The food industry has been busy thinking about sustainability, affordability, healthiness and so on, for at least ten, fifteen years. And there's some important lessons to be drawn there. One is to look at the entire cycle of production. So in food that means from the farmer all the way to the consumer.
In textiles that would mean also from the production, not just from the moment the textile is there, but really from the cotton farmer, from the wool farmer, all the way down to the person who buys and wears the clothes.
There are many steps in between. And each of these steps need to be optimized, Otherwise you don't get sustainable fashion or sustainable production. A second important point is that in that whole chain approach, you then notice that there are many points where there are actually losses or waste. And waste in itself, we now think is also a resource.
Waste with food is different from the waste with fashion, because in fashion you don't eat so you don't digest. I mean, a few exceptions there, so at the end, if a piece of clothing is not interesting anymore to the consumer, it then only becomes waste. Whereas in food, the waste occurs all along the chain. So what do we need to do?
We need to analyse where the major parts of the waste are. waste can be either discarded products, for example snippets that are too small in textile, but also of course all the damage that is done by dyes, by a washing system and so on. And then at the end point, the consumer, that's the very important educational point.
Food waste at the consumer level is still a very high percentage of the entire chain. it would be that also in the fashion chain, the consumer is the crucial point. We have to give a certain value to waste and to discarded parts because if it doesn't have a value, the consumer is not enticed to do it differently. And food, like many parts of fashion, is cheap. So you need to have an incentive for consumers to think differently.
the main lesson from the food industry to the fashion industry is to really think in terms of circularity.Of course sustainability is a trade-off. What is the most important dimension?If you say for example, you want only local wool, then that means something for the production process, for example in the Netherlands. It means that you have to then optimize the wool production there. Our lesson from the food and agriculture industry is that ideally, you would like to produce there where it can be best done in terms of sustainability. But from a social point of view, it can often be very important to produce there where there is a really demand for employment the fact that you can employ women who otherwise could not be employed, could be a reason to produce somewhere where maybe from a sustainability point of view, it wouldn't be the best possible option. But it will never, or very rarely, be an optimal solution. The fact that you can use something again, and really recycle it, may be a very strong impetus for people to actually buy clothes that are really meeting those criteria. But then the other alternative could be that that might not be entirely locally sourced.
for example local and small scale versus large scale and global, is in a way a false dichotomy. There's nothing we eat or we wear that doesn't have inputs from many parts of the world. So the local part is very much also an identity issue. And it is an issue through which people want to promote a certain branch of industry, so again, using local cotton or local wool can be a very powerful statement. But even if you do that, it's very unlikely that the dye is also locally produced, it's very unlikely that the water is only local water and it's very unlikely that even all the labour is local. that certainly becomes even more complicated with more materials. So we shouldn't have that dichotomy in such an extreme way. We have to realise that our entire world economy is linked And the choice for local should be an informed choice, that means that you're doing something which has a higher price, which can be an incentive or a dis-incentive for consumers.You're doing it also because of a certain identity issue, because you want to promote local artisans and so on.But it can also be that you say as a consumer, well I want to buy something from a country far away because I want to have the chance to give employment and hence income to people very far away. I have a jersey which is a wonderful little jersey, and I received it as a gift once when I gave talk, but the interesting thing about the jersey is that it has a little QR-code on the inside. And with that QR-code, I actually have access to the farmer, and to the farmer who produced the wool. And so if I look at the farm, I can see actually the valley,this is a New Zealand valley, where the sheep are produced and they're happily sort of running around the valley. The farmers' son comes and tells something about the farm and their aims.Yet I'm having it here in the Netherlands.So the local is important. you know where it comes from, so the identity is clear. Yet although very happy you can be connected to that farmer in New Zealand and I think the strength of feeling that connectedness is as important as saying that you only want local things.
there needs to be a real fundamental analysis, where does it go wrong in the fashion industry, in social, in economic and environmental dimensions.
how can we build a new story around fashion, where the pride is in the recycling, in the re-use, in the joy of having something that lasts nearly forever.
the main role for valuing waste lies with the consumer. what is currently viewed as waste should be revalued, in order to change consumer behaviour and value resources in both the food- and fashion industry.
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