The Inconvenient Truth for Fashion
As it seeks to become more sustainable, the fashion industry is slowly waking up to the inconvenient truth that it must reduce the sheer volume of stuff that it produces, buys and wastes.
This will require a massive change in direction. Last year, Kenya alone received 900 million items of clothing of which over half were landfilled or incinerated. According to the World Bank, the current growth trajectory would see world clothing sales grow by 65% by 2030. Contrast that with the findings by the Hot or Cool Institute, a Berlin-based sustainability group, whose research indicates that meeting fashion industry environmental goals would require consumers to buy only five new pieces a year.
Leading the fast fashion charge is Shein whose sale of low-cost clothing saw them recently surpass Amazon as the most downloaded App and who achieved a quadrupling of sales between 2019 -2021 - although there has been a recent decline.
The fundamental challenge facing the sector is how to make the business case for working more responsibly and producing less. This requires a shift in focus to profitability rather than exponential growth. The sector is renowned for being creative, but despite the growing discussion around degrowth, circularity, cutting overproduction and a just transition, very few answers have appeared to-date.
What is clear is that every part of the chain needs to participate: from investors to designers to consumers. Legislation, education and an evolution of the business model are essential. It is this requirement for radical collaboration that makes this a perfect challenge for Sizzle and will be the focus for our second campaign. It is a daunting challenge but there are five reasons that give us hope that change can be achieved.
1. Legislation is tightening
The fashion industry is moving from self-regulation and non-legally binding pacts to meaningful sustainability legislation, as evidenced by activity in France which is leading the charge globally. New legislation includes greater supply chain traceability, more transparent product labelling, a curb on greenwashing and extended producer responsibility (EPR), aimed at cutting pre- and post-consumer waste.
The French government’s proactive stance provides an indication of what’s to come in Europe. France is not alone in seeking stricter sustainable fashion legislation, with the US pushing for progress too through California’s Senate Bill 62 and the New York Fashion Act.
The UK is lagging behind in this area of policy with research from Buy Better UK revealing that since 2007, only 19 policies have been published to tackle problems related to the fashion industry, with only one policy containing details of cost or timeframes.
2. Fast Fashion is increasingly questioned
The ethical debate on fast fashion is growing. According to consumer-intelligence firm Brandwatch, between 2020 and 2023, around 70% of overall conversations regarding Shein on the internet skewed negative in sentiment. This indicates that there could be a tipping point with fast fashion looking increasingly out of step with the times.
3. Credible solutions exist
There are credible routes to reducing the current fashion model. For example, the circularity of the industry can be boosted by designing for disassembly, which involves breaking down unsold clothing to make new garments rather than discarding them.
The challenge is to highlight those which have the potential to be genuinely game-changing at scale and to call out those which might superficially look good but don’t address the core issue.
4. The need for clarity
The debate around sustainable fashion has been dominated by vested interests with many of the large fashion brands ‘marking their own scorecard’ when it comes to sustainability claims. Conversations have also tended to shy away from the contentious issue of over-production and consumption.
There are indications that this will change as the Advertising Standards Agency is increasingly turning the spotlight on ‘greenwashing’. Under the digital markets, competition and consumer bill to be unveiled shortly, big companies face the threat of civil penalties of up to 10% of global turnover for breaches of consumer law. Individuals who breach these laws will face fines of up to £300,000.
5. Change is essential
The UN recently stated that we are ‘On the road to climate hell with the foot on the accelerator’. The implications of extreme climate change are increasingly clear to see hitting livelihoods, harming nature and challenging the resilience of businesses. The fashion sector is a significant contributor to the loss of biodiversity and climate change. If science-based targets are to be met the sector needs to fundamentally change which is increasingly recognised by leaders in the sector.
The focus for Sizzle
The scale of the challenge is significant and there is a mass of initiatives underway, but Sizzle believes that change at scale can only be achieved if there is a supportive legislative framework that supports the shift to a more sustainable industry. This framework is evolving in France, but there is no similar momentum in the UK and limited engagement between key players to discuss what such a framework might look like.
This is the first space that Sizzle in partnership with policy communications experts Cast from Clay intends to explore. We start by asking three questions:
What might a supportive legislative framework look like that can hasten the shift to a more sustainable fashion sector?
What initiatives are in the pipeline that can be accelerated or refined to start creating this framework?
How ready is the fashion sector for potential changes and what does it need to do to respond?
These questions will be addressed through open dialogue with diverse stakeholders from across all sectors and will lead to a series of recommendations highlighting how transformative change can be delivered. These recommendations will open the door for targeted trials to test the validity of the suggested route forward.
If you would like to be involved in the dialogue, please get in touch with trewin@sizzle.org.uk.