Fashion, efficiency and the problem of too much

Welcome to the final episode in our arc on the fashion industry, where we ask an uncomfortable question: are we trying to make fashion more sustainable, or are we mostly trying to manage the side effects of a system that produces more clothing than the world actually needs?

Over the past few weeks we've explored the industry from several different angles. We interviewed Kristina Elinder Liljas at the Apparel Impact Institute about climate risk and why sustainability is increasingly becoming a competitiveness issue. 

We sat down with Áine Clarke at the Business and Human Rights Centre to discuss  to discuss labour and human rights and the social realities embedded within global supply chains.  We also spoke to two industry specialists, discussing the potential for fashion circularity with Niccolò Cipriani from Rifò and the world of deadstock and recommerce with Kanchan Bharwani from Empire Apparel.

At first glance, there is no obvious reason why those conversations should belong together except that they’re all aspects of the fashion industry. The further we got into the series though, the  more we realised that sustainable fashion is not really a story about clothes.

It's a story about how an industrial system optimised for speed, volume and cost interacts with water, energy, labour, materials and waste. Once you see that, many of the industry's sustainability challenges stop looking like isolated problems and start looking like the consequences of the system doing exactly what it was designed to do. 

The choice is not between cheap clothing and expensive clothing. The real question is which costs are currently included in the price and which costs are not.  A garment can be inexpensive because the system producing it has become genuinely more efficient, but it can also be inexpensive because part of the cost has been transferred elsewhere — to workers, communities, ecosystems and future generations. 

Fashion sustainability is often presented as a question of products but our conversations suggest it may be a question of systems and processes. And if that is true, building a more sustainable fashion industry may require far more than making better clothes.    It may require asking whether many of the industry's environmental and social challenges are not accidental side effects, but the consequences of a system that has become exceptionally good at delivering exactly what it was designed to deliver. 

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Transcript

Felicia Jackson (00:00)
because so many of our clothes are actually made in the global south we're using the water in the global south. We're using the land and the potential biodiversity for factories and whatever it may be. We've got people working in those factories on low wages and maybe no wages,

Those clothes are then manufactured, made and shipped off to brands in the global north to sell. We then wear them and then turn around and send them back to create more waste and more dumping in the places where it was created. I am not having a go at the brands. I'm not having a go at people who love fashion. What I am talking about is thinking through what we do and how we do it.

Giulia Bottaro (00:43)
Welcome to the final episode in our arc on fashion. I am your co-host Giulia Bottaro.

Felicia Jackson (00:50)
and I'm your other co-host, Felicia Jackson.

Giulia Bottaro (00:53)
Today we are asking an uncomfortable question. Are we trying to make fashion more sustainable or are we mostly trying to manage the side effects of a system that produces more clothing that the world actually needs? Over the past few weeks we've explored the industry from several different angles. We spoke to Kristina Elinder Liljas at the Apparel Impact Institute about climate risk and why sustainability is increasingly becoming a competitiveness issue.

She warned that inaction on the impact of climate change could slash the value of the fashion industry, currently worth around $1.77 trillion, massively over the next 15 years. We spoke to Aine Clarke at the Business and Human Rights Center about the human rights abuses that are so widespread across the supply chain and how integrated they seem to be into the system's underpinning fashion.

We also spoke to two specialists from the industry itself, discussing the potential for fashion circularity with Nicolo Cipriani from Rifò and the world of dead stock and re-commerce with Kenchen Bharwani from Empire Apparel. At the first glance, there is no obvious reason why those conversations, which I invite you to listen to separately, should belong together except that they all aspects of the fashion industry. The further we got into the series,

the lesser discussion seemed to be about clothing itself. Again and again, we found ourselves talking about energy systems, logistic networks, forecasting models, labor markets, waste infrastructure, water stress, and supply chain. Fashion increasingly looked less like a consumer industry and more like a vast industrial system that most of us only encountered through the final product hanging on a rail. What do you think, Felicia?

