Being Eco-fashion is in fashion

Fashion has always existed, you could even say that it is something implicit in man, his evolution and his innate egocentrism.

However, the concept of fashion, as it is known today, did not appear until the Renaissance, where it began to become professional, and it evolved until it reached current levels, coinciding with its small industrial revolution, thanks to the sewing machine.

What we already know today is a perverse concept of fashion, which is conceived as an art fleeting in time, which obeys the dictation of some and is based on the anxiety to be up to date with others. A system that, with globalization, has been democratized and at the same time degraded, evolving with its back to society and the environment, seeking to generate inequalities through constant novelty and elitist products, and proposing consumption as the only remedy for dissatisfaction, seeking unrestrained sales associated with an increasingly unsustainable environmental and social impact.

The environmental impact of fashion.

Fashion, like any other human activity, creates pressure on the environment. In fact, fashion, like other basic needs to be met by human beings, generates pressure on resources and the quality of the environment that always translates into a very high environmental impact, due to the enormous volume of human beings who yearn to meet this need in the best possible way.

In fact, some studies estimate the consumption of textiles by an average European at 14 kg/year, being responsible for 5% of the carbon footprint of an average citizen and 1.5% of the total volume of waste generated by them, with no more than 13% of them being recycled.

If we analyze the life cycle of one of the most common garments in anyone's wardrobe, such as jeans, we can get an idea of the enormous environmental impact that we generate only with the clothes we wear on a daily basis:

• More than 2 billion jeans are sold worldwide every year.
• Of the two components of jeans, the biggest impact by far is that of cotton yarn, which accounts for up to 98% of the environmental impact of this garment.
• Cotton cultivation is the largest crop in the world, if we exclude the cultivation of species intended for food, and accounts for 2.5% of the occupied land.
• The cultivation of cotton consumes 3% of the water destined for agricultural uses, 10% of all the pesticides produced on the planet and 25% of all the agrochemicals manufactured.
• 1 kg of processed cotton fiber consumes around 1,700 liters of water on average, and its water footprint can reach 9,100 liters/kg.
• Denim pants can end up traveling an average of 20,000 km by truck, train or boat from when cotton is grown in India until the pants arrive at the store in Madrid.
• About 20,000 tons of synthetic dyes are produced per year to dye denim fabric, to which must be added those produced in natural indigo dye.
• With normal use, jeans could be consuming a minimum of about 600 liters of water for washing throughout their life cycle. (calculated for 5 years of useful life and one wash every two weeks at full load in a state-of-the-art washing machine).
• Most of the studies carried out establish that half of the environmental burden of jeans is due to the use.
• In the end, during their entire lifecycle, jeans can consume the equivalent of about 3700 liters of water or even twice as much, or about 100 Kwh of primary energy, as well as being responsible for the emission of the equivalent of 15 kg of CO2.

Something is moving in the fashion world.

It is clear that the situation is becoming unsustainable through the current channels, and this is already being noticed by companies, designers, professionals, lovers of the sector and, above all, consumers.

In fact, being Eco-Fashion is now in fashion and more and more initiatives are emerging aimed at finding the balance between fashion and social responsibility, between the needs of men and the capacity of the environment to respond to them, often thanks to an increasingly informed, responsible and conscious collective consciousness that pushes the market to alternative fashion that meets their needs.

First of all, the movements aimed at acting on the environmental impact of raw materials stand out, with force, the “organic” movement, where cotton is once again the greatest exponent and pioneer, and where, in addition to the environment, other criteria of corporate social responsibility are beginning to be included, and the first standards for the labeling of “organic” garments begin to emerge.

The DIY movement (from the English expression “do it yourself”) is also beginning to emerge, the creation of fashion in the same place where it is consumed and by the consumers themselves, through local groups that seek a return to traditional techniques, sewing groups that allow the arrangement and refurbishment of garments for reuse, or that even seek the creation of their own fashion environment, some of which are even shaped as hacktivisms about fashion, movements with political and artistic overtones that demand a real and immediate change of current consumption scheme, even beyond proposals that they consider to be deviant or simple patches.

Many of these movements seek to a large extent, and as the basis of their demands, to exchange quantity for quality. And this is precisely one of the fundamental pillars of being Eco-fashion: moving to, already referred to by many as, “slow-fashion”, and to put aside unbridled consumerist movements to begin to make quality consumption appropriate to the real needs of each person.

On the other hand, another line of work in the Eco-Fashion world, logical if we think about the life cycle of our jeans, is to seek recycling or reuse to achieve two things: Avoid the generation of waste, which requires treatment and has a strong environmental impact, and avoid the need to manufacture a new product from virgin raw materials starting from the beginning of the entire life cycle.

In this sense, as in the previous alternatives, there are also more and more options that seek to recycle textiles and other waste that can be used as second-hand clothing by other people, recycled for other different uses (such as rags, or even as absorbers), or that end up becoming even accessories, new garments or even “Vintage” fashion garments in alternative markets, which are increasingly fashionable and in demand.

And along with all this new movement of organic, quality design, slow-fashion, and the reuse and recycling of materials, events, platforms and organizations aimed at joining forces and promoting sustainable fashion are beginning to spread strongly.

Sustainable fashion events are beginning to emerge, with great force, that aim to promote and make this option known to the general public and to bring together the different actors in this sector in a single point for the search for synergies and new lines of work. There are also more and more successful showrooms and runways of sustainable fashion, the days and exhibitions created around this theme, and even the communities created around sustainable fashion.

However, there is still a lot to do, the consumerist thinking scheme of a good part of society must change a lot. The way in which people see fashion in their daily lives must change, so that they can begin to think, to ask themselves questions about the origin of their clothes, the materials, their responsibility in their manufacture. Only then can the fashion world begin to take firmer steps towards sustainability, towards the promotion of the local, of organic fibers and the recycling of materials, of quality and of buying out of necessity and not on impulse.

If you want to know more about sustainable fashion visit the blog: Environmental Quality.