What's wrong with fast fashion?

Last Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of Bangladesh’s tragic Rana Plaza factory collapse, where 1,130 garment workers were killed.

“If a positive can be found, it’s that Rana Plaza has been a turning point — the 21st Century equivalent of New York’s 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, which killed 146 but led to a unionized, safe garment industry,” Dolly Jones wrote on Vogue earlier this month.

This tragedy resulted indeed in significant steps taken by individual companies and European and American coalitions, aiming to improve the safety of the garment workers in Bangladesh and ensure clothing supply chains are more ethical and transparent.

Still, even with all of these efforts to build what H&M describes as “sustainable fashion future,” one question is still hanging out there: Can fast fashion really be sustainable?

To answer this question let’s try first to define what fast fashion is and why exactly it is unsustainable. “The phrase ‘fast fashion’ refers to low-cost clothing collections that mimic current luxury fashion trends,” the authors of the paper “Fast Fashion, Sustainability, and the Ethical Appeal of Luxury Brands” explain. “Trends run their course with lightning speed, with today’s latest styles rapidly outdoing yesterday’s, which have already been moved to the trash bin.”

The speed of fast fashion, the cheap prices and the poor quality of many items have gained it the nickname “McFashion.” Other terms used to describe this trend are even less compelling, including “landfill fashion” to “throwaway fashion” and “cheap crap.”

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Fast fashion companies tend to see it differently of course. From their point of view this trend is about making fashion accessible and affordable for more people. “We want to surprise the customers,” Margareta van den Bosch, H&M’s style adviser told NPR. “We want to have something exciting. And if it’s all the time hanging the same things there, it is not so exciting, I think.”

What fast fashion companies would probably not dispute is that their affordable prices require them to manufacture in countries where the wages are low and sell high volumes of items, utilizing planned obsolescence tactics to be profitable. And this is where the problem lies.

High volumes requires a greater use of raw materials, energy, water and other resources and contributes to climate change – the U.K.-based organization WRAP estimated that “the processes from raw material to garment supply contribute around one-third of the waste footprint, three-quarters of the carbon impact and most of the water footprint of clothing.” According to WRAP’s research, extending the average life of clothes by just three months of active use per item would lead to a 5 percent to 10 percent reduction in each of the carbon, water and waste footprints.

In addition, keeping prices low requires fast fashion companies to manufacture in countries with low wages, where contractors and subcontractors need to meet requirements for low costs, many times on the account of workers’ safety and working conditions, just like we saw in Bangladesh.

Finally, let’s not forget the cultural impact fast fashion has on consumers – it has promoted the trend of disposable fashion, where customers buy items and because they’re so cheap they use them just once or twice before discarding them. This is not always the case – I’m writing this article wearing my beloved Zara shirt that I bought in 2004. Still, reading that a research by the American Apparel and Footwear associations found that “Americans annually purchase an average of eight pairs of shoes and 68 pieces of clothing,” I get the feeling that my Zara shirt is the exception, not the rule.

So, given these unsustainable impacts you can see that making fast fashion sustainable seems almost impossible. After all, when thinking about companies built on sustainable principles like Patagonia, Zady and Honest by, it seems like sustainability is everything fast fashion isn’t. As Rose Marcario, Patagonia’s new CEO explained it in an interview with the Guardian:

“If you build things that last, [customers] need to buy less of them and you deplete fewer natural resources. We think that’s a good thing…we are facing an ecological disaster – and if we continue this idea of fast fashion and throwing away products, not recycling and not taking care of environment, we are not going to have a planet to live on.”

Still, fast fashion companies claim Patagonia’s way is not the only way to be sustainable. They also offer a vision that is supposed to improve their practices and create a more sustainable business model. It is based on elements such as ensuring fair living wage and better working conditions for garment workers, and creating a closed-loop systems, where customers are encouraged to bring back unwanted clothes, which will later be used as textile materials in new products.

These are not perfect solutions, especially when it comes to creating closed-loop systems, which require customers’ collaboration and further technological advancements to become a viable solution. As the Guardian’s Oliver Baich wrote “closed-loop textile recycling currently remains exactly that: a promise.”

In my point of view the problem with the closed-loop solution is not just its feasibility, but also that it’s basically about being less bad, or “making the old, destructive system a bit less so,” as Michael Braungart and William McDonough describe such efforts in “Cradle to Cradle.” And “doing less bad is not the same as doing more good,” they add.

