Where Do Our Clothes Come From? And Are They Sustainable?
TL;DR The apparel industry is causing devastating effects on our environment and the people trying to make a living. By avoiding frequent wardrobe additions and supporting the “slow fashion” movement, we can help activate sustainability in what we choose to wear.
A few years ago I attended a screening for a movie at The Michigan Theater. Going in, I had no idea what the movie was going to be about. To my surprise, by the end of the movie I was standing in applause because of the emotions this movie had triggered in me. This movie is called Boy & The World. It’s about the journey of a young boy on a quest to find his father who was separated from him by the torments of globalization. A story told without dialogue, expressed through sounds, colors, and animation.
Those who know me well know that I have a passion for food and understanding agriculture’s impact on the environment. After I saw Boy & the World, I gained a wider perspective. I began to think more deeply about the purchases I made and all the hands involved in allowing me the luxury of said purchase. After investigating how food reached my plate, I shifted my focus to the clothing supply chain. I learned how things like fast fashion, fair trade, recycling, and organic farming are impacting the future of the apparel industry, impoverished countries, and our planet.
Defining Sustainability
Before diving into detail, I’d first like to level set on the definition of sustainability. For many people, the word sustainability is only associated with environmental-friendliness, or being “green.” While this is not completely incorrect, it can be a narrow view that fails to connect two other crucial aspects. In the UN’s Brundtland Commission report, “Our Common Future,” sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This concept is a balancing act among three pillars, economic, social, and environmental development. I will often refer to these as the triple bottom line: profits, people, and planet.
Pillars of sustainability
I would also like to point out that sustainability is about finding balance in a complex web of interconnected systems. The research and thoughts I share here only scratch the surface of sustainability in the apparel industry. I understand that there may be holes in these claims and compelling counter-arguments can be made. This is intended to spark curiosity. Use this article to generate thoughtful discussions with coworkers, friends and family. And if you find your own thoughts and opinions, let’s dive into those and continue the conversation.
Materials
To begin our journey on the clothing supply chain, let’s talk about what our clothing is made from. There are two types of fibers used in fabric production, natural and synthetic. Some of the most common natural fibers include, cotton, flax (linen), wool, ramie, hemp, rayon and silk. Under the synthetic type we have nylons, polyesters, and spandex. With each of these fibers there are various methods to create the fabric for clothing. What is more important though, is how each fiber is produced.
Natural
Creating natural fibers involves harvesting fibers from a natural source, like the lint of the cotton plant, the stalk of the hemp plant, or the wool of a sheep; and then spinning those fibers into yarn. At first glance, natural fibers have seemingly obvious advantages - they are renewable and biodegradable. But, depending on how they are produced they can have drastic effects on the environment and the people producing them.
One of today’s major culprits is cotton. Industrial-scale cotton farming uses massive amounts of pesticides and GMO cotton plants to protect from bugs, decimating soil fertility. In the year 2000, The USDA estimated 84 million pounds of pesticides were applied to the nation’s 14.4 million acres of cotton and more than two billion pounds of fertilizers were spread on those same fields. As these harsh chemicals drift through the air or leach into waterways, they also pose major health risks to the people working on or living around these farms.
One alternative to regular cotton is cotton grown organically whereby farmers leverage crop rotation to maintain harmony with the natural world, in turn, eliminating the need for GMO plants and pesticides. Another alternative is hardier materials, like industrial hemp or flax, which can be less environmentally straining based on the nature of the plants. My first hemp-wear purchase was a t-shirt and hat back in 2019 from Patagonia. Read about Patagonia’s efforts to innovate in the textile industry using hemp here.
Synthetic
Synthetic fibers, on the other hand, are man-made materials produced through chemical synthesis. While some synthetic fibers, like rayon and acetate are derived from bio-based chemicals that can be composted, the majority of synthetic materials used in production are petroleum-based polymers (just like plastic). That’s right, your clothes can be made from the same fossil fuel you pump into your vehicle every week. Nylon, polyester, spandex, and acrylic all fall under this class of synthetic fibers. As you can imagine, the end of life for these inorganic materials is likely to be landfill pollution and can take over 200 years before degrading. In addition to destroying natural habitats, they are accelerating the imminent depletion of a non-renewable resource.
Nowadays, we are seeing a proliferation of brands making fabric out of recycled plastic from a variety of sources. This is definitely a step in the right direction but, it’s not a perfect solution. One big reason is that recycling plastic waste is not 100% efficient and requires large amounts of water and energy to produce. Moreover, the dyes used to color synthetic materials are known to be the most toxic dyes to humans and wildlife .
There are also many researchers investigating just how much micro-plastic waste is being leached into water systems when washing synthetic fabrics. In 2011, Mark Browne, now a senior research associate at the University of New South Wales, Australia, published a study, which found that microfibers made up 85% of human-made debris on shorelines around the world.
