and climate positive."

To get there, the Swedish fashion chain's targets include making its supply chain "climate neutral" - meaning it does not contribute to global warming - and only using recycled or other sustainably sourced materials, both by 2030.

"As we move towards a business model based on a circular economy, our climate agenda is pushed. And we want to use our size and scale to make a difference," Cecilia Strömblad Brännsten, H&M Group's environmental sustainability manager, said by email.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation is in a partnership with the Laudes Foundation, which is affiliated with the retailer C&A. (Reporting by Naimul Karim @Naimonthefield; editing by Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

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Fast Fashion Brands Join Sustainable Recycling Partnership in Bangladesh

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DHAKA, Feb 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Major fashion brands, including H&M, M&S and C&A, are getting behind an initiative in Bangladesh that aims to use more recycled materials in clothing production and significantly cut planet-heating emissions from manufacturing by 2030.

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The rise of fast fashion is largely behind the growing amounts of clothing we buy and throw away each year (Credit: Press Association)

Fast fashion is leading to a mountain of clothing being thrown away each year and has a huge impact on the environment, so can we turn our unwanted garments into something useful?

Open your wardrobe and be honest. How long was it since you last wore some of those clothes? Do you think it might be time for a clear out?

Languishing in the back of cupboards and bottom of drawers are outfits that don't fit any more, items that have gone out of fashion, or even clothes that have never been worn. In fact, according to research conducted by sociologist Sophie Woodward at the University of Manchester, on average 12% of clothes in the wardrobes of women she studied could be considered "inactive".

If you were brutal, you'll probably manage to fill a bin-bag or two with clothes you no longer want or need. But what then?

Around 85% of all textiles thrown away in the US - roughly 13 million tonnes in 2017 - are either dumped into landfill or burned. The average American has been estimated to throw away around 37kg of clothes every year. And globally, an estimated 92 million tonnes of textiles waste is created each year and the equivalent to a rubbish truck full of clothes ends up on landfill sites every second. By 2030, we are expected as a whole to be discarding more than 134 million tonnes of textiles a year.

Millions of tonnes of clothing, shoes and other textiles end up in landfill every year because very little is sent for recycling (Credit: Alamy)

"The current fashion system uses high volumes of non-renewable resources, including petroleum, extracted to produce clothes that are often used only for a short period of time, after which the materials are largely lost to landfill or incineration," says Chetna Prajapati, who studies ways of making sustainable textiles at Loughborough University in the UK.

"This system puts pressure on valuable resources such as water, pollutes the environment and degrades ecosystems in addition to creating societal impacts on a global scale."

There are good reasons to seek out alternatives to chucking clothes in the bin - globally the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions, with textile production alone is estimated to release 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. Vast amounts of water are also needed to produce the clothes we wear too and the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of global waste water. ( Read more about the impact our fashion addiction has on the planet.)

At the same time we are buying more clothes than ever - the average consumer now buys 60% more clothing than they did 15 years ago. More than two tonnes of clothing are bought each minute in the UK, more than any other country in Europe. Globally, around 56 million tonnes of clothing are bought each year, and this is expected to rise to 93 million tonnes by 2030 and 160 million tonnes by 2050.

While most clothes with care will last many years, changing fashions mean their lifespan is artificially shortened by consumers changing tastes. Industry figures suggest modern clothing will have a lifespan of between 2-10 years - with underwear and t-shirts lasting just one to two years, while suits and coats last for around four to six years.

Would recycling our clothes help to reduce the toll our fashion addiction has on the environment?

Currently just 13.6% of clothes and shoes thrown away in the US end up being recycled - while the average American throws away 37kg of clothes every year. Globally just 12% of the material used for clothing ends up being recycled. Compare that to paper, glass and plastic PET bottles - which have recycling rates of 66%, 27% and 29% respectively in the US - and it is clear clothing lags behind.

Indeed, most of the recycled polyester being used now by leading fashion brands in fact comes from bottles rather than old clothing.

Much of the problem comes down to what our clothes are made from. The fabrics we drape over our bodies are complex combinations of fibres, fixtures and accessories. They are made from problematic blends of natural yarns, mand-made filaments, plastics and metals.

"For example, a 100% cotton t-shirt contains many other components such as labels and sewing threads which are usually made from another material like polyester," says Prajapati. "Similarly, a typical pair of jeans are made from cotton yarn which is generally blended with elastane, and other components such as zips and buttons and polyester sewing thread and dyed using a range of dyes."

Sorting clothing by hand is a time consuming task made more complicated by the many blends of man-made and natural fibres used in modern garments (Credit: Getty Images)

This makes them hard to separate so they can be effectively recycled. Sorting textiles into different fibres and material types by hand is labour intensive, slow and requires a skilled workforce. Growing use of modern fabric blends in clothing also makes it hard to do this mechanically too, although European researchers have been developing techniques that make use of hyperspectral cameras - which can see light beyond the limits of human vision - to better identify different fabric types. Once sorted, the dyes that have been applied to the fabrics need to be removed in order for yarns to be reused.

Currently, however, very few of the clothes that are sent to be recycled are actually turned into new clothing - a process known as "material to material" recycling. Old wool jumpers, for example, can be turned into carpets, cashmere can be recycled into suits. But as of 2015, less than 1% of used clothing was recycled in this way.

While of course there is a healthy market in second-hand clothes being sold online, perhaps the most popular way of disposing of old clothes is simply to give them away so they can be reused through charity shops. Increasingly, however, clothes donations are being used as a way of simply passing on the textile waste problem to others.

At Oxfam's Wastesaver clothes sorting and recycling plant in Batley, Yorkshire, UK, 80 tonnes of old clothes pass through the factory every week. Lorraine Needham Reid, Oxfam's Wastesaver manager, has worked at the plant for over 10 years. Over that time, however, she has seen a real decline in the quality of clothes that are reaching them, particularly when it comes to the materials used to make the clothes.

These days, most of what reaches Wastesaver will end up never being worn again. Over a third - 35% of the clothes - go to Oxfam's partners in Senegal to be sold. Between 1-3% go back into Oxfam shops around the UK to be re-sold.

The majority is sent for recycling in some way, but about six tonnes of the garments are of such poor quality they are simply torn up so they can be used as industrial cleaning clothes and stuffing for mattresses or car seats.

Fibre recycling technologies do exist, but they are only used on a small scale. Generally, the techniques can be separated into mechanical and chemical recycling.

"Blends are most suitable for mechanical fibre recycling, where fabrics are shredded and pulled to transform them into fibres of shorter length," says Prajapati. Shorter fibre length produces fabrics of lower quality and strength, so the results from this kind of recycling can't be used for clothing. Instead these tend to then be "downcycled" to produce other composite fibre materials such as thermal insulation or carpet for use in the building industry. Some researchers have found ways of creating noise insulation from old textile fibres.

Chemical fibre recycling for fabrics with large quantities of one type of fibre, for example polyester and nylon are well established, says Prajapati. "However, they consist of multiple processes and additional chemicals, making the process and resulting yarn or fabric costly," she says.

