Fashion is unpredictable. In just a few years, t-shirts have become a whole new space for self-expression. We’re more used to slogans like "mornings are too early" or "Little Miss Grumpy" (sic). But recently, a new, slightly more militant specimen turned up on the website of a famous clothing brand:

And coming from H&M, that’s no accident. The company wants to be seen as the sustainability leader among so-called “fast fashion” brands (= brands that have set up a system of ultra-fast collection turnover). It churns out one initiative after another, often with plenty of media coverage: H&M Conscious, Close The Loop or Climate positive 2040, for example. And at first glance, it looks like the top of the class on this front, with its 220 people working on sustainability.

Is fast fashion really becoming sustainable, or is it just going all out on greenwashing? (spoiler: the latter)

Chemical pollution: the one that gets the headlines

In China, there’s a joke that you can predict next season’s trendy colour just by looking at the rivers (we haven’t checked). When it comes to effort on this front, H&M doesn’t have too much to blush about: it’s the top-ranked brand in Greenpeace’s Detox Catwalk, alongside Zara and Benetton. In a nutshell, they have pledged, by 2020:

• to eliminate toxic waste discharged into wastewater;
• to limit emissions of carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. These substances are used in particular to make waterproof clothing and prints, or are found in factory detergents.

And it’s a huge job. No fast fashion brand owns its factories: they use subcontractors, who use subcontractors, who use subcontractors, and so on.

But this chemical pollution, dramatic as it is, is only the tip of the iceberg¹. Fast fashion has another² massive environmental problem.

Fast fashion is fuelling global warming

Cotton growing, synthetic fibre production, spinning, weaving, dyeing, garment making… Making a piece of clothing uses energy, and therefore produces greenhouse gases³. To give you an idea, fabric is dyed in autoclaves: huge pressurised machines holding a dye bath at over 100°C. Massive energy guzzlers. And since most factories are in Asia, the electricity comes from burning coal or natural gas, which releases plenty of CO2.

The upshot: depending on which report you read, the fashion industry emits between 2% and 8% of the world’s greenhouse gases, almost as much as all road transport on the planet⁴. In short, you can cycle to work all you like: if you put on a new t-shirt every day, you’re still melting the ice caps.

So what is fast fashion doing about it?

At first glance, H&M (once again) seems to be near the top of the class. With its Climate Positive 2040 initiative, it claims it will not only cut its greenhouse gas emissions but become climate positive by 2040! Nice. But when you look closely at how it plans to get there, there’s a slight snag. As we’ve seen, most greenhouse gas emissions come from manufacturing… an area it has no control over, since none of the factories making its clothes belong to it. So to pull it off, it plans to rely on “carbon sinks”, including artificial ones. The idea? Sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere with huge machines and stashing it deep underground.

Minor problem: nobody has ever managed to prove it works… In fact, most carbon sink projects have simply been abandoned because of astronomical costs or technical problems. That’s probably why, on its page, H&M is calling on “experts and innovators” around the world for help. Anyone free?

Another idea: making clothes from recycled fibres. We’re big fans of H&M’s Close The Loop video (and this one too, with M.I.A.), but in carbon footprint terms, recycling textile fibres is only a very, very partial solution⁵. Making a garment from recycled fibres involves an industrial process that also generates a lot of CO2, if only to recover the fibres in the first place… What’s more, the technology is nowhere near ready for the vast majority of cases: for example, we still can’t separate cotton and polyester fibres at a reasonable cost. The result: even with an ultra-optimistic assumption of 40% recycled fibres, the fashion industry’s CO2 emissions would fall by less than 10%. Recycling clothes does help minimise the use of raw materials (water and pesticides for cotton, oil for polyester), but when it comes to carbon footprint, it’s really not going to save the polar bears.

In short, to borrow the metaphor of the French engineer and author Philippe Bihouix:

"We’re being told to put our foot down on the accelerator and hope we invent wings before we reach the edge of the cliff."