Felicia Jackson (02:45)
To be perfectly honest, the thing that came through to me most strongly was that while we might think of fashion as what we wear and what we look at and what we love, it is an industrial system and for that reason, it's the same issues we see again and again and again. We have to accept that there are trade-offs for what we want. There are trade-offs that we have to understand. Is it worth having a cheap t-shirt if it affects

how people live in another country? Is it important to have the latest style land in a big box that you can open on screen if that means that we're actually destroying elements of biodiversity and water? And the thing that I think perhaps is most important is something that can sound like a moral question. Is this the right thing to do? While it may be that, it's also an

unbelievably practical question because what we're doing is we're making things work now in exchange for problems in the future and we're not having a real conversation about what those problems might be or how they're going to affect us, our children and in fact even the ability of the systems we have at the moment to keep functioning because how are fashion companies supposed to still make all the things they make and sell to us?

if they haven't got the power, the materials, the logistics and the ability to get them to us.

Giulia Bottaro (04:16)
Absolutely. One thing that I found striking as well is the fact that the commercial decisions kind of happen in an office somewhere in the global north and then they have massive consequences on the global south, workers in the global south, but also the environment everywhere. and also the trap of trying to make fashion sustainable by staying within the system that we have is that maybe it looks like we've applied a solution somewhere, but actually

another problem has appeared somewhere else so it's really applying plasters all over the place.

Felicia Jackson (04:52)
That's exactly

it. It's like moving a problem out of sight or sweeping it under the carpet. You've got all the waste that comes from textiles that gets dumped in other parts of the world. And we've seen that in other industries. What's really in a way frightening about what's happened with textiles and with fashion is that you've actually got these huge industries in global south countries actually making a living out of

parts of what we consider to be waste and the rest actually just gets dumped or makes people's lives worse and it is that thing that I suppose we clear up one problem where we are and then it makes a problem somewhere else.

Giulia Bottaro (05:37)
Yeah, I think it would be worth really exploring more this conversation, but I would just like to make the point that nothing is by accident in this industry. And we've really learned this throughout the three episodes. Everything is done on purpose to make operations as efficient, as cheap, as quick as they possibly can be. And really the consequences just...

I suppose in a way they just are ⁓ an unfortunate byproduct, but they're not really being addressed.

Felicia Jackson (06:08)
I

think that's probably a key issue. mean, I know I go on about this a lot in terms of efficiency and cost, because if you look at COVID, what happened was all these industries that had been optimizing for just-in-time manufacturing, when COVID hit, they didn't have all the bits and pieces they need to make what they needed. So they actually had to have a rethink about what you keep when you deliver, how you make things,

And what we've got in the fashion industry, as you say, is something that's been optimized to be efficient and cheap for the majority of the industry. And the thing is, if that's what it's been designed for, then all the problems we're talking about aren't actually...

problems. They're what the system was designed to do.

Giulia Bottaro (06:55)
Yes, exactly. Yeah, for example, the issue of overproduction that Kenchen explored quite at length in our interview.

companies overproduced as a buffer So really they want to produce more and the waste well just happens to be waste. And then there are other companies like Rifò then, who have been thinking, okay, can we do something with this waste? And you can, but yeah, ultimately, yeah.

Felicia Jackson (07:20)
But is the problem the waste

or is it the fact that you're making too much in the first place?

Giulia Bottaro (07:25)
Exactly. ultimately

the answer is produce less, but no industry in the world really wants to produce less, do they? just...

Felicia Jackson (07:35)
Well,

maybe it's that we're thinking about producing less in the wrong way. Because if you talk about them producing less, that sounds like, well, we can't afford to do that because that means we'll be selling less. But if you think about it, what the fashion industry is really, really good at is making, moving and selling clothes and responding to market demand.