Treating cotton-polyester blends with enzymes from fungi can recover the man-made fibres for reuse (Credit: Getty Images)

There has been success on a smaller scale to effectively separate natural and synthetic blends and capture both types of fibres, without losing either fibre in the process. However, scaling up this technology to an industrial scale remains the challenge.

One group of researchers led by Carol Lin, a chemical engineer at the City University of Hong Kong, has developed a technique for recycling fabrics made from cotton and polyester blends by feeding them to fungi. The fungi Aspergillus niger - which typically forms a black mould on grapes - produces an enzyme that can break down the cotton into glucose that can then be used turned into syrup. The remaining pure polyester fibres can then be reused to make new clothing, they claim. Poly-cotton blends are now among the most popular fabrics for use in cheap clothing, commonly used in t-shirts, shirts and even jeans.

Lin and her team have since refined the process so it can be done on a larger scale using industrially produced cellulose enzymes, and have been working with the clothing retailer H&M to examine what impact this recycling process might have on its textile waste.

Austrian researchers have also developed techniques using enzymes that allow them to turn old wool clothing into a material that can be used as a resin or adhesive.

But if we ever hope to make our clothing sustainable, more fundamental changes to the clothing industry will need to be made. Fabrics, fibres and garments will need to be designed in ways that make them easier to recover and recycle.

"Recycling needs to be incorporated into the current system to make it more circular," says Prajapati. "Therefore, the way we design clothes needs to change, it needs to facilitate recycling."

One option is to create new types of materials altogether, from different sources, that either won't have the same impact on the environment or might be easier to recycle. Some are even looking at turning other types of waste - such as off milk - into clothing.

When milk turns sour, it separates into whey at the bottom and protein flakes on top. When you remove the whey, you are left with a kind of cottage cheese.

"This cottage cheese is put into a machine that works like a noodle machine," says Anke Domaske, founder of QMilk, a company that has been developing new types of biodegradable fibres in Hemmingen, Germany. "Together with water you create a dough. At the end there is a spinneret with holes so fine that you do not end up with noodles, but fine fibres that are thinner than hair."

The company then spins these fibres into yarns, which it says have a silk-like texture. These can then be used to make jersey or woven fabrics, or other textiles like felt. Crucially, when a garment made completely from QMilk fibres is no longer wanted, it can simply be composted at home, Domaske says.

QMilk isn't the only company creating textiles from unusual sources.

The dye that is added to clothing also needs to be removed before it the yarn can be recycled (Credit: Getty Images)

After working for years at a design company in Germany, Renana Krebs saw behind the scenes how poor the textiles and clothing industry is for the environment. She vowed to do something about it and in 2016, she started Algalife, making fibres and dyes from algae.

Algae is already widely used in the beauty industry, in certain foods and it is used to make biofuels. "After learning about all those industries, and the benefits that we get from algae, we asked 'why not to do this for textiles?'" says Krebs.

One benefit is the algae are harvested in a closed system, meaning there is no freshwater used in the process at all. All the algae need to grow is water and sunlight. By extracting natural colourings from different types of algae, Krebs and her team have been able to combine these with enzymes and fixative agents - which help to bind the pigment to a fabric - from synthetic and natural sources, including oak galls, pomegranate rind and juniper needles.

They have also been able to produce fibres that can turned into yarns by purifying proteins from the algae or even using them to produce a bio-oil that can be turned into bioplastic fibres.

Prajapati has also been working with colleagues at De Montfort University to produce enzymes that could potentially make the clothes dying process more sustainable.

Currently most textiles are coloured using synthetic dyes, which are petroleum derivatives, and patterned with complex processes. These processes can require temperatures of up to 100C for cotton, nylon and wool, but higher for polyester and other synthetic fibres. On top of this, the process requires high pressures, long processing times and the use of additional chemicals such as acids and alkalis, which are harmful towards the environment in large quantities.

Prajapati and her colleagues have been developing processes that use enzymes so that textile dyes and patterning of fabrics can be done temperatures as low as 50C, at atmospheric pressure and pH conditions around neutral without the use of additional chemicals.

"The key advantages over conventional methods include simpler processing of textiles, the elimination of pre-manufactured dyes and opportunities for multiple colours to be achieved through simple alteration of processing conditions," she says.

Pigments made by Algalife have similar benefits, plus the added benefit of being created from renewable sources, says Krebs. You can even drink the dye they produce, she says. Algalife is now working with a major retail fashion brand and hope to have clothes made from algae in stores by 2021.

Other major brands across the fashion industry are starting to pay attention to the demand for more sustainable practices. Companies like Adidas, that recently announced a range of trainers made from ocean plastic. High street retailer Zara also announced in 2019 that it would be using only sustainable materials by 2025.

The shredding process used by mechanical recycling methods leads to shorter, weaker fibres that cannot be resued to make clothes (Credit: Alamy)

"Using recycled, rather than virgin, materials offers an opportunity to drastically reduce non-renewable resource inputs and the negative impacts of the industry, like CO2 emissions, water and chemical use," says Prajapati.

But some are sceptical about how committed some large brands are to sustainability, accusing them of "greenwashing", which the companies deny.

Zara was one of the original inventors of the fast fashion system as we know it, says Clare Press, Australian Vogue's sustainability editor-at-large and author of the book Wardrobe Crisis. "Let's not pretend people shop at Zara for heirlooms to pass down through the generations," she says. "In the last 20 years the fashion system has changed completely, moving away from seasonal drops towards near-instant gratification. Waiting six months for a runway look seems crazy to a new generation of fashion fans raised on Instagram and 'see now, buy now'."

So while recycling and more sustainable fabrics will be a key part of the solution, consumers too will need to change their behaviour if we hope to lessen the impact that the fashion industry is having on our planet.

"We need to slow down, take a little time to reconnect with our clothes and appreciate them again," says Press. "Remember that whatever you are wearing, it took both physical and creative resources to make it."

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Fast fashion is leading to a mountain of clothing being thrown away each year and has a huge impact on the environment, so can we turn our unwanted garments into something useful?

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The Good Trade editors endorse products we've personally researched, tested, and genuinely love. Learn more about our methodology and business model here.

As we've become more conscious about our purchases, we often wonder: Who makes the clothes we wear every day and in what kind of conditions? Documentaries like " The True Cost" shine a light on how the fast fashion industry depletes the earth's resources and leverages labor to pass on a "cheap" cost to the end consumer.

But our spending-and non-spending-can help make a positive difference for the people and resources involved in the making of our clothing. So when we do need to update our wardrobes, we turn to slow fashion brands like the 35 sustainable fashion brands listed below. Each fashion brand has made it a central part of its mission to approach garment production in an ethical and transparent way that considers both people and the planet. Many of these ethical clothing brands come with third-party sustainable and ethical certifications as well.

If you're new to shopping for sustainable fashion, you may be surprised by the price tags-but it's important to understand these brands are not designed to be consumed at the same rate as fast fashion. Instead, these sustainable fashion brands prioritize eco-friendly practices, ethical production standards, timeless design, and high-quality essentials that never go out of style.

For more sustainable clothing, you can check out our guides to responsibly made shoes, sustainable underwear, and even fair trade fashion brands in the UK.

And remember: We don't have to buy a whole new wardrobe all at once. To create a more sustainable wardrobe, we can simply start with what we have, mend pieces we love most, and build our closets out slowly and intentionally.