Synthetic materials are revered for their durability and reliable performance. In this case, if purchasing synthetic is unavoidable, extending the useful life for as long as possible is the best choice to make in the pursuit of sustainability.
Manufacturing and Labor
The next area of the supply chain is about who is making our clothing and how it’s made. Globalization and international trade has been taking place for centuries. The need for trading arose out of the idea of comparative advantage, and the variety of available resources in other places, including labor. In Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” he discusses the earliest concepts of division of labor and how workers specialized in one task increases efficiency. Today, we can see this happening in the clothing supply chain where brands pursue apparel manufacturers in countries where labor is cheap. China, India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam, for example, are the top exporters of clothing and textile goods in the world.
In order to maximize profits, major garment brands have gotten away paying factory workers extremely low wages and have taken advantage of the limited regulation on working conditions in these less developed areas of the world. This is where the term sweatshops originated, often being associated with forced child labor. In these areas there is an abundance of cheap labor, allowing the garment factories to continue driving wages down. So much so that the people they employ are working unhealthy amounts to make enough to feed just their family, sometimes not even themselves. This has been likened to modern day slavery. On top of this, a lack of bureaucratic influence makes it easy for garment factories to further drive costs down by investing little to none in occupational health and safety. This translates to unsafe and unhealthy working conditions for the workers who are already struggling to make a living. There have been too many cases where failed enforcement of compliance and oversight resulted in building collapses. With a death toll of over 1,000 people, the 2013 Dhaka building collapse in Bangladesh brought a lot of attention to apparel companies’ responsibility (or lack of) in auditing their supply chain and providing transparency to their consumers.
Illegal waste dumping into natural waterways also poses a major public health concern to nearby villages, where the workers and their families often live. An estimated 20% of industrial water pollution is generated by textile mills alone and “use 20,000 chemicals, many of them carcinogenic, to make clothes.” These chemicals are contaminating the water supply local villages use for drinking, cooking, and bathing, and eventually leaches into the soil used by local farmers.
Enter the Fair Trade movement. This movement is based on the principle that responsible companies need to demand higher standards for everyone involved in making their products, and for the planet. Empowerment and equality has reached the likes of farmers, factory workers, and fishermen and -women. In a global economy filled with free trade markets, the pursuit of Fair Trade products is a choice for consumers to support income sustainability, empowerment, community well-being, and environmental stewardship.
Fashion
Our final stop on the apparel supply chain is about how we choose our style and what clothes to buy. Fashion refers to the popular trends associated with a particular time and context. Most times, this is what drives people to dress one way over another. It used to be apparel brands would release new styles 2-4 times a year according to the seasons. Now, those brands are churning out new styles much more quickly. From 2000 to 2014, McKinsey estimated worldwide clothing production doubled and the number of garments purchased each year by the average consumer rose 60%.
“...offer up an ocean of clothing to maximize profits”
Consumerism in such excess has proliferated in the fashion industry. Media outlets and activists have coined this trend as “fast fashion.” It is the idea that bargain brands, like H&M, Zara, and even many higher-end brands, will offer up an ocean of clothing to maximize profits.
A key enabler of fast fashion is technology. There is technology used to help speed up the design and manufacture process, allowing the garment factories to output more styles of clothing in a shorter amount of time. Moreover, there is the technology that encourages consumerism through digital advertisement and social media. The main driver behind all of this being quantity over quality.
The flip side to fast fashion is…you guessed it, slow fashion. The idea of slow fashion shifts focus to producing clothing with quality and purpose. Rather than aiming to release hundreds of different styles in a year, a clothing brand focuses on a few specific styles in a year meant to serve a good cause. These brands compete in the market by their appreciation for exceptional quality. The shoe brand, allbirds is a prime example of a slow fashion company that balances the triple bottom line of profit, people, and planet.
Do Your Part
I know there was a lot of information in this post, but the main takeaway is to think twice, or thrice, about where your clothes came from. To tie all of this together here is a list of things we can do to help improve the sustainability of the apparel industry.
Before buying that flashy hoody you stumbled upon on Facebook, think about whether you truly need another hoody. Avoid impulse buys that will just add clutter to your closet. If you’ve found yourself with more clothes than you need, do not throw it all away. You can look for ways to upcycle the materials into new clothing, find it a new home by donating to a local thrift store, or handing it down to a friend or family member.
Shop with intention so you can plan to use your clothing for years rather than months. Look for garments made from renewable, natural materials, and manufactured in a socially and environmentally responsible way. If there is a strong reason to go synthetic (usually for performance wear), make sure you opt for quality so you can put it to use for a long time.
Washing and drying clothes drastically reduces the lifespan of your garment and for synthetic fibers, releases massive amounts of microplastic pollution. Rather than washing and drying all your clothes in the machine, an easy way to extend the life of your clothes and minimize energy use is by hang drying.
