Sustainable Style : How Sustainable Practices Can Benefit Everyone

Robert Swan once said “the greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” Two companies that understand this concept are Patagonia and Nike. How they address these issues regarding sustainable business practice vary, however. Both have made it their mission to deliver excellence and make the best quality products within their industries, Patagonia focussing more on outdoor active wear, while Nike is more sports oriented. Part of this process has been developing products from sustainable sources. Patagonia, for example, actively took a stand against chemical intensive cotton in 1994, and has since switched to less harmful means of organic cotton within all their cotton-based products. They are even going the extra

This papers purpose is to teach fashion heavy consumers on the real price of fast fashion and how buying it affects the environment. This type of audience can be anyone who partakes in the buying of well-known cheap retail stores that have a large audience of being fast and obtainable. These consumers should have the information on how fast fashion effects are environment so it could possibly alter their buying habits to be eco-friendlier but buying either less or more sustainable clothing instead of the cheap alternatives. This audience should care about this purpose because this will affect the world now and for future generations as their environment is being mistreated because of these fast

80 billion clothing items are produced every year. About two million tons of clothes is thrown away every year. The clothes often cannot be resold due to lack of quality. Only about 10% of clothes are resold. ¾ of the clothing’s manifested from fast fashion labels will end up in a land fill after a year after it is put out for consumers to buy.

TenTree has created a product with the positioning to give customers clothing options that are environmentally and socially responsible. They promise to plant ten trees for every item purchased and only use factories that are approved by WRAP. (TenTree, n.d.) They also have a large selection of t-shirts, hoodies, sweaters, tanks, hats, and toques, in a variety of different colours and sizes. (TenTree, n.d.) Satisfying the customer wants for a wide variety of socially and environmentally responsible clothing has created functional-instrumental value for their customers.

Fashion is everything to society and the media. The fashion industry has transformed into a necessity in the life of people. Everyone wants to look good, feel fabulous and feel as if we belong with everyone else. The envy and desire to wear certain things and look a certain way all come, from wearing the latest fashion handbags, accessories, dresses, shoes, and the list goes on. But, when is considering fashion into an individual’s life going too far to the extreme? Many do not consider the whereabouts of fashion materials and how the environment is affected by the mere existence of certain garments. Some may believe these objects grow on trees. But that is clearly not the case. Even though it would be nice. The fashion industry as a

In this article, Barenblat outlines some of the key reasons as to why fast fashion is detrimental for women and the environment. The author supports her claim by suggesting fast fashion is expensive for the planet, encourages young women in poverty to work in sweatshops, and leads to million tons of landfill each year. This information in the article is useful because it provides relevant statistics on the damages caused by the clothing industry.

The process is just as important as the materials used in the production. Alongside production technology innovations, brands such as Adidas and Nike have begun to use recycled materials in their shoes. The way to ‘do more with less’ will involve innovations in the types of materials used in products. Adidas has prototyped Primeknit shoes made from recovered ocean fishing nets while Nike is using recycled polyester, diverting plastic bottles from landfills. Furthermore Nike has begun to implement sustainability metrics into their material choice and product design. This helps to ensure that there is greater transparency to the trade-off’s that designers are making between functional performance and environmental impact. To ensure continuous superior product performance a business must drive product innovation as well as

Nordstrom has continued to improve their dedication to the environment, steps such as: reducing carbon dioxide released into the air, using organic cottons and investing time and money into the discovery of more sustainable fabric clarification. Although many of these steps may seem like obvious choices so many large companies are still struggling to make the leap nordstrom has shown in these areas. The hunt for more sustainable fabrics is in hopes to lower the unlawfully logged forests and continue to encourage other brands, which they outsource from to be aware of how and where their fabric materials are made. The ethical decision to improve their own environmental practices and inspire other brands to do the same shows they care about the recent changes in society and are willing to form to these

Fashion today may seem as it’s not using much water, consequently it’s one of the most water wasted issues in the world, conversely it comes very close to water pollution. 2,700 litres of water produce just one t-shirt that we may wear once and just abandon a couple weeks in the time to come. You may not know, but many noxious chemicals are used to create the fabric that is discarded into our clothes but once it’s reached the fabric’s limit, people dump the chemicals into rivers which lead to water pollution without a care. On a sadder note, citizens in poor countries waste their lives making our clothes for at least 50 cents per hour just to feed

Clothing not only keeps us warm, hides our imperfections or accentuates our best features, but also expresses our personality. However, fashion is more like a cult than self-expression. Every month or every weekend, sometimes in our pajamas, we start a new crusade for extra clothes, even if 20% of it never leaves our closets. We buy a staggering amount of cheap and low-quality clothing, which sometimes falls apart after one wear or one wash, and easily gets tossed into the garbage.

My aim is to link up the environmental issue to the potential saleable fashion brand, as AllSaint. However, the brand announced to the DIVA magazine that, ‘… The

The fact that there is so much competition in the clothing industry forces companies to seek the cheapest labor and material. To get products that are the least environmentally harmful will cost the company more money. That can lead future CEO’s to look for less expensive resources that may not meet their current standards. For example, because Patagonia makes synthetic clothing, plastics used to make the clothing release micro-plastics into the water when washed. These micro-plastics cannot be completely filtered by waste water filtering plants. (Martinko, Katherine)

The impacts that clothing have on the global economy and environment have become increasingly prominent over the years. While consumers don’t pay attention to the origins of their clothing, the producers use tactful strategies in order to keep up with the fashion industry and save their products on the market [A]. From sweatshops to pollution, the origins of our clothing have a huge impact on global sustainability whether it be on the economy or the environment [D]. The affects that it has on the global society is continuously getting worse and will eventually get to a point where the damage on the environment and the economy can no longer be reversed. The origins of clothing directly impact global sustainability because it promotes poverty in many areas of the world thus exploiting the economy, and destroying the environment.

Social issues within sustainability are something that needs to be constantly re-addressed and re-evaluated due to our ever-changing cultural perceptions. For example, the health and safety of workers has been an area that has been exploited throughout history in association with textiles. In western culture the industrial revolution saw the rapid growth of machinery, factories and production as a whole. The factory workers themselves where typically very poor and received extremely little wages as well as little or no thought having gone into the health and safety of those workers. Factories were perceived as noisy, cluttered and very dangerous. This brought forward a social need for proper training, supervision and a clean and controlled environment within a work place. This being said we now have in today’s modern western culture, laws and regulations that protect us and ensure we receive minimum wage for the time and effort we provide. This is reinforced by Barbour’s statement that they ‘recognise the importance and implications of health, safety, welfare… working in partnership with its own factories and all of its suppliers both in the UK and overseas to ensure that workplace standards, health and safety, fair pay and fair employment conditions are complied with.’ (Barbour Press, n.d.) However, if as a society we understand the need and solution for these particular social issues, why do many textile and fashion companies go further a field to non-European

There are a large amount of social and environmental problems within the global apparel industry.