2. Pact

Pact is pretty obsessed with making super-soft sustainable clothes for kids and adults that also make the world a better place. This socially conscious brand goes to great lengths to make sure its entire supply chain, from the growing and harvesting of the organic cotton to the final sewing and all the processes in between, are as responsible and clean as possible. And the non-GMO cotton is great for you and the farmers growing it. Pact is one of our go-to brands for basics and underwear, and offers carbon-offset shipping for a more sustainable purchase.

8. Kotn

Add some luxury to your daily wardrobe with Kotn's ultra-soft basics, made from Egyptian cotton. From its farms to its factories, Kotn creates all of its garments in a fair and safe environment, and is even helping suppliers make the switch to organic within the next five years. In addition, the certified B Corp has helped impact over 100,000 lives in Egypt by building schools and funding 2,000+ farms. With quality manufacturing, you know its cotton tees will last you 30 wears and beyond-and cozy and impactful every time.

9. Fair Indigo

One thing that is often overlooked when shopping for sustainable apparel is the quality and longevity of an item. Fair Indigo is committed to creating clothes that will last upwards of five years-like the Forever Organic Tees (available in a variety of styles and earth-friendly dyes). The brand's garments are made with organic Peruvian Pima cotton, grown on a family farm and harvested by hand. With an emphasis on quality apparel, sustainable and ethical practices, and free shipping options, it's one of our go-to shops for affordable organic basics and artisan-made accessories.

12. Summersalt

Summersalt, a travelwear brand offering sustainable swimwear, athleisure, and loungewear, turned to women themselves to inform its fit-10,000 women to be exact. Equipped with over 1.5 million measurements, the team has created a versatile and delightful line of garments, from color-blocking one-pieces to light and breezy sweaters. Summersalt pieces are responsibly made in WRAP- and sustainably certified factories, using materials like recycled polyamide, regenerative cupro, and cruelty-free wool.

16. ALOHAS

ALOHAS is committed to a sustainable on-demand model to eliminate waste from overstock. Working from pre-orders, they make only what is needed, filling happy customer carts and not the landfill. Their Spanish factories are externally audited to maintain the highest level of fair labor practices, and their Second Life Project uses cactus and corn leathers along with other recycled materials for soles, heels, caps, and linings. Come here for well-made, elevated classics with updated details, perfect when your style hasn't quite changed but you're interested in a revamp.

17. Christy Dawn

Christy Dawn hopes only to take inspiration from Mother Earth-and nothing else. This sustainable brand works primarily with deadstock or surplus fabric that would otherwise be wasted along with organic cotton, rather than conventional textiles. Most recently, Christy Dawn has taken it a step further to invest in regenerative farming practices through its Farm-to-Closet initiative in India. There's so much to love here, from a line of petite and extended sizing to maternity-friendly pieces.

20. Organic Basics

Organic Basics aims to create all your basics at a higher level: their motto, "Basically Better Made" says it all! They use sustainable materials like regenerative organic cotton, Italian eco-certified recycled nylon, and TENCEL™ Lyocell sustainable sourced from central European forests, and they are also transparenty about their ethical production. We particularly love their undies and lounge sets, and everything except their wool and cashmere collections are PETA-approved vegan.

24. Levi's

Donned by cowboys, presidents, and everyone in between, Levi's is known for being the face of denim-with a presence in more than 100 countries. And the team has always been at the forefront of change and progress: The brand touts eco-friendly and sustainable practices like recyclable denim, ethically sourced cotton, and innovations to reduce water use, in addition to giving back to its workers and community organizations alike. Find apparel (some discounted secondhand!) for the entire family that continues to stay "in"...and lasts.

29. TomboyX

TomboyX specializes in creating unisex garments for your entire wardrobe: underwear, activewear, swimwear, and ever accessories for bodies of all shapes, sizes, and gender expressions. Their thoughtful attention to bodies extends to their production practices, and each piece is made without harmful chemicals or wasteful packaging. The brand uses a water recycling program and ethical factories in Asia and South America. Working directly with suppliers and factories, TomboyX is diligent about their supply chain, which we love to see!

30. Avocado

Best For | Breathable & cozy pajamas| Certified B Corp, GOTS certified organic & biodegradable fabrics, MADE SAFE certified, nontoxic dyes, gives back to anti-hunger causes & 1% For The Planet
Price Range | $$-$$$$

From natural bedding company Avocado comes a new responsible fashion brand. With ribbed sweaters made from renewable alpaca fiber, ultra-breathable modal pajama sets, and organic cotton tees, the collection is full of comfy basics and loungewear that are super soft and ethically sourced. Plus, every purchase from the certified B Corp feeds one person in need so you'll feel good wearing these clothes, in more ways than one.

31. LACAUSA

LACAUSA is as clever as it is conscious. The name La Causa is Spanish for "The Cause," and it also represents the company's Los Angeles location. (LA, CA, USA, get it?) Whether you're shopping for a flowy dress reminiscent of warm, breezy weather or you'd prefer a jumpsuit to pair with your favorite mules, this ethical and sustainable brand is where classic meets comfort. Most garments are made in LA, and for the apparel crafted overseas, the brand ensures fair factories, living wages, and healthy working conditions for all. LACAUSA gives back quarterly to various charities.

32. Outerknown

Looking for durable classics that transcend season? Outerknown has 'em. This green brand knows that a truly conscious company needs to consider both people and the planet before, during, and post-production. The team works with global partners who offer fair wages and practice sustainable production, carefully detailing every partner on the site. It's also been a leader in creating many sustainable firsts, including recycled plastic trunks. The California-cool aesthetic for all genders, matched with the brand's ethics, has us excited to come back for more-even through its secondhand shop!

33. EILEEN FISHER

EILEEN FISHER is an industry leader in ethical and sustainable fashion. The company believes social and environmental injustices are a reason to do business completely differently, and carefully oversees its entire supply chain to ensure fair working wages. The brand is also on a mission to be a leader in circular systems, taking back old pieces of apparel and making new ones whenever possible. Otherwise, it crafts stunning organic cotton, recycled nylon, silk, and linen clothing -without hazardous chemicals.

35. Sotela

Best For | Flexible fits | Ethically made in the USA, organic & sustainable materials, made-to-order, recycled packaging, inclusive sizing
Size Range | 0-30 (see sizing details here)
Price Range | $$-$$$$

Our bodies change and fluctuate every single day; whether it's from bloating, weight change, or pregnancy, the list goes on and on. The team behind Sotela wants you to celebrate your body in any and all forms. Its line of body-positive women's apparel uses flexible sizing so that your body can look relaxed and confident in any outfit, any day. All of the apparel is made in-house in its LA studio, utilizing eco-friendly fabrics like TENCEL & linen whenever possible, and shipped to you in recycled packaging.
Featured image is from Summersalt

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35 Sustainable Clothing Brands Betting Against Fast Fashion - The Good Trade

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The best sustainable clothing brands and ethical fashion collections of 2023.

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Getty

The fashion industry is known for creating trends, and now it's working on its most important trend yet: sustainability. And unlike some questionable fashion decisions, this is a trend all consumers can get behind. We know even Nordstrom is now selling used clothing. Everyone is starting to wake up to the fact that the consumer preference has changed, and she wants more eco-friendly products.

