Last month I dove into the phrase "sustainable fashion.”
For those who didn’t catch it or don’t want to spend a whopping 4 minutes to read up - I’ll be extra nice and give you the tl;dr version :)
Sustainable fashion refers to apparel that is made more responsibly or ethically than traditional fashion business models and practices. I.e.: the clothing is made in less harmful and less impactful ways to the global environment, local communities, animals, and garment workers.
“Sustainable fashion” also does not have any absolute laws that define or label specific garments; in turn ultimately making it a subjective matter. Even though many brands use 3rd party certifications, an individual person may decide what things about a specific garment make it a “sustainable” garment in their opinion.
But what about the term circular fashion? Is it different than sustainable fashion? What about regenerative, responsible, slow, or ethical fashion?
Woh woh woh, slow down.
We’ll pick apart those phrases in another post. For now, let’s focus on circular fashion.
refers to an apparel business model that takes the utmost amount of responsibility and morality of every phase of a product into consideration with end-of-life options.
This model aims to have products in circulation for as long as possible while having as little negative impact on the global environment, local communities, animals, and garment workers as possible. It covers:
Design
Sourcing
Production
Shipping
1st wear
Next wear
And end-of-life options.
If you’ve ever looked into it, you’ll find the phrase “close the loop” along with circular diagrams to illustrate how this type of business model works. And how it is different than the opposing model.
Let's look at the linear model first. I've made my own illustration below:
Here are other illustrations from various companies.
Linear Models:
Problems of the Linear model:
Taking a step back, I always like to play devil's advocate or anticipate someones rebuttal. I think that if you are going to take a stance on something, you should take the time to consider all sides and facets thoroughly, (and not just find information to support your side of the argument).
A circular economy concept isn't new- the term first appearing by author and economist Kenneth E. Boulding in 1966, then again in a book by David Pearce & R. Turner in 1988 called The Economics of Natural Recourses.
However, the person recognized as the "father of circular economies" is "William McDonough; a architect and globally recognized leader in sustainable development and design. He is a pioneer of the concepts of Cradle to Cradle Design™, the Circular Economy and the Circular Carbon Economy, notably co-authoring Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things." - williammcdonough.com
So, despite these concepts being around for a while, some people still ask:
"What's the problem with the linear model? What's the problem with landfills? They've been around for generations and...... life goes on; there's no apparent colossal disaster from them. Just leave it at that."
To this I would say:
"Of course, a landfill has it's purpose- our waste has to go somewhere. Landfills keep cities clean, segregate hazardous waste from solid waste, provide jobs, and are more "eco-friendly" than they used to be. Old ones are converted to playgrounds for the community. They also serve as an energy source. (As garbage begins to break down it produces carbon dioxide & methane and those gases can be extruded then filtered to use for energy production).
However, on the flip side, there are enormous problems caused by landfills such as:
- Greenhouse gases being emitted, (methane especially- which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide).
-Methane is highly flammable and if in an enclosed space, can cause an entire landfill to light up in seconds.
-Accidents & landslides have been a cause of serious injury and death for landfill employees, as well as citizens in developing countries. Dozens of people died in a 2017 landslide in Sri Lankan, 113 people from Ethiopia in March of 2017, 53 deaths between the U.S. and Canada in 2019......the list goes on and on.
-Some studies indicate local cancer diagnosis, respiratory disorders and developmental defects in children to be linked to people living near landfills.
-Various animal and wildlife are negatively affected from feeding on the decomposing waste; ingesting plastic, aluminum, and other unsafe materials. This also causes certain species to change their migration patterns; altering the projection of species endangerment, breeding and extinction.
-Landfills produce a toxic liquid called leachate (pronounced lee-chay-t). Leachate is the collection of alllllll the stuff from alllllll the garabage from alllllll the houses and companies collected from a given area. AKA: all the disgusting stuff from everyone. And if a liner in a landfill is ruptured, this toxic liquid leaks into the local ground water.
So....
