SUSTAINABLE FASHION: FAUX POSSIBILITY?

Jennifer Lin & Amanda Zheng Cornell University

CRP3840: Green Cities December 2008

2

o green. One home, one earth. The alarming consequences of natural resources abuse and

neglect for the environment have forced the human race to react to an unfamiliar crisis. With the human population pushing 7 billion—and the size of the Earth not changing anytime soon—the focus has shifted to preventing further pollution and reversing damage. Initiatives such as reducing carbon emissions, encouraging recycling and reusing, have permeated into popular culture. The “Green” epidemic has stormed the globe and is here to stay. So with all this “Green” talk, why are we focusing on clothing and fashion? Clothes are a necessity. Clothing serves as protection and coverage. The simple act of wearing clothing has become inherent. In response to an opportunity to propagate preferences and opinions of a population, a new industry called fashion was born. Fashion, the concept of wearing styles that are trendy and of the time, has burgeoned into a multi-billion dollar industry. Fashion sends messages. Whether subdued or blatant, clothes allow personal expression. Messages attached to clothing can spread awareness and opinions. We are taking a critical look at the fashion industry because while it is one of the most visible forms of expression, the inner-workings of the industry remain mysterious. Greedy consumerism, the constant investment of the end product without thought of the

production process, has completely overshadowed the environmental and social repercussions of mass clothing production. We do not think about how these choices affect the environment; there is nothing about the act of buying clothing that makes us stop to think about the environmental consequences. How is the fashion industry responding to the “Green” craze? The fashion industry serves as a viable harbinger for any type of popular movement, fad, or trend, due to its widespread influence and effective reach to all types of demographics. With the recent “Green” movement, the fashion industry serves as a natural choice for propagating this issue. Nevertheless, there is disconnect in this partnership. The fashion industry profits from simple changes in aesthetics of garments for a large consumer base. With a significant sphere of influence, clothing companies easily convince buyers to get rid of their “out-of-style” wardrobe and purchase the latest styles. However, buying new clothing every season—or perhaps every week—in order to stay in style is a choice that harms the environment. People who buy into trends, throwing away perfectly good clothing in the process, cannot see the indirect harm on the environment in the same way that other obvious issues, such as noise and air pollution, lack of public transportation, and building initiatives affect people.

G

Fashion and Clothing: A Primer

Trend spotting in magazines encourages consumers to follow suit.

3

ashion has shifted from one-of-a-kind handmade haute couture pieces to traditional ready-to-wear.

Today, the fashion industry, once a slow paced business where clothing items could be worn for an entire decade because of their high quality and consistently similar styles, continues to change at alarming rates. The quick changes in styles and trends allow for the regular consumption of clothing, which resulting in steady profits for companies. Every month, new styles appear on the market and as different trends surface, consumers wanting to keep up with the industry are forced to buy new clothing and replace their seemingly “outdated” styles. Out of our fast paced buying culture, “fast fashion” was born. Rather than investing more time and money in each piece of clothing, fast fashion buys into impulsive consumerism and fleeting fashion trends. Fast fashion companies stock the latest styles, many just six weeks after their runway debut. The purpose of fast fashion is to supply countless new styles in stores as rapidly as possible and at the lowest feasible price. Less cost per item perhaps implies lesser quality, but affordable prices lure customers who desire to spend as little possible on the most up-to-date looks. Low prices also imply that consumers are able to buy clothes frequently; they can wear an outfit a couple of times and then replace it. Clothing has become disposable due to neglect of quality and style obsolescence. Current culture considers keeping a single garment for years as archaic and passé. A clothing company in the fast fashion market would have 20% of their inventory replaced weekly with new styles; this means that in a little over a month,

companies such as Zara, Mango, and Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) will have entirely different inventories in retail than just a month prior (Radar 2). Due to the short-lived lifespan of clothes, everything in the supply chain from designing, manufacturing, to transport is accelerated. Since the produced clothing sells at much lower prices, companies must turn a profit through time and budget-based cuts in their pre-retail operations. Most clothing companies cut transporting time by opening more stores and outlets; Spanish fast fashion pioneer Zara has around 1000 stores, the majority in Europe. Vertical integration in pre-retail and short transporting distances allows Zara to efficiently manufacture and deliver clothing at lower prices with an even shorter turnover. Fast fashion companies beat ready-to-wear companies to the market, many who ironically originate many of the designs themselves. Larger international companies, such as H&M and the Gap, have more stores—1400 and 3000 respectively, but due to their larger global market and outsourced production, transportation costs are higher than mid-sized Zara, which owns factories in Spain (Tokatli 23). With a large number of styles per year, the time constraint forces companies to produce a single quantity output. Consumers must react quickly and impulsively to get an item that’s still on the racks. With fast fashion comprising a larger share of the fashion industry, increased production and fleeting consumer tastes can hardly be beneficial to the environment. As the fashion industry encourages people to uphold ideals of sustainability, one would hope that these companies practice what they preach. However, what the fashion industry publicizes does not reflect the true ideologies of a business. The purpose of any company is to achieve economic success by making profit, and being fashionably “green” is very expensive. Many fashion companies claim to be sustainable in their practices, highlighting their efforts to improve the environment and save the earth. However, without tackling economic factors, equity issues, and environmental concerns to achieve a balance within companies, can the fashion industry truly be sustainable?