It's been incredible at making lots of different types of clothing accessible and affordable, but to a certain group of people in certain parts of the world. And I think we need to have a conversation about whether or not the fashion industry and the way it's set up actually is going to be resilient for the different things that we actually need to face, the challenges that we face with water and energy and materials, because

if this problem is what the fashion industry has learned to be brilliant at is causing these problems, then we're really saying that fashion sustainability challenges are more to do with how successful it is at doing what it does than it is about particular elements of that process. That maybe it's time for a complete redesign.

a lot of the industry seems to have got on board with the idea of sustainability. A lot of people's first entry point to sustainability is sustainable fashion. But what does that mean? know, resale platforms and the dead stock market and repair services. I love the idea of repair services. It's like my grandmother. I don't know how many people in...

your generation know how to darn a sock, but my grandmother taught me how to. I mean, I'm not very good at it, obviously. But you know, but it's, it's well, you know, I've, I've got my sewing, my little sewing mushroom. It's a terrifying looking thing. And you're supposed to sort of sew it all up on the bottom. I was really bad at it, but the concept is there. But two generations ago, it was normal that you made clothes out of what you had, that you kept them going.

Giulia Bottaro (09:20)
⁓ You've got the skill in case of emergency.

Felicia Jackson (09:41)
Now we're sort of seeing that as a premium service to show how good people are. That seems to me to be a real shift in perspective that might be part of the problem.

Giulia Bottaro (09:51)
I have to say I had a pair of sandals be resoled by a professional and it was as expensive as buying a new pair, but I did it out of out of principle. had to. But yeah, and that is the are more incentivized to just buy new because it's easier, it's cheaper, it's quicker, it's less of a pain. And anyway, the low quality of clothing means that they will eventually break just quite quickly, actually, with a few

Felicia Jackson (10:03)
But that's the thing!

I was just about to say, because...

Giulia Bottaro (10:18)
washes.

Felicia Jackson (10:19)
Yeah, I mean,

again, sorry to bring up my grandmother, but I have a dress of my grandmother's. Not that I will ever fit into it, but it's so beautiful that it reminds me of her and I've kept it and she wore it. And it's still a beautiful piece of clothing and the quality is amazing. And I bought a linen dress last summer and I got it out when the sun came out earlier this year and it looks awful. You know, it's tatty and the colors faded and...

Giulia Bottaro (10:45)
Yeah.

Felicia Jackson (10:48)
The hems are going and I'm like.

Giulia Bottaro (10:50)
It's also because clothes that are mass produced are made for, I suppose, a body that is considered average, or maybe they are made in a shape that they think will fit most bodies, which doesn't mean that it fits all bodies, right? So whilst back in the day, people had things more fitted, and so they have a completely different look.

Felicia Jackson (11:11)
Well, there's always, you see, this is a problem for me because when we talk about the beautifully fitted clothes and beautiful quality materials, it almost feels like we're talking about the top end of the fashion industry, or couture, or, you know, made for you or even tailored, which a lot of people can't afford. And so there becomes this question of, well, surely

affordable, accessible clothing for all is a good thing, which it is, but so's good quality material, well-made, artisanal skills, expertise. And we seem to be getting, yeah, exactly. But we do seem to be getting into this sort of binary approach where things are one or the other. again, this comes back to my complete obsession with trade-offs, but what are we giving up to get what we want? And are there not

Giulia Bottaro (11:52)
Things that don't break.

Felicia Jackson (12:07)
different ways of looking at how we make what we make or what we expect clothes to be able to do. Because if you're changing your outfits, you know, every weekend, and I don't mean changing your clothes, obviously that happens more often, but you you have to have something new. You can't go out with your friends wearing the same thing they've seen. You can't go to, I don't know, a summer of weddings and wear the same dress with some different accessories. You've got to have a totally different outfit.

There's a real cultural pressure to... to consume.

Giulia Bottaro (12:39)
Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, we've been conditioned to do that. We've been told that retail therapy is great for us when really it's great for the bottom line of these companies. Definitely not great for our mental health in the end because it's quite fleeting as a moment of happiness, right? And then you just end up with so much crap.