I say all of that to demonstrate the very real issues facing us and our future generations. I'm not an expert on economics or environmental conservation by any means, but through the research I've done, I am confident in saying that although landfills have their place in our society, they need to change. They need to become less harmful- an innovated system that doesn't leave people, animals and our planet desecrated.
Obviously, apparel isn't the only thing going into landfills but it certainly accounts for something. Here are some stats......
The impacts are clear. And if for some reason you're not convinced, maybe you need to take a trip to Ghana, Africa where the world's largest second hand clothing market resides. These piles and piles of excess clothing get burned leaving the people there with health problems from the gasses emitted due to the inevitable burning of clothes.
Or you can take some time and deep dive into these comprehensive recourses:
The gif's are silly but after reading about the devastation for so long and still hearing people comment on how none of this matters or even worse, that none of these issues are real- you have to lighten the mood somehow. So why not add a little sass and sarcasm to get the point across?
On a local level, me (and my wiggly toddler), personally took a tour of our landfill here in Logan, Utah last week (December 14th 2022).
(True mompreneur fashion ;)
Emily Malik, Sustainability Coordinator for Logan City kindly showed us around the facilities.
The sites were unsurprising and shocking at the same time. People know their garbage goes to a dumb, but how many people actually see it in person?
The picture and video above depict the gloomy and gross inevitability of our garbage and that even recyclable material gets dumped. Here, at the Logan City Landfill, residents can pay $10 dollars to dumb waste but can recycle for free. This particular person or business paid money to dumb cardboard when they could have broken it down and recycled for free.
And what's worse? Textiles- (clothing, shoes, accessories, bags, and soft goods like bedding, towels, pillows, etc) get dumped and landfilled as well. But more on that in another post.
Circular Models:
Moving on to circular models, let's take a look at some graphics. Some are more detailed than others but all of them illustrate the point of materials not going into the trash, but back into the systems from which they came, or into other systems- staying in circulation.
I personally like Common Objective's illustration. It's simple whilst getting the point across, and I designed one based on theirs.
Soukeyna Gueye, a project manager at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation points out:
"We extract more recourses from out planet than our planet can replenish. So we need 1.6 earth's to be able to feed all of us but also to provide recourses. And that's the problem: we don't have 1.6 earth's. We have 1 planet earth.
Almost everything we make in this economy is designed for a throw away culture. Almost everything gets burned, dumped or landfilled. Not only are we throwing away a lot of recourses but we waste a lot of money."
We have a: TAKE. MAKE. USE. WASTE. society.
How can circular models change things for the better?
Circular models can alleviate the pressure from the already hemorrhaging parts of the apparel system through products staying in circulation for as long as possible and being changed into other forms to be of use for other industries.
It doesn't solve the world's waste crisis entirely, of course, but it certainly would help. If circular systems were implemented, it would:
-Reduce the amount of raw materials extracted from the earth
-Reduce the amount of water needed
-Reduct greenhouse gas emissions
-Reduce local and global pollution
-Alleviate the financial and economic pressures on farmers and farming communities
-Leave less solid waste in the landfills
-Have less garments being shipped back to developing countries (where it's not needed)
-Enable garment workers to not have such strict quotas
-Spread accurate and vital information to propel future generations to be more mindful and educated
Sadly, implementing circular systems isn't a silver bullet, fix all- as Patrick Schroder points out in his article:
"The literature on CE (Circular Economies) suggest that transition to circularity across multiple sectors will generate new employment opportunities for developing countries, and that these jobs will be better because they will cut across society due to the diversification of skills the CE will call for. The CE literature seems to hold circularity up as a solution to unemployment and to formalize those in the informal economy. But it rarely considers how employment conditions could change for those already in work."
No silver bullet?
Just because implementing circular systems wouldn't fix everything doesn't mean we shouldn't implement them. At the end of the day, if no one does anything, we are choosing to leave our earth, people and planets in worse shape than before we came here. The future generations need us to move the needle.
As my favorite saying by Eileen Fisher goes:
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