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This article originally appeared at the BSR blog and is reprinted with permission.
Many smart and opinionated people are split on the answer to the question of whether less is more, which has become central to the sustainable consumption debate.
In the fashion industry, there are a few versions of this question: Can we buy, wear, and throw away clothing and accessories every season? Or do we need to consume less, better, smarter? And what does that look like?
At one extreme, the solution to "Go Naked" is not a viable option (not for consumers and not for brands), though it does make for provocative messaging. But between everyone going naked and the current (unsustainable) state, there are many opportunities and challenges in moving toward the sustainable consumption of fashion.
To explore this landscape and catalyze changes among business, consumers, civil society, and governments, BSR and the Danish Fashion Institute are kicking off a "Nice Consumer" (PDF) initiative this month that will help define what the fashion industry could look like and how we can get there.
Our first steps include looking at effective methods for raising awareness with consumers and identifying emerging business models for the sustainable consumption of fashion. Without a precise definition, we're working under the assumption that "we'll know it when we see it." We are only a couple weeks into a six-month project and we are already finding inspiring examples every day.
Marks and Spencer has had a long partnership with Oxfam to take back clothing and resell it to consumers. Now the company has created a coat made from recycled cashmere. This is promising example of "closing the loop" in manufacturing, although we are a long way away from changing the "buy, wear, toss" business model for clothing, particularly in the low-price and fast-fashion market segments.
Patagonia raised eyebrows with an advertisement in the New York Times during the U.S. marketing blitz known as Black Friday. The ad, featuring a comfy-looking jacket with the headline "Don't Buy This Jacket," was part of the company's Common Threads Initiative, which is asking consumers to pledge to "reduce excess consumption and give the planet's vital systems a rest from pollution, resource depletion, and greenhouse gases." The consumer pledge is matched by Patagonia's commitment to design better products, to repair damaged products, to take back products, and to continue advocating for sustainable consumption.
In the realm of haute couture, individual designers are at the forefront of experimenting with sustainable materials and concepts. The most commercially successful designer doing this is Stella McCartney, who eschews the use of leather and fur in all her products for animal welfare reasons, and for concerns about environmental impacts of raising livestock and tanning and dying leather.
While these are examples of companies engaging with consumers, there are still important questions about how consumers are responding and empowering themselves to buy, wear, and dispose of clothing sustainably, as well as the role for government and civil society to get involved.
Stay tuned for more on the BSR blog about our "Nice Consumer" initiative, and follow it on Twitter by searching #NICECONSUMER.
Thanks Alli. We'll be sharing
Thanks Alli. We'll be sharing our research results as widely as possible. Some of the initiatives that we're looking at are government led, while others are corporate or NGO-led campaigns.
The examples of United By Blue (banana fiber, product take back with deposit) are really novel! Thanks for sharing. I hope you'll participate in some of the webinars that we are going to run on this topic. I'll make sure you receive the information.
Great piece, Cody. I'm
Great piece, Cody. I'm curious to see what kinds of campaigns will be implemented as part of the Nice Consumer initiative, and to see if any of it will find its way over to the States.
Your mention about the "buy, wear, throwaway, repeat" cycle of buying clothes caught my attention, and if you don't mind I'd like to elaborate on something we're doing at United By Blue (http://unitedbyblue.com) to help mitigate the throwaway nature of clothes. One of the things we're doing is implementing a recycling program for our products. Since cotton can be recycled, we'll take back any t-shirt our consumers purchase from us and turn it into something new. We also have a deposit as part of our recycling program (much like our bottle deposit program) that gives consumers an incentive to give us back their clothes. It's like a bottle deposit program, but for clothes.
We've also reduced our plastic packaging by 80% by switching over to rapidly renewing banana fiber bags.
Most significant of all, we remove one pound of trash for every product we sell, and actually host the cleanups ourselves. (We don't outsource our dirty work.)
Anyway, don't mean to ramble on for too long. There are lots of things fashion labels can do to reduce their negative environmental impact, and many more things that each of us can do to increase our positive environmental impact. At UBB, we think it's important to do both.