So what is “doing good” in the case of the fast fashion industry? This is a mindset shift from economics that is wasteful and based on selling a large number of low-quality products to economics that is mindful and based on selling less yet better products. The challenge as Oliver Baich wrote is to move from creating happy shoppers to creating happy non-shoppers, ones that use their garments more frequently, share clothes and buy less.

If and when fast fashion will be able to make this change, then it will become sustainable. Until then, all we have are attempts with little impact to slow it a bit.

questions

1.  Make a little summary to explain your classmates what Fast Fashion means.

2. Define what are the ethical and environmental problems of the fast fashion system and consumption.

3. Create a presentation (PPT, Keynote or any other format) to explain the two points above.

Copyright by Patagonia.com

The rise of mending: how Britain learned to repair clothes again

By Sarah Lewis-Hammond - for theguardian.co.uk

Monday 19 May 2014

When Make Do & Mend (“we make things and mend things,” says Pippa Bray, the shop's owner) opened its doors in 2002, they had expected to be reasonably busy. That turned out to be an understatement. They weren’t just busy, they were inundated, getting busier all the time. And then the economic crisis arrived – and business went through the roof.

“When the recession hit, people became more conscious of cost and started valuing their clothes more. We do a lot of replacing zips, taking up hems, altering old clothes to fit,” says Bray. The shop, in St Day in Cornwall, now employs 12 people, and turns out a constant supply of fixed pockets, patched jeans, relined jackets, and taken up hems. While the small jobs are the bread and butter of the business, they have also on request expanded into upholstery, marine-ware (such as boat covers and cushions), and even academic gowns for university graduates.

According to Pippa, it’s a huge growth industry but there are not enough skilled people. “I’m always being asked to show people how to put in a zip or patch jeans. It’s just not taught anywhere any more. Good clothes are like old friends and it’s nice to see when people don’t have to throw away a jacket or something they’ve had for 20 years.”

Making or altering clothes may seem like a humble pursuit. But research by the Craft & Hobby Trade Association (CHA-UK) shows that the entire crafting industry (which also includes knitting, cake decorating, painting and other handycrafts) is worth a whopping £3.1bn to the UK economy. It is also, as if from nowhere, wildly popular. About 3.5 million people in the UK are involved in making their own clothes with a sewing machine according to CHA-UK, and of that number 433,000 only started sewing in the last 12 months.

“The last few years have been epic for the industry,” says Fiona Pullen, founder of the Sewing Directory and described by some as the godmother of the sewing world. She thinks the economic crisis has driven people towards a more Make Do & Mend mentality, and growing environmental awareness is making people more conscious of where their clothes come from. “People are trying to be less disposable. They would rather buy something quality and keep repairing it. The Great British Sewing Bee helped a lot [John Lewis has seen a 22% increase in sewing machine sales since the show ran last year] . It was already happening.”

Tom van Deijnen runs the Visible Mending programme in Brighton and has a mission to show that repairs to clothes can in themselves be beautiful. “Wear your darn like a badge of honour,” he says. When he takes on a commission he asks, “Why would you like me to repair this? What makes you want to keep it?”

“I started repairing because I realised there is a lot of work and skill involved in making clothes. It takes a long time. I began to appreciate the skill and effort all these anonymous people put in to making clothes for the high street. If you want to make people understand why £4 for a T-shirt is not the right price, get them to make an item of clothing. We should respect them for making these clothes for us, especially at the prices we pay.”

Although the mending movement is still small, Tom says it is growing and people are coming round to the idea that you can’t just throw things out any more, you need to fix them. He points out that Repair Cafés, where you can turn up with anything from a wonky chair to a smashed smart phone and find out how to fix it, are becoming increasingly common. “People are starting to see the importance of repairing again,” he says.

“They don’t teach sewing in most schools nowadays, or mothers don’t get a chance to teach them, or they’re frightened, they think the machine is going to run away with them,” says Mary Ann Robbins, who runs workshops around Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire under the name Sewing Seams Easy, teaching people how to use a sewing machine and to refashion old clothes. Over the last couple of years her business has grown dramatically.

Dressmaking and refashioning has also seen a huge upsurge in interest, partly, according to sewing blogger Rachel Pinheiro, thanks to the internet. “The techniques of sewing are the same now as they were 100 years ago. There is nothing new when it comes to making things. But over the last few years people have begun to find each other and share ideas as they have never been able to before. There are fresh ideas in terms of design and colour, and a change of aesthetic. It’s brought a whole new audience to the hobby.” Sewing and mending communities are springing up and forming networks via Twitter or Pinterest, through innovations like #makedoandmendhour, where every Thursday evening Jen Gale of the My Make Do and Mend Year blog, hosts a hashtag-based hubbub of ideas, jokes, and requests for mending advice.

