While more and more people turn to sustainable fashion in order to reduce their environmental footprints, I think it’s fair to ask the question of whether buying sustainable and ethical products is even worth our money.
Switching from synthetic materials (such as polyester) to more natural fabrics, opting out of the use of harmful chemicals, and reducing shipping-related waste and CO2 emissions have undoubtedly a positive effect on the environment.
However, sustainable fashion in and of itself isn’t enough to solve all the problems created by the fashion industry.
Sustainable fashion won’t save the environment
Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely believe that sustainable fashion is important and even necessary. But if we really want to create a sustainable fashion industry, we need to fundamentally change fashion’s business model.
We have to say goodbye to buying new clothes on a weekly basis and not wearing most of them.
We have to stop throwing out our clothes only after an average of 7 wears and start taking care of them for the long run. If you want to know how, we have a very comprehensive guide about garment care.
And fashion brands have to shift to a much slower and more circular way of doing business.
And we need to do all that without making fashion boring and unattractive.
Fashion’s impact on the environment
Some say fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world, some say a different number, but it is definitely in the top five most polluting industries!
According to The World Bank, the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of our global CO2 emissions and around 20% of our wastewater comes from dyeing and treating fabrics.
But fashion isn’t only amongst the most polluting, it’s also one of the most wasteful industries.
Imagine all the people around the world, we all wear clothes every day. Or at least most of us do… but do we all have as many clothes as we need? No, we have way more!
An average consumer throws away 70 pounds (31.75 kilograms) of clothing per year. Globally we produce 13 million tons of textile waste each year 95% of which could be reused or recycled.
Read our post about How Much Waste Does the Fashion Industry Produce? to learn more.
Want to learn even more about the topic? 5 Must-Read Ethical Fashion Books Revealing Fashion’s Dirty Secrets
Why is sustainable fashion important?
In order to reduce the fashion industry’s impact on the environment, we need to buy fewer clothes as well as improve the quality and sustainability of our clothes. We need both of these strategies to solve fashion’s problem.
If we keep buying and producing an excess amount of clothing, no matter how sustainable they are, we still create a lot of unnecessary waste and emissions.
If we simply buy less but fail to challenge the way our clothes are produced, we are simply continuing to poison the environment, just to a smaller extent.
That’s why sustainable fashion has a crucial part in reducing fashion’s impact, but it won’t be enough all by itself
How does sustainable fashion help the environment?
Sustainable fashion is quite a broad term that involves many different environmental aspects of clothing production. Most companies focus on solving different issues, and we, as consumers can decide which are the most important issues to us.
1. Sustainable fashion reduces textile waste
Sustainable fashion, in general, has better quality and longer life than fast fashion clothes.
Yes, sustainable fashion tends to be more expensive as well, but if you account for the cost per wear of a garment, it’s not always the case.
Cost per wear (CPV) measures how much an item costs per each wear. The cost per wear decreases the more you wear that item, and gives a much more accurate way of looking at the prices of our clothes.
A $7 item that you only wear once has a CPV of $7. While a $10 item worn 10 times has a CPW of $1. So in this case, you lost more money on the less expensive item.
If you want to learn more about the cost per wear and how to measure it, you might want to read Cost Per Wear: The True Cost Of Your Clothes.
2. Sustainable fashion reduces greenhouse gas emissions
There are three ways the fashion industry produces greenhouse gases: oil, transportation, and cows. Sustainable fashion gives solutions to all three.
Synthetic materials (that are also the most used fast fashion fabrics), such as polyester, nylon, and spandex require oil. And oil production is one of our biggest greenhouse gas emitters. Sustainable fashion favors natural fabrics and recycled materials which emit less CO2 and use more renewable resources.
By shifting back to local production, sustainable fashion also reduces greenhouse gases produced by transportation.
Vegan materials, especially the growing number of plant-based leathers, decrease the need for animal leather. Traditional leather doesn’t only involve a lot of cruelty we could easily live without, it also emits methane which is actually an even more dangerous greenhouse gas than CO2 in the short term.
If you think that leather isn’t that bad because “it’s only a by-product of the meat industry”, we have written about that and some of the ethical dilemmas we face when it comes to leather and fur in this post: Leather VS Fur: Same Cruelty Perceived Differently
And to learn more about our favorite vegan leathers, check out: 12 Innovative Vegan & Zero-Waste Fabrics We’ll All Be Wearing Soon
3. Sustainable fashion uses less water
Fashion is a very water-intensive industry. Cotton, for example, is a very thirsty crop that needs a lot of water to grow.
Sustainable fashion brands that prioritize linen, hemp, or innovative semi-synthetic materials such as Tencel lyocell, or recycled and upcycled fabrics can drastically reduce their water use.
4. Sustainable fashion uses less energy
Synthetic materials, in addition to producing more greenhouse gases, also use more energy. Recycled polyester, for example, is half as energy-intensive as new polyester.
But the natural materials I already mentioned (hemp, linen, bamboo) are even more energy-efficient. That’s why sustainable fashion prioritizes these fabrics over polyester and other synthetic fabrics.
In addition to the use of sustainable fabrics, reducing energy consumption can be implemented at every step of the supply chain.
Local production reduces the energy used for transportation.
New dyeing methods are put in place to reduce energy and water use.
Ethical fashion brands often prefer creating smaller collections with hand-made items. In this case, craftsmanship and human labor replace a small amount of energy used by factories.
The slow fashion movement, and the notion of producing less, but better quality, and extending the life-cycle of our clothes could easily cut fashion’s energy use by half.
