This Earth Day, Chicago Fashion Coalition presents “The Future of Fashion Sustainability,” a conversation with leading voices from fashion design, manufacturing, retail, and activism on how transparency, materials, worker’s rights, and consumption play a key role in achieving global climate goals and creating a more sustainable industry.

With ten years left to avert catastrophic climate change, the fashion industry is tasked with assessing and redesigning the decade’s old systems that have contributed to it being the world’s second-largest polluter globally. As fashion’s water consumption is set to double by 2030 and the amount of waste it creates to 148 million tons, the industry needs to look forward in order to address how transparency, materials, worker’s rights, and consumption will contribute to the overall sustainability of the industry and the environment.

Transparency

The fashion industry is notoriously opaque; a characteristic that has allowed for inefficiencies in the supply chain, corporate structure, unethical labor practices, and limited data on farming conditions and their environmental emissions. 

“There is a level at which the lack of transparency is working for these companies because it allows them to perpetuate the status quo,” said Linda E. Greer, a global fellow at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.

But with increased attention to fashion sustainability by consumers, brands are being forced to become more transparent with their processes across their organizations in order to present a clearer, more accurate gauge on their social and environmental impact.

Materials

According to the Sustainability Index produced by Business of Fashion, most clothes in the world are made using fossil fuels, and oil-based polyester is the most commonly used fabric in the world with nearly 60 million tons produced in 2019. Fashion’s second-favorite fiber is cotton, a product with a complicated environmental footprint whose present connections to modern-day slavery are as problematic as its past.

When looking to the future of fashion sustainability, the need to address materials production, waste, and design is paramount to achieving global climate goals. Biodiversity and regenerative agriculture are emerging solutions within textile production, but the designers also have a huge role to play. 

Through a focus on minimizing waste, increasing quality, being innovative with textiles, and designing for longevity, designers are responsible for shifting their creative lens for a more environmentally conscious industry. 

Worker’s Rights

Millions of garment workers around the world, 80% being women, face human rights violations and unethical labor practices every day. From unsafe working environments to critically low wages to gender-based violence, the fashion industry has done little to protect its garment workers  - most of whom reside in the global south and developing economies. 

Fast fashion is largely to blame for the violence the industry imposes on its garment workers, with corporate profit being placed before the ethical treatment of the workforce, and increased consumption demands being prioritized before health and safety standards. 

In order to create a more sustainable industry, worker’s rights and economic disparity must be addressed. The challenge will be in the restructuring of corporate organizations and the redistribution of wealth across the supply chain, as well as committing to transparency in ethics.

Consumption

In the last two decades, the consumption of fashion has increased by 400%. With trends becoming more ephemeral and social media promoting a culture of constant consumerism, more garments than ever are entering the global south’s burdened economy of resale and further adding to environmental pollution everywhere. 

To solve the problem, consumers and marketers will be challenged with rethinking the culture of consumption and the trend-based systems that hold the industry captive. Additionally, fashion circularity and materials recycling will require both innovation and mainstream adoption by consumers across the entire ecosystem. 

A Peer Panel

Led by Rachel Misick, a writer, strategist, and author of “Second to None,” discusses sustainability in fashion with panelists Hoda Katebi [Blue Tin Production]. a Chicago-based Iranian-American writer, abolitionist organizer, and creative educator, William McNicol, the founder and lead designer of the Cleveland-based fashion brand, William Frederick, and Rachel Habegger, a global and local supply planner for corporate retailers.

For more information on the future of fashion sustainability, visit these resources:

• Business of Fashion

• Ellen MacArthur Foundation

• Human's Rights Watch

• Sage Journals

• Network for Business Sustainability

• Slow Factory Foundation