“It really is a wonderful community to be a part of,” says Pinheiro. “That’s one of the great attractions of sewing, it’s the people. We joke there is a special sewing gene that makes that person immediately friendly.”

For Fiona that community has been the bedrock of her new career. The Sewing Directory was meant to be a minor pastime that fit around her young son, but the sudden explosion in popularity means it has taken over. “I work 60 hours a week,” she says. “I could take on people and work seven days a week but there is still more work.” Her success has also opened other opportunities: she now trains other craft businesses in the dark arts of SEO and marketing, she writes regularly for sewing magazines, and has just finished her first book, a guide to running a creative business. “It’s not just me,” she says. “Lots of my customers are so busy.”

“Sewing is empowering,” says Rachel. “Not just in terms of creativity, but it also allows you to share knowledge with others, to make friends around the world and experience their culture. The internet is like a chemical agent for speeding everything up. Whatever is going on in the world, the sewing community responds somehow.”

On 14 April, for example, the anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh, people wore their clothes inside out to show the labels, to show they weren’t supporting the companies implicated in the disaster. Rachel says “people who sew their own clothes have their own labels. We can say ‘this is made by me’, the exact opposite of the mass manufactured industry.”

That is a kind of satisfaction that can’t be beaten. “People want the satisfaction of being creative,” Rachel says. “But life is also busy and this is a way people can find each other, they can find their club.”

Millennials for Change

Millennials Are Reshaping The World Of Social Impact

By Vanessa Kirsch and Dana O'Donovan

www.fastcoexist.com

January 2016

Stories about millennials are unavoidable in the media today. We’ve all heard how they’re knocking at the door to the corner office and already taking the lead in politics, business, philanthropy, and everywhere else. Like the boomers in their day, millennials will be the largest proportion of any generation in the U.S. workforce by 2025, and their unique set of characteristics will reshape our world. But too often, their uniqueness is being viewed with apprehension, as the entire demographic is painted with critical terms like self-centered, careerist, apathetic, coddled, materialistic, and unfocused. The suggestion seems to be that they aren’t up to meeting the challenges we face as a nation and a world. Even more problematic, when it comes to marketing products, the term "millennial" has become almost synonymous with the narrow slice of the larger generation who is white and upwardly mobile.

We beg to differ on both points, because we’ve seen what millennial leaders are capable of. Our two organizations, the nonprofit venture philanthropy fund New Profit and the professional services firm Deloitte, have collaborated for 15 years to help visionary social entrepreneurs build high-impact organizations and problem-solving ecosystems, with a goal of breaking down the systemic barriers standing between people and opportunity in America. We have seen every type of leader, organization, and approach during that time, so we’re rarely surprised. But recently, we’ve been amazed to meet millennials from diverse backgrounds and sectors who are fearlessly ignoring the negative chatter about their generation and instead are showing us the future. We want to introduce you to a few people and groups that show how this unique generation is already changing the way we live, work, and solve problems:

1. Vedette Gavin and Derwin Dubose, New Majority Community Labs (NMCL)

Created to shift power from social sector institutions, most of which lack demographic and socioeconomic diversity, to people and communities, NMCL uses the power of big data to amplify the effectiveness of on-the-ground organizing. As cofounder Vedette Gavin said recently, "Don’t create a plan to help me without including me!" NMCL hires people in communities to collect and analyze data, then works with them to create locally led, locally funded solutions. While still in the seed stage, NMCL has already launched a program in the under-resourced Ivy City neighborhood of Washington, D.C. And bigger expansion plans are in the works.

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2. The MBA students at the Deloitte Foundation’s national case competition

For the first time this year, the Deloitte Foundation focused its annual case competition on social impact, asking MBA students to craft a new organizational strategy for New Profit, rather than the classic profit-oriented corporate puzzles. The students were given less than 12 hours to immerse themselves in complex issues relating to the evolution of philanthropy and the social entrepreneurship movement and prepare a presentation for senior leaders from Deloitte and the social impact community. We were absolutely amazed at their insightfulness, energy, and passion.

3. Alejandro Gac-Artigas, Springboard Collaborative

With a mission to close the reading achievement gap, Springboard Collaborative takes a unique in-sourced staffing approach by training public school teachers to collaborate with parents on reading achievement, using an ingeniously inexpensive approach that works within existing budgets to build lasting internal capacity in schools. Springboard Collaborative is truly redefining parent-teacher collaboration and, in turn, transforming school communities and optimizing student-learning outcomes.