Can we enjoy fast fashion without destroying the planet? The global fashion industry is in desperate need of an ecological plan, but London fashion week proved there still isn’t one – yet Guardian Lucy Siegle Fri 25 Feb 2022 How do you solve a problem like the global fashion industry? From the declining lifespan of clothes to the lightning metabolism of fashion consumerism and the increased reliance on petroleum-based synthetic fibres, this is one industry desperate for an ecological plan. London fashion week – which ended this week – showed there still isn’t one. Coverage was dominated by the launch of a new collection from one of the fastest models of production and e-retail, Pretty Little Thing, owned by the Boohoo group. It didn’t seem to matter that this show was not officially part of fashion week – it had all the ingredients of a smash hit, including a social media superstar turned creative director, Molly-Mae Hague. And, in something of a plot twist, alongside the brand’s runway show came the announcement that it will launch a pre-owned resale marketplace later this year “in a bid to encourage its shoppers to embrace sustainability”. Of course reselling, reusing and extending the lifespan of garments is critical in the fight to bring some sanity into the fashion cycle. But to push out more fast fashion and then recircu te it later seems like the fashion equivalent of carbon capture storage. It may help soothe investors, but it is unlikely to decarbonise fashion.    

Room for rent.....Meanwhile, around the same time as PLT’s announcement a genuinely important fashion industry innovator – rental platform Onloan – announced that it was pressing pause, leaving a gap in the sustainable fashion ecosystem.Fashion rental platforms all have slightly different business models. Byrotation is a peer to peer lending app, charging a borrower per loan and taking a percentage from lender and renter. There’s MyWardrobe – from former Whistles CEO Jane Shepherdson, who has said she wants renting clothes to be as commonplace as renting a car; HURR, who have teamed up with Selfridges and Hirestreet, which aims to take things mainstream, providing rental for M&S. Onloan, meanwhile, offered a subscription model. Users could rent two or four pieces a month for £69 or £99. Unusually, the company bought and held stock. For co-founder Tamsin Chislett, who has a background running a fairtrade cotton project in Uganda, this is key to re-engineering the industry. “The fashion supply chain is riven with underpayment. For us it was important to pay for actual, finished garments to allow the manufacturing part of the supply chain to work,” she says. Onloan was prepared to invest in buying wholesale, offering a royalty fee every time the piece was rented and winning the trust and partnership of prestigious yet traditional designers, such as Joseph. The theory is that getting access to these brands at a fraction of the cost is part of the alchemy that can turn consumers to renters and take the heat (and carbon) out of the system.

‘Risky’ business..... Not everyone is convinced, though. In particular, a report published in May 2021 by respected Finnish academics put the boot in, concluding that renting clothes was less green than other options, including throwing them away. It got a lot of coverage....read on.     https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/25/rent-clothes-fashion-sustainable-climate

The Dark Side of Fast Fashion.....According to an analysis by Business Insider, fashion production comprises 10% of total global carbon emissions, as much as the emissions generated by the European Union. The industrydries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year. Even washing clothes releases 50 0,000 tons of microfibres into the ocean each year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.The Quantis International 2018 report found that the three main drivers of the industry’s global pollution impacts are dyeing and finishing (36%), yarn preparation (28%) and fibre production (15%). The report also established that fibre production has the largest impact on freshwater withdrawal (water diverted or withdrawn from a surface water or groundwater source) and ecosystem quality due to cotton cultivation, while the dyeing and finishing, yarn preparation and fibre production stages have the highest impacts on resource depletion, due to the energy-intensive processes based on fossil fuel energy. According to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, emissions from textile manufacturing alone are projected to skyrocket by 60% by 2030. The time it takes for a product to go through the supply chain, from design to purchase, is called lead time. In 2012, Zara was able to design, produce and deliver a new garment in two weeks; Forever 21 in six weeks and H&M in eight weeks. Newer industry player Shein, a major Chinese fast fashion company, has garments ready to be sold in just 10 days. This results in the fashion industry producing obscene amounts of waste. 

2. Microplastics - Furthermore, brands use synthetic fibres like polyester, nylon and acrylic which take hundreds of years to biodegrade. A 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that 35% of all microplastics – tiny pieces of non-biodegradable plastic – found in the ocean come from the laundering of synthetic textiles like polyester.......read on https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/       

Kicking our growth addiction is the way out of the climate crisis. This is how to do it. With the right global economic policies, we could fight poverty and global heating at the same time. Guardian Larry Elliott 17 Nov 2022 For the best part of three centuries, there has been a consensus about the goal of economic policy. Since the dawn of the industrial age in the 18th century, the aim has been to achieve as rapid growth as possible. It’s not hard to see why there has been this focus. Growth has raised living standards, increased life expectancy, improved medical care and resulted in better educated, better fed populations. Indeed, it is a mark of how successful rich western countries have been in lifting people out of poverty that developing countries are keen to have what we’ve had. If faster growth means cleaner drinking water, more children in school and fewer mothers dying in childbirth then the world’s poorer nations want more of it. But there’s an obvious problem. If developing countries are to have the same – or even remotely the same – standards of living as developed countries, that means a lot higher use of resources and additional pressure on the planet. It means an increase in energy use and the risk of an irreversible global climate crisis. 