F

Customers wait in line to be the first to get new styles at H&M store. Image from: http://trewz.com/2007/11/

The Latest Trend: Fast Fashion

4

any sustainable development paradigms revolve around the three E’s of Economy,

Equity, and Environment. For any operation to be sustainable, it needs to be profitable, but also take human rights and the environment equally into consideration. An ideal clothing company would take significant strides and implement a balanced policy stressing economic, social, and environmental sustainability. In the fashion industry, one could interpret sustainability as: Economic responsibility. proper corporate governance, not exploiting the markets through monopolies, competition among companies Social responsibility. Social fairness, providing living wages for workers, safe working conditions, anti-child labor Environmental responsibility. reducing waste and output OR produce eco-friendly clothing This is where the problem lies. The conglomerate concept of “green” creates a confusing definition of environmental sustainability within the fashion industry. Many consumers are exposed to the concept of reducing individual carbon footprints; however, one could also contribute to a “green” cause by buying organic, or recycling and reuse. The dilemma rests in whether to approach environmental sustainability through eco-friendly means, or through efforts to minimize waste and promoting recycling and reuse. In a study conducted by de Brito, Carbone, and Blanquart, stakeholders in the fashion industry were

surveyed on their views of the three pillars of sustainability. All stakeholders stressed that economic sustainability is central, a prerequisite for any successful business. However, the propensity to adopt sustainable equity and environment measures ranged from implicit to unnatural. Equity is important in today’s business world because of the social norms and conventions of human rights, now widespread thanks to globalization. With a general understanding of worker’s rights to living wages, safe factory conditions, and the hazards of child labor, many clothing companies tacitly agree to monitor and ensure safe working conditions. The Environment area remains the final frontier, the least regulated due to the vague concept of environmental sustainability. Because of this discrepancy, each company defines environmental sustainability on its own terms, through company-wide legislation and enforcement (de Brito et al 541). Going Global: International Clothing Companies Fast fashion brand H&M’s openly states their sustainability vision on (www.hm.com) as: “H&M's business operations shall be run in a way which is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.” After examining many different clothing companies, it comes as no surprise that large international clothing companies are leading the way in sustainable fashion. Large international clothing companies can consider implementing environmentally responsible initiatives because they have the fiscal autonomy and strong target audience to make a difference. This is not to say that these company’s policies are completely developed eradicating and social inequality. These large international companies have flaws, and while they outline efforts to eliminate economic, social, and environmental exploitation, it is nevertheless a lengthy process. At the same time, an openly promoted sustainability policy is a step in the right direction. Many fashion companies which fail to disclose their economic and social policies do not mention anything about the environment, leaving the assumption that clothing corporations who can evolve their practices for the benefit of the environment must first address the economic and equity E’s.

M

The Three E’s of Sustainability in Fashion

5

s addressed earlier, any clothing company strives to earn maximum profit through retail sales.

However, companies with large shares of the fashion industry have the power and influence to determine prices, creating an oligopoly, or perhaps a monopoly. With no outside competition, companies have no incentive to sell products at competitive prices, instead overcharging consumers and reaping maximum profits; good thing for consumers, this rarely happens. Clothing is a necessity, and the fashion industry resembles a market competition that promotes economic sustainability in two aspects: Demand and Supply. One company simply cannot provide enough supply to satisfy the demand and tastes of consumers. There are many clothing companies to target the different areas of the fashion industry Price competition. The demand for clothing will not diminish, but the demand for expensive clothing is very inelastic. With so many companies in the fashion industry, market competition will eliminate inefficient companies with high prices, providing a range of prices to satisfy all consumers' utilities. From the most basic items to expensive haute couture, there is something for everyone. Economic sustainability is the lifeblood of any clothing company. With so many companies in the fashion industry, there is little room for exploitation. One potential flaw in a company’s economic sustainability philosophy lies in their response to changing production costs. While this presents fiscal challenges both good and bad, the necessity of clothing causes clothing prices and purchasing power to fluctuate in tandem. The important task of pricing clothing at a fair level lies with the producer, since uncompetitive prices could easily derail profits and a sustainable business model. Brief tangent on living wages. Los Angeles-based