To solve fast fashion’s environmental problem, we’d rather kid ourselves by betting on technologies that have yet to be invented than tackle the real, awkward issue:

Disposable fashion

Every year, the clothing industry produces 150 billion garments, most of which pile up in wardrobes or get thrown away after a few months. And the number keeps growing:

Global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014. This exponential curve is not compatible with a planet that, by definition, has finite resources. No, there is no planet B.

The damage fast fashion does to the environment is built into its very business model. In that context, any “green” initiative is like trying to fill a bathtub with a hole in it.

Greenwashing is dangerous because it discourages us from changing the way we consume, because it makes us believe the problem is solved, because it lulls us to sleep while our house is burning.

Of course, one day we might invent brilliant technologies to suck up CO2 or recycle fibres and solve our environmental problems. But it’s a huge gamble. And above all, a huge risk. Meanwhile, there’s one equation that won’t change:

To produce is to pollute

So what do we do?

We can make our own clothes. Or buy second-hand. That’s cool. But let’s not kid ourselves: it will never clothe everyone. Good luck finding a white t-shirt in a size M at Ding Fring or Guerrisol (two French second-hand chains)…

There’s only one solution, and it’s simple and obvious. Plain common sense:

Buy less.

By choosing well-made, high-quality clothing that will last as long as possible.

Of course, cotton isn’t Kevlar: you’ll never keep a t-shirt for your whole life. But with a little care, you’ll wear it for several years. And it’s easier than you think:

• Buy from brands that produce responsibly and in Europe: Saint James, 1083, Atelier Tuffery…
• Take your time: if a garment is a tad too small but you’re buying it in the hope of losing weight, if you don’t much like the colour but you’re buying it because it’s on sale… forget it. And don’t let discounts blind you: they’re very often an artificial way to get you to buy something you don't need.
• Check the label. If the material is OEKO-TEX certified, it contains no toxic substances. If it’s made in Europe, you know the workers are protected by a proper legal framework (unlike in Bangladesh) and that the carbon footprint is smaller.
• Take care of it. How long a garment lasts depends on how you look after it. So, follow our care tips (yes, you really need to stop washing your wool sweaters).
• Alterations are your friend: a small repair rarely costs more than 10 euros, it gives work to someone in your neighbourhood, and it saves you buying a new garment that costs 5 times as much.

The fashion industry hasn't exactly been heading in the right direction. And it is up to each and every one of us to decide where it should go from here.

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Notes

¹ No, the textile industry is not the second most polluting sector in the world after oil. This statistic, repeated far and wide by almost every media outlet and industry stakeholder – even when signing the French fashion industry’s climate commitment charter for COP 21 – does not specify the type of pollution it covers and is based on absolutely no source.

² Not to mention the working conditions of textile workers, which are often appalling, or the impact on the soul of our town centres.

³ Contrary to popular belief, transport is not what produces the bulk of greenhouse gases in a garment’s life cycle (only just over 1% of emissions). Even though most of our clothes are made on the other side of the world. It makes sense: a garment is neither very big nor very heavy, so it doesn’t take up much room in a container. And since 90% of clothes travel by cargo ship, a mode of transport that emits relatively little CO2 per kg/km travelled, the result is relatively little CO2. Shipping does, on the other hand, emit huge amounts of fine particles, but that’s another story.

⁴ According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), road transport accounts for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions: in 2010, transport accounted for 14% of greenhouse gas emissions, and road transport accounted for 72% of transport-related greenhouse gas emissions. On this criterion, that would make fashion the world’s 4th most polluting sector, behind agriculture, electricity and building heating, and therefore, transport (breakdown of sectors here).

⁵ This “closed-loop recycling” should not be confused with “open-loop recycling”, which recycles plastic from other products, such as bottles.

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Who are we to say that? 

You’re reading La Mode à l’Envers, a blog run by the clothing brand Loom. The textile industry is in a sorry state, and the planet is footing the bill. So whatever we manage to understand about this industry, we try to explain here. Because making clothes that last is good, but revealing, sharing and inspiring is even more powerful.

If you like what we write and want more, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here. Promise: we don’t write often, and we never spam.