Felicia Jackson (13:01)
It's the dopamine hit from buying followed by the, ⁓ no, what did I buy?

Giulia Bottaro (13:06)
whoops,

exactly. And then you return. And I think maybe this is a good time to talk about the secondhand clothing market and kind of how, again, it's great as a concept, right? But in certain situations, it does, again, look like a plaster on the problem because...

Felicia Jackson (13:14)
Yeah.

Giulia Bottaro (13:26)
it's also a trap. It's like, well, I can buy all the things that I want because I will just sell them on Vinted or a depop, which A, doesn't mean that people will actually buy them. And also B, it means that there is just a constant refreshing of our wardrobes, which is what we don't need.

Felicia Jackson (13:46)
Well, there's also that thing that one of my godchildren told me about this. And actually I've now seen it the way you never notice anything until someone says it. And then you're like, it's everywhere. But when you can go and buy used clothes by the pound, you actually weigh up the amount of old clothes and you go and get a big pile and you go through it and you'll find something amazing. You can turn into something lovely and the rest just gets dumped. And that's a common thing today.

Giulia Bottaro (14:01)
Yes.

Yeah,

yeah, absolutely.

Felicia Jackson (14:15)
You know, it's,

maybe it's the hunter gatherer in us. We want to go out and rummage through a pile of stuff.

Giulia Bottaro (14:20)
No, I have to say scavenging

is exciting, I have to say, because in Italy as well, are in Milan some like just the local markets with food and fruit and veg, etc. But then there are also the Ravanare stalls where it literally means scavenge. So there are piles of clothing just thrown there. So it's fun to spend some time scavenging and they're very cheap. They can be maximum five euros. But, you know,

Felicia Jackson (14:48)
But that's telling

us something about...

Giulia Bottaro (14:50)
Yes, the value of these pieces and some of them may be cotton or wool or silk. Yes. ⁓

Felicia Jackson (14:57)
you think how much water

it takes to make one cotton t-shirt? I mean it's thousands of gallons and we don't think about it. Yeah.

Giulia Bottaro (15:03)
Exactly. And the hands that worked through it.

And yeah, and actually I have a study here from Yale, they studied sample of people who use secondhand resale platform And they found that over 69 % of respondents reported having purchased secondhand clothes at least once, which is great. But then

A cluster of 59 respondents reported high consumption levels in both new and secondhand clothes. So the secondhand buying then just becomes something that you do alongside the new clothing buying. ⁓ then members of this group frequently returned items they had purchased, retained garments for short periods, and had increased their purchasing of secondhand clothing since 2020.

Felicia Jackson (15:39)
That's what you were talking about.

Giulia Bottaro (15:54)
So, and I think the other thing is in all of this is the returning because people just, well, the problem with returns is that people will buy online because it's easier, there's more choice, whatever. And then maybe you will buy two pairs of shoes, well, two sizes of the same pair because you're not sure what fits better. And so on with the clothing or then you just buy and you're like, well, I'm not sure if I like it, but I'm just going to return it.

Felicia Jackson (15:58)
Yeah, I'm really bad at that.

Giulia Bottaro (16:21)
These returns don't often get sold again. They end up into the waste pile or maybe they go into the charity pile, which is a whole problem that we're now going to talk about. So it's just this concept of how disposable everything is. I'm buying it, but I might return it.

Felicia Jackson (16:30)
⁓ Didn't realize. not today.

And I actually think there's another element there, which is if that is the model that's taking over, then how a smaller independent business is supposed to compete, because I know the cost of managing returns is enormous and is a huge problem for a lot of brands. But that means that in order to compete, you have to scale up, you have to standardize, you have to mass produce, you have to optimize your system. These are all the things that we're saying

potentially are accelerating the development of a system that actually isn't positive. I'm trying to say, I'm trying to find a word because I want to say that isn't good for us without again sounding moralistic or, you know, lecturing.