Increasingly, customers want to have a positive impact on the environment. Research shows that 88% of consumers want brands to help them be more environmentally friendly. Yet, fashion is notorious for its wasteful practices that are hurting the environment. Fashion production releases 10% of the world's carbon emissions, more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. The fashion industry is responsible for 20% of all water pollution worldwide. If the fashion industry continues on its current path, it will produce 26% of the world's carbon footprint by 2050. Clearly, something needs to be done to remedy the situation and disrupt the industry.

Here are 10 fashion companies leading the way in sustainability. These companies, large and small, show the potential for sustainable fashion that looks good and does good.
Rothy's
From their materials to production to the way they treat their employees, Rothy's has been sustainable since day one. I personally have two pairs of Rothy's I love walking around in, especially speaking on stage at business events. I am pregnant and comfort is everything. Also, as I learned on the Rachel Hollis podcast "Rise," they are made from 100% recycled plastic water bottles and post-consumer recycled materials.
Tentree
For each item purchased, Tentree lives up to its name and plants 10 trees and even gives customers a code so they can track the growth of their trees. It is on track to plant one billion trees by 2030. Tentree's clothing is made from ethically sourced and sustainable materials including cork, coconut and recycled polyester and produced in ethical factories.
Everlane
Everlane mixes sustainability with transparency by sharing with customers the exact breakdown of the cost of each item and showing the factories where garments are made. The company builds strong relationships with factory owners to ensure that the employees and production meet Everlane's high ethical standards. Everlane also recently released a line of clothing made from recycled plastic bottles and other reused materials.
Pact
This Colorado-based company sells certified organic and fair-trade clothing for the entire family. The entire supply chain, from growing and harvesting the non-GMO cotton to creating the final pieces, is as sustainable and clean as possible and includes processes that use significantly less water than traditional cotton. Pact also reuses old clothing and linens to create many of its items.
Patagonia
Patagonia not only uses sustainable materials in its outerwear, but it also helps customers repair their clothing instead of buying new items. Patagonia follows fair-trade practices and closely monitors its supply chain to make it safe for the environment, workers and consumers. Its goal is to find solutions to environmental issues without causing unnecessary harm to the world. Because the products are so durable, customers are encouraged to recycle old Patagonia gear and purchase items second hand.
Levi's
Denim is notorious for requiring huge amounts of water to create one pair of jeans, but Levi's new collection, Water<Less, uses up to 96% less water. For this and all of its products, Levi's is committed to sustainability through the entire design and manufacturing process, including working towards 100% sustainably sourced cotton and recycling old jeans into home insulation.
H&M Conscious
H&M is moving away from its fast fashion roots with the Conscious collection, made of materials like organic cotton and recycled polyester. By using eco-friendly fabrics and more sustainable production methods, the company hopes to reduce its environmental footprint. Customers can also recycle unwanted garments at H&M stores and get a discount for a future purchase. As a whole, H&M has a goal to use only sustainably sourced materials by 2030.
Reformation
Each stylish item from Reformation comes with a description and score of its environmental footprint to help customers understand the impact of their clothing. The pieces are made of upcycled and sustainable materials in fair wage environments. Reformation has been carbon neutral since 2015 and helps protect deforested areas to offset its manufacturing. Customers can also sell their old clothing to Reformation to earn credit for new pieces.
Amour Vert
This clothing brand makes sustainably sourced garments in smaller batches to avoid the waste of unsold items. Amour Vert partners directly with mills to ensure items are made using non-toxic dyes and the most sustainable fabrics. For every item purchased, Amour Vert plants a tree. The company also follows a zero-waste policy and finds creative solutions to recycle and reuse items.
Eileen Fisher
Every aspect of Eileen Fisher's design and manufacturing process is built to be as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible, from the materials used to the ethical treatment of the workers who sew the pieces. The company avoids air shipping and uses creative processes to limit fabric waste. Eileen Fisher buys back used items to recycle into new garments or turn into art if the clothing can't be resold.
People Tree
Founded in 1991, People Tree was one of the first sustainable fashion brands. It is the only brand credited by the World Fair Trade Organization and invests heavily in sustainable and environmentally friendly practices, including organic farming. People Tree promotes fair wages and good working conditions and uses sustainable materials like organic cotton, natural fibers and chemical free dyes.

Consumers are looking to move away from fast fashion to more environmentally friendly options that are as stylish as they are responsible. These companies show that even small improvements to the materials and processes can create a major and much-needed change in the fashion industry.
Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker and the author of the bestselling book The Customer Of The Future. Sign up for her weekly newsletter .
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11 Fashion Companies Leading The Way In Sustainability

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The fashion industry is known for creating trends, and now it's working on its most important trend yet: sustainability. And unlike some questionable fashion decisions, this is a trend all consumers can get behind. We know even Nordstrom is now selling used clothing.

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The Netherlands – Fixing Fashion is providing education to empower people to keep – and maintain – their clothes for longer.

The open-source platform is organised into three categories – Care, Repair, and Upgrade – and offers an ever-growing library of information about repairing and maintaining garments and accessories, delivered as video tutorials, diagrams and detailed instructions. Each of the tutorials include techniques that are accessible and available to everyone, using resources such as household bleach, cardboard and basic sewing kits.

Alongside this, Fixing Fashion is creating community around the concept of fixing and upgrading clothing, beginning with a dedicated chat on messaging platform Discord. ‘I didn’t want to support the linear way of producing and say recycling is the answer,’ comments Alicia Minnaard, designer and co-founder of Fixing Fashion. ‘Repairing, upgrading and actually caring for clothing is what’s really missing in fashion.'

With growing awareness around sustainability in fashion, consumers are getting creative and adopting DIY Dressing behaviours to reinvent their wardrobes.

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US – Material science and apparel company Pangaia is using carbon negative ink as an eco-friendly alternative to conventional textile printing.

Working with pollution upcycling company Graviky Labs, Pangaia is utilising the company’s Air-Ink innovation – a water-based black ink formulated using carbon-capture technology. The ink is created using an extraction process, whereby air pollution particles are transformed into different grades of inks, dispersions and coatings. Pangaia will use the Air-Ink for black lettering and graphics on its capsule collection of recycled cotton hoodies, t-shirts and trousers.

The eco-conscious nature of the collaboration is also reflected in the collection’s logo: an infinity symbol that represents circularity in fashion. For Graviky Labs, teaming up with the apparel brand means it is able to expand its reach and continue raising awareness around its carbon negative solution.

We've also discovered how pollution is being used in the luxury sector, with companies such as Aether diamonds redirecting carbon to create lab-grown diamonds.

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France – Two students are proposing a future in which chewing gum is given a new lease of life – and our city streets are tidier – by turning the sticky stuff into skateboard wheels.

Design students Hugo Maupetit and Vivian Fischer of L'École de Design Nantes Atlantique put forward the idea as an imagined partnership between skate brand Vans and gum company Mentos. The duo propose collecting chewing gum through gum boards affixed to lampposts, after which the gum would be cleaned and mixed with a secret ingredient to stabilise it. After being stained with natural dye to form the base of the wheels, they suggest the material is machined into skateboard wheels and stamped with the brands' logos.

