REDUCE, REPAIR AND REUSE
Former fashion writer pushing to lessen the environmental impact of the clothing industry
As a fashion editor living in Toronto in the age of the #OOTD — outfit of the day — photos on Instagram, Monika Markovinovic indulged in her love for clothes with trendy, stylish pieces from mass market retailers.
But she started to get a nagging sense of disquiet over the impact of the fashion industry and her own shopping habits.
“I was going to H&M and Zara — it’s like a sick fix — with the thought I’m going to buy this jacket, wear it a couple times, and it’ll eventually fall apart,” said Markovinovic.
She began researching how fast fashion produces a dizzying array of items in a short amount of time and was horrified by the hidden environmental and social cost of the fast-paced, highly globalized industry.
So Markovinovic embarked on a radical — considering her line of work — experiment. She eliminated all clothes shopping for a year starting March 2017. No new stuff, no second-hand items. She used what she had in her closet, pairing pieces in different ways to create a fresh look.
Most of her colleagues thought she was crazy. But it also helped get an important conversation going.
“The fashion industry still has a long way to go,” said Markovinovic, who now lives in Vancouver and works in travel. “But now with the conversation around climate change and our habits as humans, more people are starting to ask themselves where their clothes come from, and what environmental impact it has.”
CARBON GENERATOR
Clothing manufacturing is resource-intensive. It requires land to grow raw materials like cotton, wool and flax. The fashion industry produces 20 per cent of global waste water and 10 per cent of global carbon emissions, said the United Nations Environment Programme.
With the growth of fast fashion — clothing made quickly and cheaply following the latest trends — apparel waste is on the rise. Globally, the number of new garments produced annually now exceeds 100 billion, double the amount produced in 2000, according to data compiled by Waste Reduction Week of Canada.
Research by McKinsey & Company found that the average consumer bought 60 per cent more clothing in 2014 than in 2000, but kept each garment half as long.
Worldwide, 92 million tonnes of fashion waste is dumped in landfills every year. In Canada, an estimated 500,000 tonnes of apparel waste is discarded annually. In Metro Vancouver, 20,000 tonnes, or 44 million pounds, of clothing are thrown out annually. That figure makes up only about two per cent of all garbage in landfills. Still, it’s a number that Metro Vancouver is concerned about.
“We wanted to get out in front of that trend of increasing clothing waste,” said Karen Storry, senior project engineer at Metro Vancouver. “Textiles, despite being one of the smaller items in the waste stream, is something we can tackle that is of significant enough value that if we work on it, we could start to move the dial.”
Metro Vancouver plans to revive its Think thrice about your clothes campaign next year to encourage residents to reduce, repair and reuse their clothing.
Fast fashion is producing more clothes than the world can possibly consume, said Emily Smith, one of the instructors of an innovative course offered by Simon Fraser University in partnership with Emily Carr University that focuses on textiles and sustainability in Vancouver.
“It’s absolutely dire we do something about this,” said Smith, adding that our throwaway culture and lack of repair and mending skills contribute to waste.
Fast fashion also comes with a hidden social cost, as it relies on manufacturing in developing countries, often using low-wage labour working in exploitative conditions brought on by pressure from brands to third-party manufacturers to produce clothing at the cheapest cost.
Because production occurs far away, consumers have become detached from how their clothes are made, she said. “It has become a marginalized practice to make your own clothes.”
RESALE MARKET IS BOOMING
Last week, retail chain Forever 21 announced the closure of 44 Canadian stores and up to 178 locations in the U.S. under bankruptcy protection, prompting speculation whether the company’s poor performance indicates a consumer shift away from fast fashion.
But Forever 21’s closure is largely due to poor merchandising, poor quality — even by fast fashion standards — and increased competition from other international brands entering Canada rather than a rejection of fast fashion, said retail consultant Craig Patterson of Retail Insider, noting that other fast-fashion powerhouses such as Spain’s Zara and Sweden’s H&M are doing well.
But Patterson said there is no doubt consumers are becoming more aware of the environmental and social cost of fast fashion and overconsumption and have started shifting their dollars to more sustainable options.
A few years ago, H&M launched its “conscious collection” which it said used sustainable materials, although some critics were skeptical, accusing the company of “greenwashing.”
The Swedish giant has a textile recycling scheme that encourages shoppers to donate old clothing of any brand at its stores.