Giulia Bottaro (17:26)
Well, that is

not sustainable. Yeah.

Felicia Jackson (17:28)
that doesn't make the world a better place. It doesn't make the world a worse

place because...

Giulia Bottaro (17:32)
But sustainable

for everybody involved really, because it's not about like you are sustainable for people, the planet, sure, all the nice things, but then for the business itself, this just constant pressure to deliver loads of orders, to deliver the new drops, new drops every week, every day, new styles. I mean, it sounds hectic. And then there is, you know, we had fast fashion for the longest time with names, which we still do.

Felicia Jackson (17:35)
Yeah, that's a better way of putting it.

Yeah.

which we still do.

Giulia Bottaro (18:02)
ultra fast fashion appeared. And then are this gonna be even faster than ultra fast fashion, like supersonic fast fashion? Like, I don't know. the pressure is always on.

Felicia Jackson (18:13)
Well, and

this is the problem. So this was Kristina's point when we were talking about the cost of inaction, which is if you are in the fashion industry and you don't take action now to manage your future energy costs, to manage your future access to materials, to manage your logistics in the face of increasing physical climate risk, your costs are going to go up enormously.

That's further pressure on margins, on business and on operations. So I guess actually the real question that we're trying to ask is whether or not fashion can be sustainable or at least become more sustainable while still staying cheap, fast and convenient.

I mean, I think the answer is no, but I don't have a solution to what that should be. And I know that ⁓ the Apparel Impact Institute's report, which we'll put a link to in the show notes, has got ideas about how you might address the challenge. And there's loads of bodies out there working in sustainability, which are looking at different industries and trying to say, what should you do? What could you do? How could you build res...

Giulia Bottaro (19:09)
Yeah.

Felicia Jackson (19:33)
Maybe it is, I was about to say, that helps you build resilience, but maybe that's what we need to be talking about. Instead of talking about sustainable fashion, which to me has an air of, we're making bits of it sustainable, so aren't we wonderful? Buy as much of our stuff as you'd like because we're sustainable. Instead, we need to think about the resilience of the industry as a whole.

Giulia Bottaro (19:36)
That's it.

Felicia Jackson (19:59)
who is going to be able to survive and to thrive in the face of all these pressures coming together. The physical pressures, the financial pressures, the margin pressures, the consumer pressures, and the pressures of an accelerating model that seems to be almost constricting our ability to do things differently.

Giulia Bottaro (20:17)
And also, again, like in many other industries, being truly, truly sustainable, not just greenwashing, is a major differentiator across your competition. The reason why I really wanted to speak to RIFO, the company that I interviewed for the circularity episode, is because I really truly believe in their model and I've read all their material. They're very transparent.

they just make ⁓ clothes from ⁓ waste, right? From waste textiles. What I think is very important is that they make timeless designs. So you buy something and like I have some of their pieces and I regard them as basic items that I will wear forever because they're good quality, because they're not weird colors or weird shapes, you know, they're just something...

Felicia Jackson (21:08)
Do you say weird colours? Like that's a bad

thing. I love a weird colour. But I get what you mean. They're classic.

Giulia Bottaro (21:12)
Yes, mean, exactly. It's like

their classic, exactly. Basic in the good sense of the word. and they have a huge fan base in Italy, but also across Europe and I don't know, maybe beyond. They were born as a crowdfunding project.

people want these things, people are willing to pay extra for something that is good quality and has a good story behind, that has really good credential, believable. it's something to consider when you were mentioning earlier small businesses.

Maybe the sustainable element is what makes a difference.

the thing about keeping waste textiles in the loop as much as possible is what we were about to say before to what happens to these returns to these clothes that can't be resold on the resale platforms. Well, a lot of them are being given to charity shops, which is great. The idea sounds great, right? But then

because of the low quality clothing that we've been talking about earlier, the fact that a lot of it is polyester or it frays,

Felicia Jackson (22:18)
going to interrupt and we are so coming back to polyester and plastics, but go on.