‘Our initiative is supposed to clean the streets in a sustainable way,’ reads a statement from the designers. ‘We invented a system that will transform used wheels and turn them into new ones. No more waste is created, and the material stays in use.'

In a similar vein, circular economy company Pentatonic last year introduced The Pebble, a re-usable cutlery and dining set made from recycled CDs.

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The rise of fast fashion is largely behind the growing amounts of clothing we buy and throw away each year (Credit: Press Association)

Fast fashion is leading to a mountain of clothing being thrown away each year and has a huge impact on the environment, so can we turn our unwanted garments into something useful?

Open your wardrobe and be honest. How long was it since you last wore some of those clothes? Do you think it might be time for a clear out?

Languishing in the back of cupboards and bottom of drawers are outfits that don't fit any more, items that have gone out of fashion, or even clothes that have never been worn. In fact, according to research conducted by sociologist Sophie Woodward at the University of Manchester, on average 12% of clothes in the wardrobes of women she studied could be considered "inactive".

If you were brutal, you'll probably manage to fill a bin-bag or two with clothes you no longer want or need. But what then?

Around 85% of all textiles thrown away in the US - roughly 13 million tonnes in 2017 - are either dumped into landfill or burned. The average American has been estimated to throw away around 37kg of clothes every year. And globally, an estimated 92 million tonnes of textiles waste is created each year and the equivalent to a rubbish truck full of clothes ends up on landfill sites every second. By 2030, we are expected as a whole to be discarding more than 134 million tonnes of textiles a year.

Millions of tonnes of clothing, shoes and other textiles end up in landfill every year because very little is sent for recycling (Credit: Alamy)

"The current fashion system uses high volumes of non-renewable resources, including petroleum, extracted to produce clothes that are often used only for a short period of time, after which the materials are largely lost to landfill or incineration," says Chetna Prajapati, who studies ways of making sustainable textiles at Loughborough University in the UK.

"This system puts pressure on valuable resources such as water, pollutes the environment and degrades ecosystems in addition to creating societal impacts on a global scale."

There are good reasons to seek out alternatives to chucking clothes in the bin - globally the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions, with textile production alone is estimated to release 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. Vast amounts of water are also needed to produce the clothes we wear too and the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of global waste water. ( Read more about the impact our fashion addiction has on the planet.)

At the same time we are buying more clothes than ever - the average consumer now buys 60% more clothing than they did 15 years ago. More than two tonnes of clothing are bought each minute in the UK, more than any other country in Europe. Globally, around 56 million tonnes of clothing are bought each year, and this is expected to rise to 93 million tonnes by 2030 and 160 million tonnes by 2050.

While most clothes with care will last many years, changing fashions mean their lifespan is artificially shortened by consumers changing tastes. Industry figures suggest modern clothing will have a lifespan of between 2-10 years - with underwear and t-shirts lasting just one to two years, while suits and coats last for around four to six years.

Would recycling our clothes help to reduce the toll our fashion addiction has on the environment?

Currently just 13.6% of clothes and shoes thrown away in the US end up being recycled - while the average American throws away 37kg of clothes every year. Globally just 12% of the material used for clothing ends up being recycled. Compare that to paper, glass and plastic PET bottles - which have recycling rates of 66%, 27% and 29% respectively in the US - and it is clear clothing lags behind.

Indeed, most of the recycled polyester being used now by leading fashion brands in fact comes from bottles rather than old clothing.

Much of the problem comes down to what our clothes are made from. The fabrics we drape over our bodies are complex combinations of fibres, fixtures and accessories. They are made from problematic blends of natural yarns, mand-made filaments, plastics and metals.

"For example, a 100% cotton t-shirt contains many other components such as labels and sewing threads which are usually made from another material like polyester," says Prajapati. "Similarly, a typical pair of jeans are made from cotton yarn which is generally blended with elastane, and other components such as zips and buttons and polyester sewing thread and dyed using a range of dyes."

Sorting clothing by hand is a time consuming task made more complicated by the many blends of man-made and natural fibres used in modern garments (Credit: Getty Images)

This makes them hard to separate so they can be effectively recycled. Sorting textiles into different fibres and material types by hand is labour intensive, slow and requires a skilled workforce. Growing use of modern fabric blends in clothing also makes it hard to do this mechanically too, although European researchers have been developing techniques that make use of hyperspectral cameras - which can see light beyond the limits of human vision - to better identify different fabric types. Once sorted, the dyes that have been applied to the fabrics need to be removed in order for yarns to be reused.

Currently, however, very few of the clothes that are sent to be recycled are actually turned into new clothing - a process known as "material to material" recycling. Old wool jumpers, for example, can be turned into carpets, cashmere can be recycled into suits. But as of 2015, less than 1% of used clothing was recycled in this way.

While of course there is a healthy market in second-hand clothes being sold online, perhaps the most popular way of disposing of old clothes is simply to give them away so they can be reused through charity shops. Increasingly, however, clothes donations are being used as a way of simply passing on the textile waste problem to others.

At Oxfam's Wastesaver clothes sorting and recycling plant in Batley, Yorkshire, UK, 80 tonnes of old clothes pass through the factory every week. Lorraine Needham Reid, Oxfam's Wastesaver manager, has worked at the plant for over 10 years. Over that time, however, she has seen a real decline in the quality of clothes that are reaching them, particularly when it comes to the materials used to make the clothes.

These days, most of what reaches Wastesaver will end up never being worn again. Over a third - 35% of the clothes - go to Oxfam's partners in Senegal to be sold. Between 1-3% go back into Oxfam shops around the UK to be re-sold.

The majority is sent for recycling in some way, but about six tonnes of the garments are of such poor quality they are simply torn up so they can be used as industrial cleaning clothes and stuffing for mattresses or car seats.

Fibre recycling technologies do exist, but they are only used on a small scale. Generally, the techniques can be separated into mechanical and chemical recycling.

"Blends are most suitable for mechanical fibre recycling, where fabrics are shredded and pulled to transform them into fibres of shorter length," says Prajapati. Shorter fibre length produces fabrics of lower quality and strength, so the results from this kind of recycling can't be used for clothing. Instead these tend to then be "downcycled" to produce other composite fibre materials such as thermal insulation or carpet for use in the building industry. Some researchers have found ways of creating noise insulation from old textile fibres.

Chemical fibre recycling for fabrics with large quantities of one type of fibre, for example polyester and nylon are well established, says Prajapati. "However, they consist of multiple processes and additional chemicals, making the process and resulting yarn or fabric costly," she says.

Treating cotton-polyester blends with enzymes from fungi can recover the man-made fibres for reuse (Credit: Getty Images)

There has been success on a smaller scale to effectively separate natural and synthetic blends and capture both types of fibres, without losing either fibre in the process. However, scaling up this technology to an industrial scale remains the challenge.

