The current trend with fashion is towards acceleration. Making more designs and more seasons every year, producing more, and the usual answer to that acceleration is to slow down. But what we see is that just slowing down won't be enough. We need a radical rethink of how the industry operates. We need to make fashion circular. Making fashion circular means making clothes with safe and renewable materials. It means designing and manufacturing clothes so they can actually turn back into new clothes once they are not used anymore, and it means developing new business models so clothes are used much more than they are today. The great thing is that we start to see a lot of examples of companies who are innovating in one of those different dimensions. So at current way the fashion industry operates is worn out. The current way of doing business actually misses out on close to 500 billion dollars every year. By having clothes that are under worn we miss out on the current of 400 billion dollars a year and by sending the materials that make our clothes to landfill or incineration, we lose an additional 100 billion dollar, and how can that be manifested, well we can take an example.
The growth of the clothing market in the US, over the next 3-5 years, is estimated to be between 2- 3% per year for new clothes . If we compare that with the predicted 15% growth over the next 3 to 5 years every year, for the resale market, we can definitely see that the opportunity really is around doing things differently. When we think about also making fashion circular it means phasing out hazardous chemicals, and by phasing out hazardous chemicals we can ensure that the workers in the industry, society and the environment, will be better off.
Currently there is quite a lack of transparency when it comes to how the industry operates but also the materials that are used in the industry, for example , if you take a pair of jeans that you would wear you would probably buy them thinking that they are 100% cotton because that's what's being said on the tag, but actually it isn't true. The seams that are used to put your jeans together are most likely made of plastics and so are the pockets that are used for your jeans and that disconnection between what is actually being said on the tag and what is the reality of the materials that are used in the product, increases the complexity that there is, to actually do something with those jeans once you stop wearing them. So when the collector will get those jeans, what you will read is that those jeans are 100% cotton but that you will know that the pockets are not most likely and the seams are not.So they cut underneath the pocket, cut around the seam to recover the part of cotton that is recoverable easily and recycle only this part of cotton where the rest will actually be discarded, that means that even if you have a product that is supposedly made of 100 percent of cotton you will lose the vast majority of the materials because practically that won't be the case. So increasing transparency, and increasing the clarity, that there is between the different actors in the value chain on the exact material content of our clothes, would actually enable a system where recovering materials after use would be much easier.
To move towards a Circular Economy there are three things that fashion companies needs to do.
*The first thing is innovate in their business model. Making sure that they develop new business model that generate value from clothes that are worn more.
*The second thing fashion companies need to do is design products and make them from safe and renewable materials that means all the chemicals that are used to make our clothes are safe, safe for the workers, safe for the environment, and safe for the wearer. And if virgin inputs are needed to make our clothes, they should come from renewable resources.
*the third thing that needs to happen is to design and make the clothes, so that they can be made again.
So how do we align the design process and the design of the clothes with what will happen to those clothes. Once they can't be worn anymore. That requires a conversation and a connection between the designers, the manufacturers and the collectors and recyclers to ensure that all that is aligned. When we talk about new business models that increase clothing use, our mind often goes towards resale or rental models. Those are great and have a lot of potential, but they are not the only thing that can happenThere is a lot of opportunity to increase the durability of products and to strengthen the relationship that a brand has with its customers. In the transition to make fashion circular, there is quite a lot a customer can do. For example, asking for more transparency or better choices from their favorite brand, but also making sure that the clothes that they have that are worn out are not put in the trash, but actually put in the right collection channels, and make sure that the clothes that they don't wear anymore but still look great and are perfectly in good shape are either ,shared, swapped or resold
What we really need is for the industry to take ownership of the problem and work together towards a better model where clothes are made from safe and renewable materials, are used more, and never become waste and the great thing that we are starting to witness is the increased awareness and willingness to act within brands that shows that achieving a circular economy for fashion is totally doable.
No comments:
Post a Comment