Planet
‘Planet’ is one of the four pillars connected with the Fashion Business school at London College of Fashion, alongside ‘People’, ‘Profit’ and ‘Purpose’.
The pillars are important for us to follow in order to build a sustainable future. ‘The fashion industry is one of the most wasteful industries on the planet’ and tremendous amounts of waste characterise the fashion industry. There are approximately 40 million tons of textiles sent to landfills every year.
Sustainability is described as “meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”. (The Brundtland Report, 1987)
Sustainable fashion aims to reorient the industry and consumers away from the fast fashion model and towards sustainable practices in sourcing, production, distribution, marketing and consumption. Slow fashion is the concept of a fashion ecosystem that uses better design processes, better materials and better working practices and skills. Encircled is a Canadian brand that has adopted ‘slow fashion’. They are transparent about their materials and provide an online listing of their core fabrics.
The circular economy means moving away from the world’s current – and enormously wasteful – economic model of ‘take, make, throw away’, in which resources are extracted, turned into products, used, and discarded (Chatham House, 2021). An example of circular fashion is the brand ‘Patagonia’. which is titled ‘The world’s most circular fashion retail brand” ((Kearney, 2022). Patagonia provides a range of outdoor clothing and gear, as well as materials for sports such as climbing, surfing and skiing. their mission statement is “To build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis”. Patagonia uses a high share of recycled materials – for example, 36% of cotton or 90% of nylon. Meanwhile, a new equipment rental programme with the gear-renting platform ‘Awayco’ has further helped its use of an even higher share of recycled fabrics.
In September 2015, the United Nations decided to take the next step in order to make our future’s brighter and more sustainable, and introduced the 17 Sustainable Development Goals with the aim of “ending global poverty” and “building a life of dignity for all and leaving no one behind”. The goals are aimed to be achieved by 2030. The 12 SGDs address the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice (United Nations, 2015).
The most relevant goal to the fashion industry is goal number 12, ensuring Sustainable Consumption and Production patterns. This is because a fashion business’s entire supply chain can be linked to this goal. This SDG focuses on wastage, overproduction, overconsumption, excessive usage of water and greenhouse gas emissions, these targets are some of the main issues that the fashion industry face. This SDG intertwines with the fashion industry as the main goal of SDG number 12 is to ‘do more and better with less’ (United Nations, 1972). Therefore, to overcome this issue, we need to ‘produce less’. The big fashion houses and designers must cut down their collections so this reduction will be echoed on the high-street. (Norwich University of The Arts, 2022)
References:
Brundtland, G. H (1987), The Brundtland Report, available at: brundtland-report.html (Accessed: 7th October 2022)
Consultancy.uk (2022), Patagonia The World’s Most Circular Fashion Brand, available at: kearney-finds-patagonia-to-be-worlds-most-circular-brand (Accessed: 8th October 2022)
Kiko, E (2022) 5 ways the fashion industry can be more sustainable, available at 5-ways-the-fashion-industry-can-be-more-sustainable (Accessed: 7th October 2022)
Oliveira Guterres, A. M (2015), Take action for the sustainable development goals, available at https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ (Accessed: 7th October 2022)
Schroder. P (2021), What is the Circular Economy?, available at: what-circular-economy (Accessed: 7th October 2022)