One group of researchers led by Carol Lin, a chemical engineer at the City University of Hong Kong, has developed a technique for recycling fabrics made from cotton and polyester blends by feeding them to fungi. The fungi Aspergillus niger - which typically forms a black mould on grapes - produces an enzyme that can break down the cotton into glucose that can then be used turned into syrup. The remaining pure polyester fibres can then be reused to make new clothing, they claim. Poly-cotton blends are now among the most popular fabrics for use in cheap clothing, commonly used in t-shirts, shirts and even jeans.

Lin and her team have since refined the process so it can be done on a larger scale using industrially produced cellulose enzymes, and have been working with the clothing retailer H&M to examine what impact this recycling process might have on its textile waste.

Austrian researchers have also developed techniques using enzymes that allow them to turn old wool clothing into a material that can be used as a resin or adhesive.

But if we ever hope to make our clothing sustainable, more fundamental changes to the clothing industry will need to be made. Fabrics, fibres and garments will need to be designed in ways that make them easier to recover and recycle.

"Recycling needs to be incorporated into the current system to make it more circular," says Prajapati. "Therefore, the way we design clothes needs to change, it needs to facilitate recycling."

One option is to create new types of materials altogether, from different sources, that either won't have the same impact on the environment or might be easier to recycle. Some are even looking at turning other types of waste - such as off milk - into clothing.

When milk turns sour, it separates into whey at the bottom and protein flakes on top. When you remove the whey, you are left with a kind of cottage cheese.

"This cottage cheese is put into a machine that works like a noodle machine," says Anke Domaske, founder of QMilk, a company that has been developing new types of biodegradable fibres in Hemmingen, Germany. "Together with water you create a dough. At the end there is a spinneret with holes so fine that you do not end up with noodles, but fine fibres that are thinner than hair."

The company then spins these fibres into yarns, which it says have a silk-like texture. These can then be used to make jersey or woven fabrics, or other textiles like felt. Crucially, when a garment made completely from QMilk fibres is no longer wanted, it can simply be composted at home, Domaske says.

QMilk isn't the only company creating textiles from unusual sources.

The dye that is added to clothing also needs to be removed before it the yarn can be recycled (Credit: Getty Images)

After working for years at a design company in Germany, Renana Krebs saw behind the scenes how poor the textiles and clothing industry is for the environment. She vowed to do something about it and in 2016, she started Algalife, making fibres and dyes from algae.

Algae is already widely used in the beauty industry, in certain foods and it is used to make biofuels. "After learning about all those industries, and the benefits that we get from algae, we asked 'why not to do this for textiles?'" says Krebs.

One benefit is the algae are harvested in a closed system, meaning there is no freshwater used in the process at all. All the algae need to grow is water and sunlight. By extracting natural colourings from different types of algae, Krebs and her team have been able to combine these with enzymes and fixative agents - which help to bind the pigment to a fabric - from synthetic and natural sources, including oak galls, pomegranate rind and juniper needles.

They have also been able to produce fibres that can turned into yarns by purifying proteins from the algae or even using them to produce a bio-oil that can be turned into bioplastic fibres.

Prajapati has also been working with colleagues at De Montfort University to produce enzymes that could potentially make the clothes dying process more sustainable.

Currently most textiles are coloured using synthetic dyes, which are petroleum derivatives, and patterned with complex processes. These processes can require temperatures of up to 100C for cotton, nylon and wool, but higher for polyester and other synthetic fibres. On top of this, the process requires high pressures, long processing times and the use of additional chemicals such as acids and alkalis, which are harmful towards the environment in large quantities.

Prajapati and her colleagues have been developing processes that use enzymes so that textile dyes and patterning of fabrics can be done temperatures as low as 50C, at atmospheric pressure and pH conditions around neutral without the use of additional chemicals.

"The key advantages over conventional methods include simpler processing of textiles, the elimination of pre-manufactured dyes and opportunities for multiple colours to be achieved through simple alteration of processing conditions," she says.

Pigments made by Algalife have similar benefits, plus the added benefit of being created from renewable sources, says Krebs. You can even drink the dye they produce, she says. Algalife is now working with a major retail fashion brand and hope to have clothes made from algae in stores by 2021.

Other major brands across the fashion industry are starting to pay attention to the demand for more sustainable practices. Companies like Adidas, that recently announced a range of trainers made from ocean plastic. High street retailer Zara also announced in 2019 that it would be using only sustainable materials by 2025.

The shredding process used by mechanical recycling methods leads to shorter, weaker fibres that cannot be resued to make clothes (Credit: Alamy)

"Using recycled, rather than virgin, materials offers an opportunity to drastically reduce non-renewable resource inputs and the negative impacts of the industry, like CO2 emissions, water and chemical use," says Prajapati.

But some are sceptical about how committed some large brands are to sustainability, accusing them of "greenwashing", which the companies deny.

Zara was one of the original inventors of the fast fashion system as we know it, says Clare Press, Australian Vogue's sustainability editor-at-large and author of the book Wardrobe Crisis. "Let's not pretend people shop at Zara for heirlooms to pass down through the generations," she says. "In the last 20 years the fashion system has changed completely, moving away from seasonal drops towards near-instant gratification. Waiting six months for a runway look seems crazy to a new generation of fashion fans raised on Instagram and 'see now, buy now'."

So while recycling and more sustainable fabrics will be a key part of the solution, consumers too will need to change their behaviour if we hope to lessen the impact that the fashion industry is having on our planet.

"We need to slow down, take a little time to reconnect with our clothes and appreciate them again," says Press. "Remember that whatever you are wearing, it took both physical and creative resources to make it."

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "The Essential List". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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Fast fashion is leading to a mountain of clothing being thrown away each year and has a huge impact on the environment, so can we turn our unwanted garments into something useful?

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https://www.reblend.nl/en/?gclid=CjwKCAjwkN6EBhBNEiwADVfyaxf5hWnLOOd9XH83-7ZdVsVvZwSoZOWfbUL4C8TxeQtqxqjtz1wH1BoCcUQQAvD_BwE

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Towards circular textiles

ReBlend is a social enterprise with a mission to raise awareness about the ecological impact of the textile industry and to inspire the use of looped & renewable raw materials. To offer a solution ReBlend develops textiles and textile products made from textiles that otherwise end up in incineration. The textiles made from recycled fibres are a positive alternative for designers and companies looking for products that look good & feel good.

In collaboration with waste collectors, producers, designers, makers and visionaries ReBlend organizes a full supply chain from start to finish to guarantee their textiles don't harm people and planet and accelerate a new ecosystem for circular textiles.

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Towards circular textiles ReBlend is a social enterprise with a mission to raise awareness about the ecological impact of the textile industry and to inspire the use of looped & renewable raw materials. To offer a solution ReBlend develops textiles and textile products made from textiles that otherwise end up in incineration.

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Recycling fashion: The town turning waste into clothes- BBC News

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By altering, accessorising and combining clothes in new ways, you can revamp your wardrobe and look amazing.

Join our army of refashionistas, creating new outfits from unloved garments, and get some seriously crafty ideas for giving your old favourites a second chance. Getting creative with your clothes isn't just about saving cash: it can give you a fabulous style that nobody else can match.

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By altering, accessorising and combining clothes in new ways, you can revamp your wardrobe and look amazing. Join our army of refashionistas, creating new outfits from unloved garments, and get some seriously crafty ideas for giving your old favourites a second chance.

