What is the Impact of Sustainable Fashion?

The Fashion Summit is taking place in Copenhagen this week along with the Global Climate Change talks and is organized by the Nordic Initiative Clean and Ethical (NICE), an organization dedicated to more sustainable business practices in fashion. The summit features fashion shows from sustainable designers, as well as talks given by fashion industry leaders like Julie Gilhart, Senior VP and Fashion Director of Barneys, Christian Kemp-Griffin, CEO of Edun, Ingrid Schullström, Head of CSR at H&M, and others, about the importance of raising eco-awareness in fashion. It's wonderful to see so many major fashion companies acknowledging that the industry does need to change and adopt more environmentally-friendly business practices. The only thing that is noticeably absent during the summit is that despite the call for companies to embrace sustainability, no speaker has actually addressed what is meant by the phrase "sustainable fashion." Sustainability in the fashion industry is more than just using eco fabrics: the whole process by which apparel is produced contributes a great deal of pollution and waste, from textile dying through to the transportation of a finished garment, and it is the reduction of this waste and pollution that will be at the core of fashion's contribution to the environment.

Sustainable Fashion from Saurabh Sethi on Vimeo.

This video by Saurabh Sethi does an excellent job of illustrating what effects fashion has on the environment and the difference that the application of more sustainable methods can make in each step of the apparel manufacturing process.