Given the existential threat posed by global heating, the concept that growth is good is being seriously challenged by those who say policymakers should be aiming for zero growth or even degrowth economies, ones that are shrinking. Make no mistake, it is a good thing that the accepted wisdom is being questioned. The idea that faster growth is the solution to every problem is no longer tenable. But there’s an obvious problem. If developing countries are to have the same – or even remotely the same – standards of living as developed countries, that means a lot higher use of resources and additional pressure on the planet. There is nothing new about the current debate. Thomas Malthus predicted eventual famine once population growth exceeded food supplies. John Stuart Mill’s comment, that the “increase in wealth is not boundless”, paved the way for what became known as steady-state economics. Herman Daly, who died last month, long championed the idea that the constraints of the natural world imposed limits to growth. Robert Kennedy famously said that gross domestic product measured everything except that which makes life worthwhile, and his words resonate now even more strongly than when he uttered them in 1968.

That said, achieving a steady-state economy or degrowth is not going to be easy. Far from it, it will be hellishly difficult. For a start, it will mean changing the way we think about economic success. Political debate is conducted by parties that vie with each other to promise voters the best growth strategy. Language matters, so when GDP is rising, that’s good news, and when it is falling, it is bad news. Countries are judged by where they sit in international league tables of growth. It would be the hardest sell for any politician to try to convince UK voters they should welcome the recession that is now only in its early stages. That’s because over many decades, people – especially the most vulnerable – have found that degrowth has not been good for them. Recessions are a form of degrowth, and they result in unemployment, bankruptcy, homelessness and hardship. Recessions also mean politicians tend to double down on growth, fearful of a backlash from voters if living standards are falling. Faced with the choice between higher use of fossil fuels or having the lights go out, governments have opted for the former.The only way to make a steady-state economy achievable is to harness an anti-poverty strategy to a pro-planet strategy. It is just about possible to imagine western societies where – after some vigorous redistribution – everyone has the income, wealth and time to lead a good life. But even that’s not going to be enough. What’s needed is a global strategy that encourages poorer countries to meet their legitimate anti-poverty goals in a way that is least harmful to the environment......read on    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/17/growth-addiction-climate-crisis-economic-policies

Kicking our growth addiction is the way out of the climate crisis. This is how to do it. With the right global economic policies, we could fight poverty and global heating at the same time. Guardian Larry Elliott 17 Nov 2022 For the best part of three centuries, there has been a consensus about the goal of economic policy. Since the dawn of the industrial age in the 18th century, the aim has been to achieve as rapid growth as possible. It’s not hard to see why there has been this focus. Growth has raised living standards, increased life expectancy, improved medical care and resulted in better educated, better fed populations. Indeed, it is a mark of how successful rich western countries have been in lifting people out of poverty that developing countries are keen to have what we’ve had. If faster growth means cleaner drinking water, more children in school and fewer mothers dying in childbirth then the world’s poorer nations want more of it. But there’s an obvious problem. If developing countries are to have the same – or even remotely the same – standards of living as developed countries, that means a lot higher use of resources and additional pressure on the planet. It means an increase in energy use and the risk of an irreversible global climate crisis. 

Given the existential threat posed by global heating, the concept that growth is good is being seriously challenged by those who say policymakers should be aiming for zero growth or even degrowth economies, ones that are shrinking. Make no mistake, it is a good thing that the accepted wisdom is being questioned. The idea that faster growth is the solution to every problem is no longer tenable. But there’s an obvious problem. If developing countries are to have the same – or even remotely the same – standards of living as developed countries, that means a lot higher use of resources and additional pressure on the planet. There is nothing new about the current debate. Thomas Malthus predicted eventual famine once population growth exceeded food supplies. John Stuart Mill’s comment, that the “increase in wealth is not boundless”, paved the way for what became known as steady-state economics. Herman Daly, who died last month, long championed the idea that the constraints of the natural world imposed limits to growth. Robert Kennedy famously said that gross domestic product measured everything except that which makes life worthwhile, and his words resonate now even more strongly than when he uttered them in 1968.

That said, achieving a steady-state economy or degrowth is not going to be easy. Far from it, it will be hellishly difficult. For a start, it will mean changing the way we think about economic success. Political debate is conducted by parties that vie with each other to promise voters the best growth strategy. Language matters, so when GDP is rising, that’s good news, and when it is falling, it is bad news. Countries are judged by where they sit in international league tables of growth. It would be the hardest sell for any politician to try to convince UK voters they should welcome the recession that is now only in its early stages. That’s because over many decades, people – especially the most vulnerable – have found that degrowth has not been good for them. Recessions are a form of degrowth, and they result in unemployment, bankruptcy, homelessness and hardship. Recessions also mean politicians tend to double down on growth, fearful of a backlash from voters if living standards are falling. Faced with the choice between higher use of fossil fuels or having the lights go out, governments have opted for the former.The only way to make a steady-state economy achievable is to harness an anti-poverty strategy to a pro-planet strategy. It is just about possible to imagine western societies where – after some vigorous redistribution – everyone has the income, wealth and time to lead a good life. But even that’s not going to be enough. What’s needed is a global strategy that encourages poorer countries to meet their legitimate anti-poverty goals in a way that is least harmful to the environment......read on    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/17/growth-addiction-climate-crisis-economic-policies