Transparency. The process behind how a garment is made, where its materials were sourced, and, crucially, the person who stitches it together should all be clear to the retailer as well as the consumer. Too often, we are still dealing with frosted glass or even a solid wall that obstructs the visibility of the fashion industry value chains from production to consumer and finally the waste pile.

On June 12^th, 2024, our fourth Climate 2.0 session in Bonn sought to understand how producers and consumers can work to make the fashion industry more transparent. For this iteration, our Climafuge and EthicalX fashion exhibition in collaboration with The Stage Gallery served as a backdrop to our discussion dialogue series. Titled “Between Resilience, Heritage, and Innovation,” the multimedia exhibition showcased traditional Sri Lankan techniques and handicrafts as well as contemporary designs. This included pieces that incorporated traditional methods such as beeralu, dumbara, handloom, and batik as well as waste-based materials, upcycling, and innovative natural dyes. 

The exhibit ran from June 11^th-15^th, concurrent to the second week of the UNFCCC Bonn Climate Change Conference 2024 (SB60). This is an important event for progressing the negotiations on international climate change adaptation goals, but it is closed to the general public, it’s a closed event to the public.

When we host our Climate 2.0 sessions, we aim to mainstream the conversation as well as encourage everyone to be active participants and concerned stakeholders. Our sessions cover intersecting themes including empowerment, entrepreneurship, capacity-building, and long-term resilience. Climate 2.0 is a platform through which SLYCAN Trust makes the complex and sometimes opaque world of climate change research and negotiations more accessible and transparent, linking the necessary stakeholders to the top-level discussions. 

In this session, our diverse audience included perspectives from the business consulting industry, students, fashion designers, and entrepreneurs. Each participant had a unique link to the fashion industry and could relate to our discussion topic of “climate-friendly fashion.” 

What is “climate-friendly fashion”? 

The dialogue explored different understandings of this concept and different ideas of how people can participate in fashion in ways that are considerate to our environment and changing climate.

There was a common understanding that “sustainability” can be defined by its broad nature, particularly as the umbrella term under which “ethical” practices and standards fell under. Each participant noted that this broad concept covers many areas not limited to the production of fashion products and the overall supply chain standards, the people and labour involved, waste accumulation, and the overall emissions expelled from this process. Sustainability also encompassed consumer habits of people who buy fashion products, although our discussion focused on sustainability first and foremost with regard to producer’s responsibility to the environment and people.

Ethical fashion was described as a component of sustainability that specifically addresses the social facet of the fashion industry. There was also the opinion that ethics can extend beyond social responsibility to include the environment, whereby the source of raw materials counts in defining what makes a garment ethically made and sourced. Our participants largely agreed that ethics are a cornerstone of sustainable fashion. Therefore, transparency in this respect is important in rating the sustainability and by extension the ethics of a fashion product. 

Responsible production

This standard of transparency places an expectation of significant responsibility on producers to be considerate and intentional in their production process. However, as we can observe in reality, the common practice is a fast fashion cycle that normalises new merchandise every two weeks. 

The paradox of climate-friendly fashion is that economies of scale are often harmful to the environment. As producers grow, they ultimately produce more and more output, which then requires them to reduce costs in other areas of the production line. This often results in poor pay for garment workers or importing raw materials to create the fashion products. From our discussion, it was illustrated that our globalised economy has taken manufacturing from local to international level, whereby cotton may be sourced from India, woven and stitched in Bangladesh, and ultimately have the tag “made in China.” This scattered approach is attributed to the economics of where a product may be manufactured for cheaper per-unit cost. Labour costs, we discussed further, are much cheaper in countries of the Global South, thus much more can be produced to meet the fast fashion cycle we see today. 

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In addition to the potential human harm caused by multinational fashion business practices, there are issues of energy expenditure, water consumption, and chemical pollution to the local environment.
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Therefore, the importance of ethical and sustainable business models in the fashion sector cannot be overstated. Manufacturing locally through collaboration with designers and artisans can be one way to pivot into climate-friendly practices. This is also essential when it comes to preserving a local way of life, producers can find inspiration in traditional methods of production that emphasises a slow fashion cycle. Additionally, by working within the community, the anonymity of who tailors our clothes is less apparent, and this makes for a more honest supply chain. 

Consumer behaviour 

In this dialogue, we acknowledged that ultimately the burden of making the fashion sector more climate-friendly is largely with producers, though we also spotlighted the power of consumers to change their day-to-day habits and make informed choices for the betterment of the environment.

Higher prices are often perceived as a hurdle to invest in slow or sustainable fashion and are a common retort to investing in a climate-friendly closet. However, our participants shed light on a variety of meaningful ways to ensure one’s clothes work for the environment, not against it – without the expectation of spending more money. Firstly, the most sustainable and ethical choice one can make is to keep the clothes they already own; wherein one does not give into the pressures of following the fast fashion cycle and purchasing a new clothing item with every new trend. Mend and repair old clothes, participate in clothes swaps with friends and family, or buy from a second hand store if you absolutely need to make a purchase. Another way to ensure your clothes are here to stay would be to educate yourself on the textiles that go into a durable and high-quality garment. All in all, what mattered most for the consumer’s role, is by how much they reframed their consumption to “do more good as opposed to less bad”. When we work to reduce our footprint on the climate, we should also increase our “handprint”  through education, workshops, and by supporting organisations that champion climate-friendly practices.

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Conclusion

As much as we can aim to do good as consumers on an individual basis, this should not stop at what we ultimately purchase. It should extend to demanding accountability and working in tandem with manufacturers to produce fashion products more responsibly. In turn, producers are obligated to not only uphold fair business practices. But to do so keeping in mind that this entails paying living wages to each worker that has a hand in the process, irrespective of where in the world they work. Additionally manufacturers should also employ people and source their raw materials locally. These are ways we can move towards mainstreaming a climate-friendly fashion sector.

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However, the scale and economics of running a profitable business presently will continue to dictate how producers supply their goods and services. This should not be seen as a dead end, but an opportunity to be creative in how best we can transform current business practices to be climate conscious. 

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ClimaComms is an initiative of SLYCAN Trust aimed at supporting and empowering communicators in enhancing evidence-driven and science-based communication on climate change. This initiative aims to better engage journalists, media professionals, and communicators from across the world to build climate awareness, raise climate literacy and contribute to scaling up evidence and science-driven climate action at all levels.

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SLYCAN Trust Youth is a global initiative of SLYCAN Trust aiming to connect and empower youth to better engage in policy and action at all levels. Our work focuses on climate change, sustainable development, biodiversity and ecosystem conservation, animal welfare, social justice, entrepreneurship, and transformative resilience-building.