Fashion and Sustainability

Chapter 1

Abstract

fashion industry.

1. Introduction

3

impact, sustainability initiatives

quantifiable action for sustainability by 2020.

Sustainability Initiatives

in the Fashion Industry

A heightened awareness toward the fashion industry's environmental impact has emerged in recent years, stirred by mounting evidence of intensified global clothing consumption and driven by the increased accessibility and affordability of clothing. In the last 3 years, the release of several comprehensive reports years detailing the extent of the fashion industry's environmental impact, as well as the founding of several fashion industry-targeted sustainability campaigns (e.g., the "2020 Commitment" of the Global Fashion Agenda), has not only helped draw a great deal of attention to the issues but has also triggered an evident wave of intention toward a concrete, quantifiable action. With the abundance of information surrounding the subject of sustainability in the fashion industry, this chapter intends to provide an overview of (1) the most concerning environmental impacts caused by the fashion industry, (2) current leading collective sustainability campaigns mobilizing the fashion industry, (3) current available benchmarks and tools for measuring environmental impact of the textile life cycle, and (4) examples of how companies in the fashion industry are executing sustainability initiatives in their products or processes. Finally, the chapter will conclude with some of the current challenges and future opportunities in sustainability confronting the

Keywords: fashion industry, Textiles and Apparel, sustainability, environmental

The taxing impact the fashion industry has had on the environment is by no means a new revelation—having accumulated a great deal of evidence over the years. However, unlike in the past when "sustainability" seemed more like an ideal adopted by individual, niche grassroot organizations, it is now considered a core value globally across the fashion industry. The fashion industry's recent wave of intentional action toward sustainability is in part motivated by several comprehensive and revealing industry sustainability reports released in the last 3 years [1–3], but moreover it is a collective response to the recent fashion industry-specific sustainability campaigns such as the "2020 Commitment," spearheaded in the last 2 years by several sustainability-driven coalitions (e.g., the Global Fashion Agenda and the Waste and Resources Action Programme UK), which have rallied formal commitments from a significant portion of the fashion industry toward concrete,

Jennifer Xiaopei Wu and Li Li
