top of page
Why Fashion Needs Fixing
What's wrong with Fashion?
Fashion has a consumption issue. It extracts, produces and throws away excessive amounts of clothing.
The fashion industry currently produces approximately at least
150 billion clothing items every single year*.
This is more clothing than we need and that is safe for our planetary boundaries (our planet's safe operating zones).
There are only 8 billion people on the planet. We don't need all these clothes!
Of these 100 billion clothing items, 92 million tonnes of clothing end up in landfills every year. This is the equivalent of a rubbish truck full of clothes ending up in a landfill every second*.
Currently, Fashion causes harm to people & planet
Fashion predominantly doesn’t care about how clothing is made, the people who make clothing, what materials clothing is made from and what happens to clothing when they are no longer wanted.
Currently, over 68% of current fibres, used to create all clothing, are extracted from
non-renewable resources, like fossil fuels (plastic-based fibres like polyester and nylon)*.
Most of our clothing is made by people who are exploited and underpaid, mainly women.
Most of the clothing consumed by the Global North
is dumped in the Global South, damaging people and planet.
These are only some of the countless ways that Fashion causes harm.
It is immensely unsustainable*.
Fashion is the industry, but Fashion is also us.
As people who wear clothing every single day, we buy and consume too many clothes,
don’t wear our clothing for long enough and throw away too many clothes.
Clothing is a basic human right. Without clothes, we’d be naked!
Everyone who wears clothing engages with Fashion (that's you!).
But fashion is fun!
We can still have fun with fashion.
It is a fundamental form of human culture, expression and identity.
Fashion, including (but not limited to) dress, textiles and clothing, has helped shape humanity.
But we need to profoundly transform how we as a society and industry
engage with our clothing and fashion.
How does Fashion Recipes for the Future help?
Fashion Recipes for the Future seeks to contribute towards transitioning to a
positive future of fashion and education for and as sustainability.
The recipes (activities) explore ways in which we interact with fashion that
are overlooked and excluded from the dominant capitalist, trend-based model.
It is just one contribution amongst a wide range of efforts to transform
fashion into one built on inclusivity, equality, revitalisation and joy.
Sustainable
& Sustainability
*
are used as umbrella terms to describe a...
transformed, revitalised, inclusive & collaborative future of fashion...
where community & practices of care are nurtured so all human,
non-human & more-than-human beings flourish...
*REFERENCES
1. The fashion industry currently produces approximately at least 150 billion clothing items every single year.
2. 92 million tonnes of clothing end up in landfills every year. This is the equivalent of a rubbish truck full of clothes ending up in a landfill every second.
Niinimäki, K., Peters, G., Dahlbo, H., Perry, P., Rissanen, T. and Gwilt, A. (2020) 'The environmental price of fast fashion', Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 1, pp. 189-200. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-0039-9
Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2017) A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future. Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Available at: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/a-new-textiles-economy (Accessed: 20th May 2023).
Kirchain, R., Olivetti, E., Miller, T.R. and Greene, S. (2015) Sustainable Apparel Materials. Cambridge, MA: Materials Systems Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at: https://matteroftrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/SustainableApparelMaterials.pdf (Accessed 15th October 2023).
3. Currently, over 68% of current fibres, used to create all clothing, are extracted from non-renewable resources, like fossil fuels (plastic-based fibres like polyester and nylon):
Chen, X., Memon, A.H., Wang, Y., Marriam, I. and Mike Tebyetekerwa (2021), 'Circular Economy and Sustainability of the Clothing and Textile Industry', Materials Circular Economy, 3(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42824-021-00026-
Image sourced with creative commons license, free, from Wix.
bottom of page