5. Sustainable fashion reduces pesticides and insecticides
Conventional cotton uses about 16% of the world’s insecticides and 7% of pesticides. While the organic food movement has already taken off, consumers are just starting to realize what we put on our skin, our biggest organ is just as important for our health as the food we put on our plates.
But avoiding pesticides and insecticides has an equally positive impact on our planet. Organic farming helps to keep the soil healthy and promotes biodiversity instead of monoculture.
If you want to learn more about the pros and cons of organic cotton, check out Is Organic Cotton Really Better Than Regular Cotton?
6. Sustainable fashion promotes circularity
Recycled and/or biodegradable materials play a key role in the sustainable fashion world. We can’t keep producing clothes anymore without knowing where they will end up after we stop using them.
We generate insane amounts of textile waste already. Recycling fashion helps to reduce waste and create a more circular economy.
Recycling textile waste into new clothing should be evident, however, it is not always easy.
Fabric blends (when an item is made of a combination of different fabrics) can rarely be recycled. And even if a material is recyclable, the recycled fabric is usually worse quality than the original. That’s why clothing is often recycled into other items such as rugs or insulation.
However, some other materials can be recycled into clothing fabrics. Recycling plastic bottles into shoes, bags, or other clothing materials is a great example of this.
7. Sustainable fashion reduces water pollution
The textile dyeing and leather tanning processes include some harsh chemicals that cause serious health problems to the workers. In developing countries, the chemicals and other toxic waste are usually just dumped into rivers.
These rivers are completely dead by now. They don’t have any fish or other animals living in them and they’ve also wiped out the plants on the riverside. They’re basically just colored, toxic streams of water seasoned with some plastic waste.
The saddest part is that often these rivers provided the only water source to neighboring villages and wildlife, due to the underdevelopment of water systems in these poor countries. Consequently, the villagers got sick and/or were forced to leave their homes.
I hope you see how absurd this is and yet Zara, H&M, Forever 21, Topshop, and basically all fast fashion companies continue to contribute to the insane pollution of our rivers.
Ethical and sustainable fashion brands, on the other hand, use alternative, non-toxic, mostly natural dyeing methods which are also more water- and energy-efficient.
Not sure which brands are fast fashion? Check out 30+ Fast Fashion Brands To Avoid For A More Sustainable Future!
8. Sustainable fashion reduces microplastics
Microplastics are microscopic plastic particles. They come from the degradation of plastic as it doesn’t ‘disappear’ or turn into another material, it only breaks down into smaller pieces. As these fragments get into the waters, they have a huge negative effect on marine life and the whole ecosystem.
One way microplastics can enter the water is through our washing machines. Every time you wash your synthetic (polyester, nylon, etc.) clothing tiny particles break down and enter our water systems.
The solution? Buy clothes made of natural materials instead. They are better for the environment in so many ways…
But if you already own synthetic clothes, don’t throw them away just yet! You can purchase this Guppyfriend Washing Bag ($34.95 at Madewell.com) which filters and collects the microplastics that break down during the wash.
9. Sustainable fashion harms fewer animals
It is quite obvious that environmental destruction is harmful to wildlife. The huge amount of waste and pollution destroys habitats and, as a result, more and more species become endangered or even extinct. But what about animals used in the industry?
If wearing fur is considered to be cruel, why are other materials, such as leather, wool, and silk still okay to wear? All animals exploited by the fashion industry suffer.
Luckily, sustainable fashion is becoming more and more vegan. Brands either realize that it’s not okay to kill or abuse an animal to make clothes out of their different body parts, or they want to reduce the environmental footprint these animals have on our planet.
Either way, the result is beautiful vegan clothing and accessories that don’t cost the lives of animals.
Here are 20 Eco-Vegan Fashion Brands That Are Crazy Affordable to prove my point!
10. Sustainable fashion makes people happier (less miserable) and healthier (less unhealthy)
We tend to forget about it sometimes, but people are also part of the environment. We don’t just want a happy, healthy planet to live on, we want to share it with happy, healthy people, and we also want to be happy and healthy ourselves.
Did you know that a fast fashion CEO earns as much money in just 4 days that a garment worker does in their whole life?
Instead of exploiting cheap labor in developing countries, sustainable and ethical fashion brands treat their workers with dignity by providing them at least a living wage and safe working conditions.
But fast fashion also keeps you unhappy and unhealthy!
You probably already know that advertisements, billboards, social media campaigns, stylish shop designs, constantly changing trends, etc. are just different ways to keep you hyped and trick you into buying more and more clothing that you don’t even need.
The constant feeling of not having enough or not being good enough (even though you have and you are!) can have a detrimental effect on your mental health.
A sustainable fashion mindset inspires you to think about your clothes as long-term companions and appreciate the things you already have!
Is it worth buying sustainable fashion for the environment?
Absolutely! Sustainable fashion has a huge positive impact on the environment compared to fast fashion. However, sustainable fashion might not be enough in and of itself! Remember that buying unnecessary items of clothing creates waste and uses valuable resources no matter how sustainably it was produced.
So it is equally important to reduce the number of clothes you purchase.
There is actually an easy and practical way to go about it. Instead of buying the same amount of clothes, try to stick to the same budget. Sustainable clothes are usually more expensive so you might only be able to buy half the amount of clothes. This is a much more budget-friendly and eco-friendly approach!
The sustainable fashion pyramid
The Buyerarchy of Needs or the sustainable fashion pyramid is a great guide to help you build a more sustainable wardrobe. When you buy, it’s a good practice to buy sustainable, but as you can see, there are many other ways to reduce your clothes’ impact on the planet!
We can help you with finding the best online apps and websites for clothing swaps and thrifting, as well as finding the best sustainable fashion brands!
Photo credit: Lukas Rodriguez on Pexels
