Community engagement is a common strategy taken by many sustainable fashion pioneers. Some fashion brands establish organizations to proactively guide and accelerate their own sustainable development goals; some others work with a charity or ecological groups and donate funds for better socio-environment initiatives, and several of them even participate in Read more…
Ethical practices are highly recommended across the entire supply chain to ensure fashion products produced under safe, humane, fair and legal conditions.
To achieve fashion arts with a sustainable focus, more and more brands seek alternative materials to replace traditional yet considered unsustainable ones and improved technologies to enhance the polluting processing. For example, Stella McCartney’s bio-synthetic materials replacing plastics, and Adidas’s waterless dyeing and bio-dyeing replacing the traditional chemical dyeing processes.
To reduce the environmental impacts, manufacturers are recommended to increase use efficiency of resources such as water and energy, to improve technologies and processes for lower carbon footprints and gaseous emissions, and to reduce hazardous materials and processing. Clean production is the crucial target for the fashion industry.
When the lifetime of a fashion product ends, recycling is the first choice for sustainability, while landfill and incineration should be the last choice due to their negative impact on the environment. Fashion brands have been urged to use more recyclable materials for product development and create effective methods to Read more…
Prolonging the lifetime of each apparel product is the key approach to lower a product carbon footprint. Fashion designers can set circular consuming plans before each product is designed; the manufacturers should be dedicated to producing products in higher quality for a longer lifetime, and the retailers should encourage conscious Read more…
Based on the successful experiences of sustainability in the fashion industry, six sustainable business initiatives are proposed for reference, including 4Rs – Reuse, Recycle, Reduce and Replace to close the loop across the supply chain and promoting ethical practices and community engagement.
One new independent British brand, Know the Origin, is performing quite outstandingly in the sustainable fashion scene. The main selling point of this brand is that all its products are made from 100% organic cotton, with some Fairtrade certified. It is also unique that consumers can follow the production journey Read more…
Patagonia, a US brand for outdoor and salient sports clothing, has been recognized as one of the most outstanding pioneers dedicated to environmental protection. The company encourages using eco-friendly fibers, including hemp, organic cotton, 100% recycled down and innovative technologies to reduce unnecessary harm to the environment. Furthermore, Patagonia initiated Read more…
In the 2017 Copenhagen Fashion Summit, and for the first time the organization Global Fashion Agenda calls on fashion brands and retailers to publish their commitment to a circular model within the next half year. More than 20 companies have already taken actions for their sustainable development plan afterwards. Some Read more…