company American Apparel gained attention for its “sweatshop free” environment and living wages for its workers. American Apparel successfully addresses economic and social sustainability within an individual. Social Responsibility Due to cheaper labor costs and less regulation, most clothing manufacturing is outsourced overseas. Unfortunately, unlike the US, many countries do not have stringent labor laws or regulations outlining the rights of a factory worker. However, clothing conglomerate Gap, Inc. are committed to going beyond the “basics of ethical business practices, and embrac[ing] the responsibility to people and the planet” (Gap, Inc. 9). As a member of the Business Leaders Initiative on Human rights, Gap, Inc. has vowed to protect employee rights as well as human rights as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All of their operations provide “basic and essential level of protection of human rights”; many of the operations do not meet the expectations of stakeholders, but these remain as lofty goals for the company to strive for in the coming years.

Fig. 1: Gap, Inc.’s social responsibility not only covers their workers, but also towards human crises. The Product Red line was

launched in response to the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

A

While the fashion industry has addressed economic and social sustainability, environmental sustainability remains unclear. Fashion is sustainable only if the industry adopts a new norm accepting environmental sustainability as lowering output investing in long-lasting clothing. We will explore fashion’s current position on sustainability, under the context of the three E’s—Economy, Equity, and Environment. With many interpretations of environmental sustainability, we will define the most effective practices, and resolutions for the future.

Economy and Equity

6

Implicit in human rights, Gap, Inc. also supports Project Red (Fig. 1). Within Gap, Inc.’s immense supply chain, the production and sourcing steps are most prone to breaches in social responsibility. While factories require company approval before they affiliate with The Gap, and in 2006, The Gap performed 4,316 inspections in around 2,000 garment factories—a semiannual check. In a much more intensive approach, Spanish clothing company Zara has taken significant accountability for worker equality and factory conditions through their vertically integrated business model. Zara does not source their production to outside factories, instead cuts the fabric in-house and sends it to hundreds of local sewing cooperatives (The Economist 2). This not only saves production time, but allows Zara to closely monitor safe practices, preventing harmful (or perhaps illegal) incidents from going unreported. Zara's success can also be a matter of location; Spain's population benefits from a strong education

eing environmentally sustainable can be split into two definitions. The first is being

environmentally friendly, a largely superficial definition, and the second being environmentally reducing, the true definition of achieving sustainable fashion. We believe that to truly be sustainable, companies must strive to become environmentally reducing. Environmentally Friendly There are many companies who claim that they are producing sustainable fashion by being environmentally friendly. Companies, like Mango, Zara, H&M, and Gap implement the use of fabrics such as organic cotton, hemp, and bamboo, all fabrics that are natural, not man-made. These companies also emphasize their use of safer dyes that contain and release fewer toxins, thus being less harmful on the planet.

Clothing tags from Gap and H&M respectively, promoting their use of organic cottons.

and awareness of human rights and equality. Many fashion companies have no policies addressing economic and social responsibility. After attempts to contact representatives at fast fashion competitors Forever 21 and Charlotte Russe, we were unsuccessful in gleaning information about their business practices; their websites did not help either. We do know that these companies depend on outside sourcing, but without evidence of factory accountability and monitoring, and with a large number of outsourced manufacturers, breaches in equity are more likely to occur. Furthermore, factory workers in developing countries often face a tough situation; the social norms of basic human rights are not yet ingrained in developing countries, leaving workers unaware of potential abuses in human rights. Others simply continue to work because the need for income far outweighs the hazardous working conditions presented. Superficial. Many of the fast fashion companies use only these methods to satisfy their environmentally conscious, yet trend hungry customers. Though these methods of using safer materials may be true in putting less stress on the planet in terms of toxins and waste, the same amount of energy and carbon emissions are still released to produce the same amount of clothing, albeit in organic fabrics rather than non-organic fabrics. However, no matter which way you cut it (pun intended), the use of organic fabrics in large quantities is still the use of fabric in large quantities, that still result in tons of wasted fabric scraps. These environmentally friendly companies believe that they are “doing their part” in saving the environment, but they still endorse the social norm of rapid mass production enabling mass excess consumption. The clothing turnover in environmentally friendly fast fashion stores is still six times for frequent, every 2 weeks versus the average 12 weeks it takes for a design to go from the design room to the store floor. Bottom line is that everything is done just to make profit as fast as possible. If the high volume of new clothing produced for consumer demand has not decreased, then nor has the quality of clothing. Hence, the core problem of unnecessary consumerism of low quality items still remains unresolved.

