“Fashion” the word itself reflects its diversity, from clothing to accessories. The fashion industries are on a boom over the past few years. But do you know, according to several United Nations groups, fashion industries are responsible for 10% of the world’s carbon emissions and nearly 20% of the world’s water waste? Nowadays fashion designers and popular clothing brands are more concerned about the environment, now they are finally shifting from Lip-service sustainability to impactful actions.
Most of us always wondered how come fashion industry adopt sustainability? What it actually means to reuse old clothes? So let me clear your doubt with the exact meaning of sustainable fashion.
What is Sustainable Fashion?
Sustainable Fashion is a design philosophy and movement that promote both social responsibility and fashion. It is defined as clothing, shoes, and other accessories that are manufactured and used in the most sustainable manner possible, taking into account both environmental and socio-economy. It is further divided into four parts that are:
- Ethical Fashion- It includes the production of clothes, working conditions, and fair trade.
- Slow Fashion- It contains sharing and renting of the material.
- Circular Fashion– It is concerned with recycling, upcycling, and thrifting.
- Conscious Fashion- It promotes eco-friendly and green fashion.
Today more and more brands are making a transition to adopt sustainable fashion. This movement not only protects nature but also helps to generate a new fashion trend that is both quirky and environment-friendly. Since 2013, the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh, fashion industries starts taking more interest ethically and sustainably. Moreover, its origin history starts in the late 90s, but this incident works as a highlighter in this movement.
Sustainable or ethical clothing has started making its mark in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, that is India. This concept is not very new for the Indian market, as Indians started propagating the use of swadeshi, organically grown fabrics for making attires. Sustainable Fashion also demolishes the thought that khadi clothes are not fashionable as now, new designers are coming up with some cool collections which are made up of fabrics like khadi.
Today many emerging Indian companies like B Label, Mio Borsa, InSom, Liva are setting some fashion goals by designing eco-friendly clothes without compromising style, quality, and durability. These attires are stylish, comfortable, and of course affordable. Indians have realized that through sustainable fashion they can contribute to saving the environment from pollution while looking stylish at the same time.
Sustainable clothes are made from organic cotton, industrial Hemp as it is rapidly renewable and requires little or no pesticides at all. While Production of sustainable clothes only organic and natural materials are used with proper working conditions at factories and the pollution emission is kept as low as possible.
Why We Should Adopt Sustainable Fashion?
You Might Think Why Should a Person Adopt Sustainable Fashion?
As we all know sustainable development is really important to protect our environment from pollution and after the oil industry fashion industry causes much pollution in the environment. Unfortunately, it is creating much more damage than we can ever think of. This industry is nasty and is creating major human and environmental damage.
Here are some of the compelling reasons that will force you to rethink as a consumer both mentally and physically.
1. Prioritising Quality
Promoting sustainability means prioritizing quality overlooks. You should start focusing on quality as good quality products tend to stay for a long time as compared to cheap quality products. The clothing produced by fast fashion brands doesn’t support the quality of material, hence this will lead you to purchase clothes again and again, which is very harmful to the environment also it will only waste your money. Choosing more suitable brands will provide quality and help you to reduce your waste as well as the amount of clothing you purchase.
2. Choose Wisely
Fast fashion mostly attracts its consumer with all the new and trendy collections which literally changes every week. We are so fascinated with all those pretty yet costly clothes that we spend money lavishly on purchasing clothes more than we need, Why? just to fix the fashion standards set by others.
Many sustainable fashion brands are focusing on creating pieces that are timeless and give high quality. Through which you can create your own style and say goodbye to wasting your money lavishly on fashion clothes that you really don’t need, instead you can create your own style and set your own fashion standards.
3. Protect Mother Earth
These fast fashion industries will leave a huge bad impact on mother earth as the waste incurred from these industries will take almost 100 years to decompose properly. It literally put impacts water consumption, landfill, the pesticides and chemicals which are used to grow cotton, and chemicals to dye the clothes directly affects our health as the waste materials are directly composed into the sea. Not only humans but it also affects animals who comes into the contact with them.
Hence to save mother earth you can shift to sustainable fashion and help to save these innocent animals too.
4. Helps the People Who Work in This Supply Chain
By switching to sustainable fashion you can help those workers who work in this supply chain at a very low cost. Fast fashion may provide clothes at a very low rate but honestly, their quality is not up to the mark. Sustainable Fashion brands make sure that the clothing you choose is not taking advantage of any worker or using any child labor illegally.
5. Helps to Save Natural Resources
A study held in 2015 shows that 97 % of materials are used to make clothes are all the new resources only 3% of materials are reused. all the chemicals and pesticides used to make the material of the clothes directly affects the soil quality and degrades its resources. Endless chemicals and dyes used to finish fabrics are just wasting our resources.
Hence to save and protect our nature we should shift our choices to sustainable fashion as it does not only help to protect nature but also helps to save our money, but also makes a positive change in the environment.
You can also help in sustainable development, simply by adopting these few tips through which you can easily become a part of this amazing movement. Here are a few techniques we are presenting to you to make your fashion journey more interesting and eco-friendly.
Here Are Some of the Best Practices to Adopt Sustainable Fashion.
1. Practice the Three R’s Judiciously
To take our first step towards sustainable development we must learn the accurate usage of three R’s that is REUSE, REDUCE and RECYCLE. Do you know that around 90% of the garments are eligible to get recycled? The clothes we wear must be reused again and again till they turn old. Garments can also be recycled, which draws out the raw material and this raw material can be used to create new fabrics. We must work together to reduce the waste material as much as possible.
2. Shop Local Products
You should try to shop from local vendors or small businesses who opt for sustainable clothes as not all the big brands are climate-friendly. Purchasing clothes from small businesses will create employment for small vendors and help to reduce the carbon footprint produced by microfiber cloths.
3. Smart Shopping
Try to shop only for the products that you genuinely need, Don’t overshop, just because the clothes are in trend. Excessive Shopping not only waste your money but also causes a lot of harm to the environment. Buying a large number of clothes, wearing them only for a few days and after that throwing them away doesn’t serve the purpose of protecting the environment.
4. Avoid Synthetic Clothes
Avoiding synthetic clothes will help in sustainable development at a very huge level, as synthetic clothes take 100 years to decompose and cause so much pollution in the environment. So it’s better to avoid such clothing materials and go for organic clothes. Synthetic clothes don’t give quality but only harms the environment badly.
5. Try to Make the Right Choice
You should be aware of the right and powers of a customer. As a consumer, you should know how to make the right choice for yourself by adopting Sustainable fashion and purchasing goods made up of organic materials, fabrics, and natural dyes.” Ayurganic ” handcrafted collection is now becoming famous as customers are getting to know about the bad effects of using synthetic clothes. “Ayurganic” clothes are completely based on ayurvedic principles.
Hence, the COVID-19 pandemic shows us the value of the environment and the deadly results of neglecting its importance. We should try to shift our fashion choices to a better and more sustainable environment as Sustainable Fashion is the new future face of the fashion industry. So let’s take an oath to protect our mother earth by taking some healthy steps towards sustainable development. Go fashionistas!!!!
