Sustainable fashion in short is the movement or process of clothing and fashion accessories being produced in a more eco-friendly way and that ensures social justice throughout the process .

Sustainable movement looks to combat  the large carbon footprint that fast fashion has created , by reducing the environmental impact of fashion such as air pollution , water pollution , and overall climate change .

Why is this needed ?

This is needed due to the following reasons :-

1. Fashion and textile industry is considered as the 2nd largest polluting industry in the world. India’s textile industry is the 3rd largest source of waste .
2. Textile industry produces 45000 meters of fabric waste everyday
3. In 2015 alone the fashion industry used up about 79 billion metric cubes of water. A single cotton t-shirt that we wear takes up about 2700 L of water , which is as much as most adults drink in 3 years , and every year 2 billion t-shirts are sold worldwide. That’s 5400 billion liters of water only for t-shirts!
4. Every year 100 billion new clothes are purchased .
5. The clothes we wear are made up of synthetic fibers, not sustainable and 60% being non-biodegradable.
6. During manufacturing of clothes, lots of chemical and synthetic dyes are used to give them a polished look and 50,000 tons of dyes are discharged into the global water system from the textile industry.
7. After wearing clothes we just dispose of them. The average family disposes 30 kg of clothes annually and 15% of this get donated or recycled , 93% of used clothes end up in landfills.
8. According to research, fashion and textile industry is responsible for 10% of global greenhouse emission.

SOLUTION AND OUR ROLE

• Producers role

1. Conducting business in an ethical way is one of the foundations of sustainable fashion .

2. Eco friendly production and packaging .

3. Emission reduced production and redesigning clothes.

4. Using organic and natural material to make clothes , which is durable and recycled waste fiber must be used .

5. Another goal is to educate people to practice environmentally friendly consumption by promoting the “green consumer”; which can allow for the company itself to gain more support and a larger following

• Our role

We can start wearing clothes which are not made from synthetic fibers,  instead made from eco-friendly fibers, which can decompose in a shorter span of time.

We should adopt  green consumerism – It is the shift in consumer behavior attitudes advocating for the efficient use of energy, which ultimately helps in saving money, reducing utility bills, lowering emission of greenhouse gas, and enabling economies to meet the growing energy demands.

Many brands are slowly moving towards sustainable fashion, if we as a consumer demand more for the eco-friendly clothing then producers will produce them more and in this way we can promote sustainable fashion .

By Saiyam Jain, Volunteer Research & Develpoment Wing