B

Environmentally Friendly vs. Environmentally Reducing

7

To be environmentally sustainable, in addition to being environmentally friendly, a company must be environmentally reducing as well. Environmentally Reducing Companies who make serious attempts at reducing their ecological footprint are environmentally reducing. Environmentally reducing works at reducing the overall clothing quantity produced, which, in an ultimate chain affect, saves energy all across the spectrum, from production to methods of transportation. By producing less of a high quality product, energy is saved by not using machines, fabric waste is reduced, and packaging material used decreased. Also, fewer shipments to stores need to be made and less oil is used to transport the goods. For sustainable garments, the idea is to prolong the life of any garment and create pieces that will endure the test of time. This is done by making garments that are better quality, longer lasting, and reusable and recyclable. Authentic. H&M, an acclaimed environmentally friendly company, proudly works at environmentally reducing. Illustrated on their company website, they explain their environmental objectives and sustainability policies they enforce. They strive to provide the best quality of clothing at the best prices. They also monitor the quality of fuel used in their transport trucks, as well as employ drivers who have had “eco-driving” training. Caveat. H&M’s one fault lies in their basic premise. The brand is one of the frontrunners of fast fashion, yet is taking significant environmentally reducing measures. While there is a limited quantity per style, H&M produces over 10,000 different designs per year, a stark contrast from The Gap’s 2,000-4,000 annual designs. When does quantity outweigh any environmental benefit? Larger international companies such as the aforementioned Gap Inc., an internationally recognized, 130 billion dollar company, is aware of where they can make a difference—through direct control, in store construction and operations, and influence, the materials, garment production, and transportation of goods. They are, according to their company’s website, working at minimizing environmental impacts through the supply chain and exploring sustainable design in their products and buildings. Gap Inc. is able to take those risks that only a stable, profiting company can make. They, firstly, can afford

to produce sustainable fashion. Secondly, they have the potential to produce less and still make profit because of their strong customer following. Thirdly, they have the means to reduce by allocating money for developing new sustainable fabrics that will last longer. Environmental Exploitation One of our main drivers for contacting specific clothing companies about environmental sustainability lay in the finished product. With fashion being a very visible and trendy form of expression, many companies have exploited the concept of “Green”. Bags and t-shirts are emblazoned with “Green” propaganda. However, are any of these companies pursuing environmentally friendly or environmentally reducing initiatives? Below are a few repeat offenders:

Urban Outfitters. A shirt promoting reuse (left), a “Forever Green” bag (below). Seem a little ironic, considering that the company would

prefer frequent customer business rather than a 10-year leave of absence. No information on the material quality of the shirt, or if it can last the test of 10 year’s worth of wear. No indication of environmentally friendly measures, such as using safer dyes, organic cottons, less toxins.

Forever 21. The “Think Green” t-shirt promotes ideas like recycling, composting, and saving water. However, the production of this shirt, especially the different colors needed to screen –print the design on.

8

The Future is Bright [Green]! The environmental repercussions of the social norm of excessively consuming clothing are often times neglected. The effect of the harm on the environment caused by constant rapid mass production of clothing styles is unknowingly ignored. Thus, the biggest hurdle is getting the fashion industry to turn around and help society create new social norms, ones that do not include rapid fashion changes, cheap clothing, or purely superficial environmental awareness. We believe that through environmentally reducing, the most effective way of achieving true environmental sustainability, there is definitely an optimistic future for truly sustainable fashion. Only when companies begin to reduce the quantity of clothing produced, increase the quality of garments to stand the test of time, and take steps to reduce their overall carbon footprint on Earth will companies have achieved the last “E” in the sustainable development paradigm. References Fasanella, Kathleen. "Is Fast Fashion Sustainable?." Fashion- Incubator. 10 Apr. 2007. 1 Dec. 2008 <http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/is_fast_fashion_sustainable/>. "Gap Inc. - Social Responsibility." Gap Inc., Portal Web Server Index. 4 Dec. 2008 <http://www.gapinc.com/public/SocialResponsibility/socialres.shtml>. "H&M - Environment ." H&M. 4 Dec. 2008 <http://www.hm.com/us/corporateresponsibility/environment__environment.nhtml>. Koyen, Jeff. "Steal This Look." Radar. 12 Feb. 2008. 25 Nov. 2008 <http://radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/02/forever_21_retail_copyright_infringe>. “Our Workers.” American Apparel 4 Dec. 2008 <http://americanapparel.net/contact/ourworkers.html>. P. De Brito, Marisa P., Valentina Carbone, and Corinne Meunierd Blanquart. "Towards a sustainable fashion retail supply chain in Europe: Organisation and performance ." International Journal of Production Economics 114 (2008): 524-553. "The Future of Fast Fashion." The Economist 18 June 2005: 1-3. Tokatli, Nebahat. “Global Sourcing: Insights from the

Global Clothing Industry—the Case of Zara, a Fast Fashion Retailer.” Journal of Economic Geography 8 (2008): 21-38.