Campaign combats throwaway fashion
More than 300 retailers, producers and designers have joined a sustainable clothing action plan launched by the UK government to tackle the environmental impact of the throwaway fashion culture, and improve the lot of developing world producers.
The Sustainable Clothing Roadmap hopes to draw attention to the wasteful effect of ‘fast fashion’ where cheap high street clothes are worn just a few times and then discarded. About 1.5m tonnes of clothing end up in landfill every year. “This action plan represents a concerted effort from the fashion industry, including top names in the high street and manufacturers, to change the face of fashion,” said Minister for Sustainability Lord Philip Hunt.
“Retailers have a big role to play in ensuring fashion is sustainable. We should all be able to walk into a shop and feel that the clothes we buy have been produced without damaging the environment or using poor labour practices, and that we will be able to reuse and recycle them when we no longer want them.”
According to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the clothing and textiles sector in the UK produces around 3.1m tonnes of carbon dioxide, 2m tonnes of waste and 70m tonnes of waste water a year.
“(The Sustainable Clothing Roadmap) is going to be great for the fashion industry, great for the climate and for anyone who’s in the supply industry in developing countries to those working in retail,” said Lord Hunt. “We believe customers want sustainable clothing and we want to give them as much as possible.”
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Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s will increase their ranges of fair trade and organic clothing and support fabrics which can be recycled more easily.
Tesco will ban cotton from countries known to use child labour.
Nike will improve the sustainability performance and innovation of all their product ranges.
Charity Shops, such as Oxfam and the Salvation Army will increase consumer awareness on the environmental benefits of clothing reuse, and open more ‘sustainable clothing’ boutiques of high quality second-hand clothing and new sustainably designed garments.
The Fairtrade Foundation aim to increase the volume of Fairtrade cotton products to 10% of all cotton clothing in the UK by 2012.