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How To Recycle Old Clothing (Even Ratty Ass Underwear)

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If you've got a giant bag full of Ed Hardy graphic tees and gaucho pants collecting dust in the back of your closet, here's how to keep them out of the trash and out of your sight.

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Fashion

Image: Kust

Polish underwear label Kust has launched a sustainable swimwear collection made using recycled materials.

The premium menswear brand has made the collection using Econyl, a recycled nylon made from regenerated fishing nets and other waste found in the ocean.

The collection comes in two styles - briefs, in black, turquoise and deep pink, and shorts, in royal blue, black and red.

The collection is accompanied by a campaign capturing the spirit of the Baltic resort town while adhering to the brand's in-house minimalist, retro silhouette.

Prices range from 90 euros for the briefs to 100 euros for the shorts.

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Kust launches sustainable swimwear collection made with Econyl

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Polish underwear label Kust has launched a sustainable swimwear collection made using recycled materials. The premium menswear brand has made the collection using Econyl, a recycled nylon made from regenerated fishing nets and other waste found in the ocean. The collection comes in two styles - briefs, in black, turquoise and deep pink, and shorts, in royal blue, black and red.

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Home / Knowledge / Article / Textile / Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Cotton

By: New Cloth Market

The Global Organic Textiles Standard (GOTS) prohibits all "genetically modified organisms (GMO's) and their derivatives". According to the Organic Exchange, none of the organic growing standards established by any government allows for GMO crops. In April, 2009, Germany announced a plan to ban all GMO crops in the country, citing concerns of the environmental impact, making Germany the latest in a string of EU countries to outlaw GMO crops. And during a public comment period in 2000, the Organic Trade Association generated 275,000 letters against GMOs being included in the National Organic Program (NOP).

Why the fuss? After all, GMO crops were developed to help us meet the demands our burgeoning population makes on our limited resources. How can that be bad?

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are plants, animals and microorganisms which have been altered genetically. Here's how the National Organic Standards Board puts it: "Genetically engineered is defined as: made with techniques that alter the molecular or cell biology of an organism by means that are not possible under natural conditions or processes. Genetic engineering includes recombinant DNA, cell fusion, micro-and macro-encapsulation, gene deletion and doubling, introducing a foreign gene, and changing the positions of genes."

The benefits of genetic engineering in the agriculture sector is great, according to its proponents. GMO crops have been hailed as a way to increase yields by protecting against pests, drought and disease. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has put forward the arguments for GMOs in agriculture, (such as increased yields and better resistance to pests and other stresses - which reduces dependence on chemicals needed for crop protection, They also list the arguments against GMO crops. There is great debate about the pros and cons of this relatively new product.

But before looking at some of the reasons so many are opposed to genetic engineering, let's look at the issues pertaining to fiber crops only - and to cotton specifically:

Shortly after GMO cotton was introduced, GMO cotton producers, citing advances based on new GMO cotton and supported by a series of Cotton Incorporated conferences on sustainable cotton, portrayed conventional cotton as the new "sustainable" choice and organic cotton as an old and inadequate solution that is "as out-dated as last year's fashions."

GMO cotton was quickly adopted by cotton farmers, and millions of hectares of GMO modified cotton has been planted worldwide since its introduction in 1996.

Why did so many farmers pay for GMO seed - which cost more - and plant this new crop? Bottom line: they were told that there was more money to be made from GMO cotton. GMO cotton was supposed to have higher yields at the same time it was helping to reduce costs. Cost savings in chemicals and manual labor was estimated at between 15 - 30%. How did it reduce dependence on chemicals:

GMO cotton was engineered to reduce insect pests so farmers could reduce their chemical dependence on pesticides, and buy less of them. The gene coding for Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) was inserted into the cotton. Bt is a protein that acts as a natural toxin to the larvae of certain moths, butterflies, beetles and flies (including the dred bollworm) and is harmless to other forms of life. When the larvae feed on the cotton they are killed by the Bt protein - thereby eliminating the need for a broad spectrum insecticide, GMO cotton was designed to be resistant to herbicides so that weed killers could be liberally sprayed on crops without worrying about killing the cotton plants. It was genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate (marketed as Roundup in the USA and manufactured by Monsanto) which is a broad-spec trum herbicide, and toxic to humans at concentrations far below the recommended agricultural use levels. Studies link glyphosate to spontaneous abortions, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and multiple my eloma.

Not only could they make more money, but GMO cotton crops were also promoted as helping tackle world hunger and poverty, and helping small farmers. If you were a cotton farmer, how could you resist? They didn't: Today 86% of all United States cotton, 68% of all Chinese cotton, and 76% of all Indian cotton (three of the major cotton growing countries) is now GMO cotton.

Requirements for analysis of GM cottonseed in Australia
currently exports more than 90% of its cotton, primarily for use as fibre, although significant quantities of cottonseed are also exported to European countries. GM cotton was first grown in Australia in 1996 and since then, the percentage of the Australian cotton crop that is genetically modified has been steadily increasing. In order to meet the requirements of export markets such as European countries where GM cottonseed is not approved, stringent controls and quality assurance systems together with accurate and reliable GM testing, are needed to monitor for adventitious contamination of non- GM seed with GM seed. Furthermore, to ensure comparable and reproducible biological measurement between laboratories and countries validated test methods and appropriate reference materials are necessary.
Australia

The National Measurement Institute (NMI) of Australia has developed and validated a procedure to screen for the presence of GM cottonseed in a sample of 3000 seeds. The method, which includes grinding and homogenising steps that ensure a representative sub-sample is used for analysis, is capable of detecting down to a single GM seed in a sample containing 3000 seeds.

Initial results seemed that all they promised was true - early studies in 2002 - 2003 reported that pesticide and herbicide use was down and yields were up (by as much as 80%) for GMO cotton. But these results were short lived. Recent reports are full of data on GMO crops requiring ever more doses of chemical pesticides and herbicides to control pests which are mutating faster than even their worse case scenarios had envisioned; and becoming resistant to the genetic modifications found in GMO cotton. A study published by the Institute for Science in Society reports that Bt cotton fields rarely have studies done on what the crops do to the soil itself; they found that soil growing Bt cotton had significantly fewer beneficial soil enzymes in the soil (which makes nutrients available to plants) and total biomass was reduced 8.9%. This, they conclude, could even lead to dead soils, unable to produce food.

What about the promise of reduced chemical dependence on pesticides and herbicides?

It was always thought that pests would eventually evolve and develop a resistance to Bt. It wasn't a question of whether resistance would happen, but how quickly it would evolve. The Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) in India published the (then currently held) opinion that, "with the current rate of increase in the area under Bt cotton, it is likely to take about 11 - 12 years for the pest to develop resistance to Bt cotton. However, with implementation of proper strategies as suggested by CICR, it is possible to delay resistance by at least 30 - 40 years if not more:' Worse case scenario was thought to be three years.

Yet in 2008 the University of Arizona published some of the first documented cases of bollworm resistance to Bt. Professor Bruce Tabashnik, a renowed insect researcher and the primary researcher of this study,said "our results contradict the worse-case scenarios of some experts under which resistance to Bt plants was expected in three years. It is no surprise that, after a while, pests can develop biological strategies against insecticidal agents and become thereby insensitive: as a rule, even advantages that have been established in a plant by conventional breeding methods only have a limited time span of effectiveness."