Giulia Bottaro (22:22)
Absolutely, I can't wait. So much to say. So there are some studies that suggest that up to 80 % of what traditional charity stores receive is completely unsellable. And so at this point, where does this clothing go? Well, from the global north, it gets shipped to the global south

This is a dynamic called waste colonialism.

Felicia Jackson (22:49)
Yeah, and this is what is insane to me, that it's actually cheaper for companies and for groups to send their waste to countries in the global south than it is to actually put them in landfill or get them recycled. It's cheaper to send to another country and get those people to deal with the consequences. And this is something we see in

in many different industries, again, it may play out differently, but it's this idea that the externalities of what we do, the environmental and social costs of our behavior, they're offshored. We send them abroad. We send them to countries which can't actually afford to do anything else. I mentioned earlier this idea of turning our waste into an industry. And I think

Giulia Bottaro (23:20)
Mm-hmm.

Felicia Jackson (23:46)
The Kantamanto market in Ghana is a key example of this. It is a huge clothing market and they spend a lot of money on buying in those bales of secondhand clothes and textiles. But even there, the estimate is 40 % of it is never actually sold. And that means that then sits in Kantamanto and around it as waste.

with the social and environmental consequences that come with it.

Giulia Bottaro (24:16)
the local traders pay for this clothing and the figures are actually quite crazy because the local community spends 325 million US dollars on bales every year and 182 million dollars of this total is paid to the global north. But then as you said,

or up to 40 % goes to waste. So it's a huge waste. It's a huge bet that doesn't end up working out. And another issue with all of these clothes being sent from the global north to the global south is that they obviously impact the local textile producers. So it could be traditional clothing. It could be small business owners. They all get overwhelmed.

by the competition of cheap polyester clothing coming from somewhere else. And then there is all the issue of what happens with this waste, the kids that maybe end up sorting through the waste, trying to find something to resell again in some other market. And it's just a huge problem from both an environmental, most importantly, social perspective.

Felicia Jackson (25:26)
what we're actually saying, because so many of our clothes are actually made in the global south in the first place. So we're using the water in the global south. We're using the land and the potential biodiversity for factories and whatever it may be. We've got people working in those factories on low wages and maybe no wages, you never know.

Giulia Bottaro (25:33)
Yeah.

Felicia Jackson (25:49)
Those clothes are then manufactured, made and shipped off to brands in the global north to sell. We then wear them and then turn around and send them back to create more waste and more dumping in the places where it was created. And please don't misunderstand me. I am not having a go at the brands. I'm not having a go at people who love fashion. What I am talking about is thinking through what we do and how we do it.

Because I know one of the big challenges with a lot of the social issues around fashion manufacturing is that very rarely does a brand actually own a factory. They have a line there, but maybe they share that with 30 other brands. So how do you get pressure to put safety considerations in place or to ensure people get breaks?

or get paid a living wage or that children aren't working there. How do you do that? How do you band together? But I think that's a question that does need to be asked because it goes back to this idea that fashion is optimized for quick and cheap and efficient and that's not necessarily going to get us to a sustainable industry.

Giulia Bottaro (27:06)
we were saying before that the decisions are made somewhere in an office in a global north when there are loads of people working in factories in the global south and

This time of geopolitical turmoil of tariffs is putting even more pressure on workers as Aine at the Business and Human Rights Centre was saying. Ultimately the pressure is all absorbed by the suppliers who in turn put it on the workers. So it's always the most vulnerable people in the supply chain who end up suffering the most.

Felicia Jackson (27:39)
what that thinking does tell us is that we as consumers do have power because what we choose to spend our money on really will have an impact on what brands choose to do. And I know it's difficult, you know, who wants to spend more money than they have to on something, especially in the current

what to call it, the current times. ⁓ It's hard, but again, it's trade-offs. It's what do we want to actually think about? What are we paying for? You know?

