Britain's Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is making great strides in transforming the fashion industry from a consumerist society into a sustainable contribution. At the start of the 2009 London fashion week Defra Minister Lord Hunt announced the Sustainable Clothing Roadmap to make fashion more sustainable and less environmentally damaging.
Lord Hunt stated that “Retailers have a big role to play in ensuring fashion is sustainable. We should all be able to walk into a shop and feel that the clothes we buy have been produced without damaging the environment or using poor labour practices, and that we will be able to reuse and recycle them when we no longer want them."
The sustainable roadmap focuses on these four areas:
- Improving environmental performance across the supply chain, including: sustainable design; fibers and fabrics; maximizing the reuse of products, recycling and managing the end of life for the products; and clothes cleaning.
- Awareness, media, education and networks for the sustainability of clothes.
- Promoting markets for sustainable clothing.
- Improving traceability along the supply chain (environmental, ethical, and trade).
Yes, see that post I just made about cotton. It's a complex problem, but not one that is impossible to solve. It just requires a little political will, both inside government and at places like NY Fashion Week. And most of the time, it's an answer that solves many problems--for NY, it would attract additional attention from news sources on the usual fashion shows. For the government, it would help give the US a favorable balance of trade, improve our wildlife, water and soil quality, and human health, provide jobs, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn both cases, it's a matter of getting political support from a broad spectrum of the population (voters, or media consumers).