Sustainable fashion?

Return to normality and recovery of consumption is a combination that, in the fashion sector, also passes through an advertising narrative that focuses on ecological and sustainable choices. Green visions with an international attitude and slogans that strike the consumer, but how much concrete is there behind the messages that luxury and fast fashion brands are spreading? The Word Economic Forum has recently published a report with alarming data: the fashion industry ranks third for production of pollutants and second for CO2 emissions.

In November 2019, 62 companies and over 200 brands drafted the Fashion Pact, a sustainability agreement that commits participants to use at least a quarter of raw materials obtained from sustainable sources by 2025 and a zero CO2 impact by 2050. .
More than a year later, the results are disheartening and far from the minimum thresholds set on paper. According to a survey by the European Commission, each citizen produces 11 kg of textile waste per year and of these 87% ends up in landfills or is incinerated. A change of course could come from the European Union which will produce, within the year, legislation with a strong impact on the fashion system.

We are talking about the EPR, the Extended Producer Responsibility, which attributes to those who place a product on the market the costs related to the management of the final stages of the life cycle of textile waste: separate collection, sorting and disposal. Despite the good intentions, once again a law and related sanctions will be needed to start producing and marketing on a large scale with a view to a circular and sustainable economy.

Elisa D'Adamo
NP June / July 2021