Giulia Bottaro (28:17)
Yeah, I remember reading once this concept of the cycle of poverty. If you're poor, you can only afford the very cheap shoes, but then the very cheap shoes break every year. So you're stuck in this loop. Well, if you can't afford it, just buy a good pair that will last you five years. So you've...

Felicia Jackson (28:35)
Or buy five pairs, wear them once

each and they'll last for 25 years.

Giulia Bottaro (28:40)
Exactly.

You know, that's the concept is that we can think about the benefits that we get from buying sustainable fashion. Again, if we can afford it, things last more, they look nicer, etc. Whatever. But we can start thinking in that way. Obviously, you know, a Shaken Not Burned we're always saying it's not just down to the individual. But I completely agree that we can still put pressure in one way or another.

Felicia Jackson (29:08)
you make a really good point that we need to think about the benefits because if you think about the way we respond to fashion, so much of that is about what we're told, you know, what we see. It's advertising and media and it's people we look up to and what they wear and what we aspire to. And do we want to look like the people we think are like us? And you you've got your styles and your types and goodness knows what.

So shouldn't part of that message be, think about it differently, think about how long you want it to last, think about the world you want to live in.

Giulia Bottaro (29:44)
Yeah.

And maybe we can now talk about plastic. As promised, as promised. And you know, one interesting thing about plastic is that plastic is known to be an endocrine disruptor. So when you wear clothes that are made of polyester, nylon, all those materials are plastic. Some people don't realize that, but all of that is just always plastic.

Felicia Jackson (29:49)
My favourite and least favourite.

Giulia Bottaro (30:11)
when you're coated in plastic it's actually really bad for you, it can disrupt your endocrine system and so if that's not maybe an encouragement to reconsider fibers I don't know what is.

Felicia Jackson (30:21)
Yes, it's for your health. Well, your interview

with Niccolò I thought was really interesting because he kept coming back to the physical property of what you actually wear. people often complain about polyester, but even aside from the endocrine system, if you have a lot of plastics in your textiles, you've got limits as to what you can do in terms of whether you can recycle them or not. Because if you mix up different fibres, the length of fibres, the type of fibres,

Giulia Bottaro (30:29)
Yeah.

Felicia Jackson (30:47)
you turn them into multiple fabrics, different blends, then you need different systems to break them down and that limits your ability to recycle. So if you think about it, it's the system within the system. We look at colors and styles and prices, but manufacturers and more importantly, recyclers are looking at fiber composition and material performance and what limits recovery. And so it's the polyester blends.

Giulia Bottaro (31:13)
Yeah,

exactly. It's such a trap and polyester doesn't recycle well either. The quality actually downgrades. And what happens is that whenever you're washing polyester, it releases microplastics into the water system. And so it's actually a lose, lose, lose scenario for everyone because it's not good for our health. ⁓ The quality is low.

Felicia Jackson (31:40)
It's not good for the

environment.

Giulia Bottaro (31:41)
Exactly, it's bad for the environment. Whilst there are plenty of great natural fiber options that can be recycled easily, they are good for us. To be fair, they are more breathable. Have you ever sweated in a polyester garment? It's not nice.

Felicia Jackson (31:58)
Well, I mean, there are some people in this world who actually

can't wear polyester and a lot of man-made fibres for the very simple reason that they're really sweaty people. I might be one of them. And it really does limit what I'm able to wear or what I'm comfortable in because nobody wants to be like that. And for those people who've never experienced it, you're very, very lucky. And I'm very, very envious.

Giulia Bottaro (32:09)
Yeah.

But you know, in

a warming planet, with temperatures going up to 35 degrees, you're extremely uncomfortable if you're wearing a polyester top. If anything.

Felicia Jackson (32:26)
Yeah, that's actually going to be an issue.

Oof.

