What You Need to Know About Sustainable Fashion
Recently the phrase sustainable fashion has become very common. You must have heard it too and are wondering what this means. The phrase has been birthed by the conscious realization that the globe is indeed facing a plastic pollution problem and immense damage to the environment and the earth in general.
Read below to have all your questions on what you need to know about sustainable fashion means answered.
Sustainable Fashion is Ethical
The first thing you need to know about sustainable fashion is its ethics. If you are fashion-sensitive you should know by now that the fashion industry is the second largest contributor to pollution after the oil industry. It is shocking to comprehend that the clothes you wear cause as much pollution as does oil drilling and CO2 emissions from aircraft, buses, motorbikes, and cars. Fashion companies, therefore, have a big task of ensuring their fashion products produce minimal carbon emissions. The best thing is for these fashion companies to recycle materials to create different products. Ethical fashion companies also handle all the people in their supply chains as worthy human beings deserving respect. These companies educate their clients on the need for zero-waste dressing cultures. They do not contribute to textile factory hazards and strive by all means to reduce pollution. These companies ensure their fashionwear is durable enough to reduce the chances of disposals which contribute to landfills.
Sustainable Fashion involves the Use of Eco-Friendly Fabric
We have different tastes for fiber. You could be a lover of denim, polyester, or even cotton. Perhaps, you should ask yourself what comes into play to have your favorite piece of fabric get to you. Fabrics are also increasing in the clothing industry and new ones are emerging every other day. Are you aware there is recycled fabric? This fabric is the most ethical fiber as it is ethically sourced and is made of green eco-friendly materials. The fabric is processed in sustainable processes from raw materials like bamboo trees, fruit trees, plastic materials, and even coffee grounds. Some other fabrics are also made from hemp. Hemp is an interesting source of fabric and you should read more to understand the importance of buying clothes made from hemp. Also, note that these recycled fabrics are very sustainable and environmentally-friendly as they release less than a quarter of the amount of carbon emitted by cotton and polyester fabrics. Crops like cotton are also not easy to grow as they require a lot of water and energy. Using recycled materials to make clothes is therefore a strategy to minimize water wastage and enhance energy conservation.
Understand the Sustainable Fashion Checklist
It is important that you understand that sustainable fashion is a comprehensive term covering many aspects. If you choose to enter the sustainable fashion industry, you should be ready to use several strategies like the use of natural organic and biodegradable fabrics. Focus on using repurposed and recycled materials. Sustainable fashion involves the use of non-toxic dyes, plastic-free packaging, zero waste methods of pattern cutting, it involves employing community and traditional craftsmanship strategies, the use of vintage, slow models of fashion like limited collections, timeless pieces, and seasonless collections. Sustainable fashion also borrows from the circular economy strategies including closed-loop recycling and rental recycling. Sustainable fashion takes into consideration the social and ethical aspects of fashion. It includes offering workers fair wages, providing them with a good work environment, and giving them flexible working hours.
Sustainable Fashion is Beneficial
Sustainable fashion is guided by the principles of a circular economy, involves methodologies of having resources in use for as long as possible, extraction of the maximum value from any resources used, recovery, and regeneration of materials even when their time of use lapses. This reduces the costs of buying new outfits every time and then. It also ensures that there are fewer emissions made from polyester and cotton and thus the environment shall ultimately be conserved. Sustainable fashion is also important as it allows for more time for hemp regeneration used to make clothes. This in turn ensures, we never run out of resources neither shall we find ourselves with landfills that we can never manage. The health of the workers who work in hemp industries is also protected and thus diseases are reduced and human labor is sustained.
The sustainable fashion market is a growing one and there are several niches to be filled. While there are so many debates on how resilient the sustainable fashion industry is, it is clear that the industry is both socially and environmentally sustainable. Many countries are already thriving in the business of sustainable fashion and as a result, they are maximally avoiding the use of chemicals, reduced waste and pollution, and are enjoying energy and water conservation. Sustainable fashion therefore exclusively considers ethics; environmental and social ethics.
