Planet
The Planet Pilar
The fashion industry has been called one of the most polluting industrial sectors. It has a long supply chain consisting of a variety of production steps, with each of them harming the environment due to water, material, chemical, and energy use. As fast fashion has gained massive popularity since the early 2000s, fashion brands are now producing almost twice the amount of clothing today compared with before the year 2000 (Niinimäki., Peters, G, Dahlbo, H. et al., 2020). The planet pilar’s main focus is to understand how exactly the fashion industry is affecting the environment in order to build a strategy that would limit the amounts of textile waste and pollution.
Circular economy
The circular economy is a model where products, components, and materials continually flow re-entering the production cycle which decreases the effect of a company’s operation on the ecosystem. This simple definition can be further explained by four main principles:
- Focus on green technologies and minimize the use of raw materials.
- Maximization of the utilization rate of assets.
- Circulate flows of products and materials at the highest rate.
- Minimization of negative environmental externalities. (Tonelli, Cristoni, 2018)
Environment-conscious economists insist that the traditional linear economy has to be replaced by a circular economy due to the linear model’s implication of using natural resources in an unsustainable way and producing large quantities of toxic waste which creates pollution thereby negatively impacting the environment (Jørgensen, Petersen, 2018).
Sustainability in relation to fashion
The process of sustainability persuades the fashion industry to change and turn into something that would be less damaging and polluting, and more efficient. A more sustainable approach can be achieved by a series of small changes made by fashion brands (Fletcher, Grose, 2012). One perfect example of a brand adopting a more sustainable approach is PANGAIA. Launched in 2018, it generated $75 million in revenue in 2020 (Nanda, 2021). PANGAIA follows a variety of eco-friendly practices but what made it stand out the most is the next-generation sustainable materials created by its group of biologists and scientists. Examples of the materials produced by PANGAIA include FLWRDWN which is made using a combination of wildflowers, a bio polymer, and aerogel (pangaia.com).
Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been adopted by the United Nations in 2015 to create solutions to massive problems such as poverty, hunger, and climate change by 2030. One SDG that has a massive impact on the fashion industry is Goal 12: ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. In today’s world of fast fashion, the wasteful and polluting impacts of the industry are set to dramatically increase by 2050 (Ellen Macarthur foundation, 2017), therefore it is extremely important to make changes now.
References
- M.C. Nanda. (2021) Available at: https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/retail/pangaia-won-over-consumers-can-it-do-the-same-for-businesses/
- Kirstie Niinimäki, Greg Peters, Helena Dahlbo, Patsy Perry, Timo Rissanen & Alison Gwilt. The environmental price of fast fashion. (2020). Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-020-0039-9
- Kate Fletcher, Lynda Grose. Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change. (2012). Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/reader.action?docID=1876120
- Sveinung Jørgensen & Lars Jacob Tynes Pedersen. The Circular Rather than the Linear Economy. (2018). Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-91971-3_8
- Marcello Tonelli, Nicolò Cristoni. Strategic Management and the Circular Economy. (2018). Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/reader.action?docID=5583067