According to a 2008 study by Friends of the Earth, independent studies have demonstrated not only that pesticide reduction claims are unfounded, but that GM crops have substantially increased pesticide use, particularly since 1999. Dr. Charles Benbrook, a leading U.S. agricultural scientist, conducted an "exhaustive analysis of USDA data on pesticide use in agriculture from 1996 to 2004. His conclusion is that over this 9 year period, adoption of GM soy, corn and cotton crops has led to use of 122 million more pounds of pesticides than would have been used had GM crops not been introduced.

With regard to herbicides, GM cotton crops were engineered to have a resistance to glyphosate - the primary component in Monsanto's patented week killer called Roundup. Roundup is Montsanto's biggest product, accounting for about 40% of their estimated 2002 revenue of $4.6 billion. Monsanto sold its GMO seeds under the brand name, "Roundup Ready" because farmers could spray the herbicide directly onto their fields and not have to worry about killing their crop. The popularity of Roundup Ready crops skyrocketed, and the use of Roundup also skyrocketed. In the U.S. alone, glyphosate use jumped by a factor of 15 between 1994 and 2005, according to the Center for Food Safety. That led to a host of "superweeds" developing a resistance to Roundup. Farmers were told that in order to combat glyphosateresistant weeds they'd have to apply other chemicals, often in combination with higher rates of glyphosate. In 2005, Monsanto recommended farmers use several additional herbicides with Roundup, including Prowl (pendimethalin), metolachlor, diuron and others. In fact, recent data shows resistance to herbicides in general, and herbicides used in GMO crops in particular, has escalated at exponential rates, according to the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds.

According to the Friends of the Earth study, cited above: " When forced to admit that herbicide-tolerant crops increase overall pesticide use, biotech industry apologists quickly fall back on a second claim: the increasing use of glyphosate has reduced use of more toxic herbicides, and so is a benefit to the environment. While this was true in the first few years of Roundup Ready crops, a look at recent trends in herbicide use undermines this claim." For instance, 2,4-D is the second most heavily used herbicide on soybeans; it is a herbicide that formed part of the defoliant Agent Orange, and has been associated with health risks such as increased risk of both cancer and birth defects - and use of 2,4-D more than doubled from 2002 to 2006. Likewise, use of atrazine (which is linked to endocrine disruption, neuropathy, breast and prostate cancer and low sperm counts) rose by nearly 7 million Ibs (a 12% increase).

And according to the Friends of the Earth study, "It is important to understand two key facts about weed resistance. First, resistance is defined as a weed's ability to survive more than the normal dose of a given herbicide rather than absolute immunity. Higher doses of the herbicide will often still kill the resistant weed, at least in the short term. The second fact follows from the first. Weed resistance is not only the result of using an herbicide excessively, it often leads to still greater use of that herbicide."

And the promised yield increases? Often, the answer depends on weather and growing conditions rather than types of seed planted. Average cotton yields in the United States were stagnant from 1996 (when GM cotton was introduced) to 2002 (when it made up 76% of cotton acreage); there was a record yield in 2004 and 2005 but these increases were chiefly attributable to excellent weather conditions. In fact the question is really whether the yield for U.S. cotton is lower than it would have been had it not been Roundup Ready seed! Other parts of the world had similar or worse results.

Another facet of this discussion should include the fact that GMO seeds are expensive: in India, Monsanto's Roundup Ready cotton seed was selling for twice the price of non-GMO seeds. GMO seeds cannot be saved and used for next season's crop. The high price for the seed led to farmers in India often having to take out loans from moneylenders who charged exorbitant interest rates. In a poignant article in the New York Times, Somini Sengupta published a discussion about the rash of suicides by Indian farmers 17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003 - and lays the blame on a combination of rural despair and American multinational companies peddling costly, genetically modified seeds.

According to the Friends of Earth ,GM crops do not fulfill their promise.

1. GM crops do not tackle hunger or poverty.

2. GM crops increase pesticide use and foster the spread of resistant "superweeds".

3. GM crops do not yield more and often yield less than other crops. (7)

4. GM crops benefit the biotech industry and some large growers, but not small farmers.

But why is the Organic Trade Association and GOTS so adamantly opposed to GMO crops? Why are European countries like Germany banning the sale and planting of GMO crop? And why did the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) release a position paper calling for a moratorium on genetically modified foods? These are some of the questions that need to be investigated before coming to any conclusion regarding the use of GM crops.

Originally published in New Cloth Market: May 2010

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Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Cotton

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Read article about Article By New Cloth Market On Genetically Modified Organism (Gmo) Cotton As The Global Organic Textiles Standard (Gots) Prohibits All Genetically Modified Organisms (Gmos) And Their Derivatives, More At Fibre2fashion.Com and more articles about Textile industry at Fibre2Fashion

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Eco-conscious, environmentally friendly, sustainable - these are just some of the buzzwords being used to promote the green credentials of brands and corporations. But while the surge of companies responding to the climate crisis is hugely positive, it can be difficult to know whether you're being a responsible consumer or buying into greenwashing.

Coined in 1986 by environmentalist Jay Westervelt, greenwashing - or 'green sheen' - is when a company uses misleading or false claims to suggest it's doing more for the environment than it actually is. "It's easy to say something is sustainable and not have to prove it," says Amina Razvi, executive director of Sustainable Apparel Coalition. "It's not always backed up by real, credible data. It makes it difficult for consumers to make smart choices."

This common practice means it's important that consumers do their research and ask questions. "Don't just listen to the marketing," comments Harriet Vocking, chief brand officer at sustainability consultancy Eco-Age. "Look at the company's website and read what they are doing."

Here are six ways to spot greenwashing in the fashion industry and become a more environmentally responsible shopper.
Look for numbers, not words
The easiest way to work out whether brands are greenwashing is by looking for figures that support their claims, rather than taking them at face value. "Companies use words such as 'sustainably made' or 'eco-friendly'," says Razvi. "[But] what percentage of their products are made with recycled materials?"

Find out whether brands have measurable targets set out on their website. "What quantifiable goals do they have listed publicly?" Razvi adds. "Companies truly committed to sustainable practices are setting ambitious goals that can be backed by science. They measure and are committed to reducing environmental impacts [every year]."

Natural isn't always more eco-friendly

Natural materials such as viscose, rayon and bamboo are promoted as eco-friendly, but it depends on how they're sourced. For example, 150 million trees are cut down for viscose production every year, according to Canopy. "Viscose is responsible for deforestation, unless it comes from a certified source," explains Orsola de Castro, founder of campaign group Fashion Revolution.

Read more: A Beginner's Guide To Shopping Sustainably On A Budget

Meanwhile, bamboo is a fast-growing fibre but it's sometimes grown with pesticides and chemicals are often used when it's turned into fabric. "Unless it comes from an organic source, bamboo is incredibly polluting," de Castro continues.

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Brands are making great strides to becoming more eco-friendly - but there's no doubt some are simply greenwashing to sell more clothes. Here's how to make sure your purchases are really sustainable, from supply chain to shop floor.