“With slow fashion, there is a bit of a movement right now,” Patterson said, citing the Marie Kondo phenomenon, a donation boom at thrift shops sparked by the popularity of the organizational guru’s Netflix show in January.
“Some of the second-hand thrifting stores like Value Village, Salvation Army, Goodwill, they’re getting more donations than in the past.”
More young people are also turning to thrifting and the resale market, lured by the thrill of a bargain, the pursuit of unique items, and a waste reduction ethos. Online second-hand stores, dubbed re-commerce, have exploded in recent years.
According to a 2019 report from online thrift store ThredUp, the resale market grew more than 20 times faster than traditional retail in the past three years, a figure Patterson described as “bonkers.”
“Talk about major disruption,” he said.
Traditional retailers are also getting in on the act. U.S. retailers J.C. Penney and Macy’s have partnered with ThredUp to offer second-hand apparel at their stores. Designer Stella McCartney offers customers who consign with luxury consignment site TheRealReal a $100 credit to its stores.
Patterson also cited the popularity of clothing rental companies as another avenue for eco-conscious consumers. While the concept is not new, the offerings are expanding beyond party dresses and designer bags.
For example, Sprout Collection, which was started by a Toronto mom, offers maternity clothes for rent on a monthly basis. American company Coyuchi offers a subscription service for towels, linens, and blankets. Later this month, a new Vancouver startup called Trade plans to launch Canada’s first clothing rental service for fast-growing infants and toddlers.
Smith said there is also a burgeoning community of makers and creators in B.C. promoting slow fashion, citing a new textile mill on the Sunshine Coast called Macgee Cloth Company, which imported antique looms to craft heirloom blankets, and a craft spinning mill on Salt Spring Island named Gulf Islands Spinning Mill Co-op, which specializes in wool, alpaca and mohair as examples.
“There’s more of these cottage industries that are more sustainable in terms of resiliency and economics,” said Smith, who co-founded Vancouver’s Mini Maker Faire, a festival that celebrates do-it-yourself makers of all sorts of products, from robots and jewelry to 3D printing products and knitting. “There’s people making this stuff all over. It’s just not in the forefront. But I believe there’s room to grow and more room to empower people.”
CHEAP FIBRES TOUGH TO RECYCLE
Metro Vancouver has a robust infrastructure to divert clothes from the landfill, said Storry, who co-wrote a 2018 report examining apparel waste in the Metro region.
Generally, discarded apparel makes its way to the second-hand market through online marketplaces and swaps, donation bins, consignment stores and thrift stores.
Thrift stores in Metro Vancouver estimate about 30 per cent of their collected materials are put out for sale, and about 25 to 30 per cent of the items are sold to customers, said the report.
Unsold clothes then go to sorter-graders, or used-clothing brokers, who sell about 50 per cent of the items to the global marketplace as apparel. Twenty per cent of items are turned into rags and another 20 per cent are recycled or repurposed as other products. The remaining 10 per cent ends up in the landfill.
Local sorter-graders, however, have reported that the rise of fast fashion has meant a decline in the quality of collected materials.
Some items are more salable than others, said Storry. Denim usually has a market, which is why people are encouraged to donate clean, used jeans regardless of their condition. High-quality wool, even if it’s from a sweater full of holes, is also prized. It’s usually shipped to Italy where a cottage industry of wool recyclers re-spins the fabric into high-quality yarn.
Synthetic fibres such as polyester and acrylic, which made up more than half of the global fibre market in 2016, pose a challenge because they are difficult to break apart and recycle. The fibres can also leave microplastics in laundry waste water that end up polluting oceans, lakes and rivers.
Despite the many avenues for diverting clothing waste, however, the Metro Vancouver study showed an increase in apparel waste in garbage collected from homes and multi-family dwellings from two to four kilograms in 2015 to five to nine kilograms in 2016.
Storry said data from two years is not enough to establish a trend, but said the numbers may suggest people may be dumping their clothes into the trash because they are not aware they can be donated.
A NEW APPROACH
Today, more than a year after she finished her self-imposed shopping ban in June 2018, Markovinovic’s shopping habits have changed forever.
Her tips: shop less, shop second-hand, shop local.
Fast fashion will always be very tempting, she said, but she has steered clear, preferring instead to shop smarter and invest in better-quality pieces, even if it costs more upfront.
“I’m willing to give more of my dollars to be able to feel good in what I wear now,” she said.