The impact of fashion

For years the British designer and activist for the environment Vivienne Westwood has been repeating: «Choose well, buy less and make it last over time!». Well, if only we could embrace this philosophy, probably the fast fashion system he would not have brought small and medium-sized companies in the sector to their knees, probably would not have taken root the worm of "but yes come on, I buy it so cheaply" and probably we would not have witnessed armies of underpaid labor set up to make poor and often polluting products. Here the conditional is a must and we do not want to point the finger at someone or something in particular, the responsibility is transversal, but today it is necessary to open our eyes to the entire production cycle of clothes. As reported by the recent Glasgow Climate Conference, the aforementioned cycle is responsible for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions over the past 10 years. COP26 was also interested in the production and consumption sector because the numbers speak for themselves: producing a pair of jeans, for example, involves the emission of 34 kg of greenhouse gases and the use of almost 10 thousand liters of water. We have already talked about the 2019 Fashion Pact, a sustainability agreement between 62 companies and over 200 brands, which commits participants to use at least a quarter of raw materials obtained from sustainable sources by 2025 and a zero CO2 impact by 2050. It is difficult to understand if these good intentions have already been transformed into concrete acts, which is why one of the objectives of COP26 is to outline a monitoring system for the countries that have signed the 2015 Paris Agreement, which, we recall, provides for the reduction of emissions of at least 50% by 2030 and the containment of global temperature rise to a maximum of 1.5 degrees.


Elisa D'Adamo
NP December 2021