Yeah, that's actually a really

good point. And actually that brings us back, and I know I always go on about cotton and how much water it takes to actually create it. But if we're talking about alternatives to polyester blends, the cottons and the natural fibers, they are better. But they're also really water consuming and energy consuming in the manufacturing process. know, jeans, fantastic, but...

think about the dyes that are used in making them, because we haven't even talked about the pollution elements and what goes into making clothes and the dyes and how that can get into the local water system, into the local ecological systems. You know, I think one of the problems we have is this issue that we think about the importance of circularity, we think about the need for recycling.

But we haven't really factored in whether or not the materials we're choosing to use are actually going to fit into those systems. It's like we've come up with this idea that this is a solution. Therefore, all we have to do is make that part of the industry bigger and it will solve the problem.

Giulia Bottaro (33:46)
Exactly, we can continue with business as usual, but...

Felicia Jackson (33:50)
Yeah, but I think fundamentally we're coming up against the same problem we often come across in sustainability, which is that business understandably is dominated by organisational thinking. What is the optimum way to make this more efficient in the short term in order to hit my KPIs, my goals, my margins, my sales volume?

but not thinking about what's going to happen when the basic variables change. And by that I mean the availability of water and resources and the cost of energy and the social stability to actually get everything to function within the system as it works now.

Giulia Bottaro (34:34)
recycling is the be all and end all solution. Like in any other sector, really. Yeah, let's just throw things away, worry free. We can just recycle them while it just doesn't work that way. And again, we can talk about the overproduction that we mentioned earlier. Ultimately, it's just producing less, producing better and producing thinking about the whole

life cycle of a garment, which again is something that isn't really considered in a lot of consumer products, but that is extremely important. And maybe we can, since we're talking about ⁓ the recycling trap and green washing and whatnot, we can just quickly say that

clothing made of recycled bottles is actually not really good for the environment, but it's always suggested as a great solution, but Because plastic bottles can be recycled multiple times by creating a fiber and then a garment with that fiber.

you're interrupting the process of continuous recycling of plastic bottles.

Felicia Jackson (35:38)
So what you're saying is taking

the recycled plastic bottles out of the recycled plastic bottle loop creates a problem.

Giulia Bottaro (35:48)
Yes, because you can't turn it easily into another product when you stop using the recycled bottle's cup or t-shirt.

Felicia Jackson (35:56)
Okay, so if you turn it into clothes,

that basically then makes it, you're not going to take a piece of clothing, take the plastic out of that and then try and put that into the recycled bottle system because you won't be able to.

Giulia Bottaro (36:09)
Yeah, it's impossible.

Exactly, and as we said before, recycling polyester clothing reduces the quality dramatically and creates microplastics, cetera.

Felicia Jackson (36:17)
Yeah, there is one

area where I do think it's worth considering, which has only just occurred to me, but that's ocean plastics. Those plastics that are actually out there in the ocean falling apart. If you can get that waste out of the ocean and turn it into something useful, I think...

Giulia Bottaro (36:35)
But they could

be recycled into bottles.

Felicia Jackson (36:39)
To be honest, I don't know enough about it, but I'm going to add a link in the show notes to an amazing organization that actually works on getting plastic out of the ocean. There was that incredible kid, Boyan Slat, who invented something when he was 17 or 18 and this boat that just goes around and basically collects crap out of the ocean and takes it out because...

Giulia Bottaro (36:49)
Mm-hmm. What are they named?

Felicia Jackson (37:06)
We've just got so much waste everywhere, whether it's plastic bottles or polyester t-shirts or whatever it is. We're just making so much stuff and constantly thinking, well, there's a solution over here. It's technically possible and it works in the lab. So at some point that will scale up and solve all our problems. We don't have to think about it. ⁓ Yeah, seriously.

Giulia Bottaro (37:14)
I know.

Such a classic in sustainability, isn't it? We just

want the silver bullet, but...

Felicia Jackson (37:34)
Everybody does.

the other thing I think is also really important is how fast plastics production is growing. I mean, I'm not going to get into a whole discussion about how the fossil fuel industry saw the writing on the wall when it came to petrol with the advent of EVs, but wasn't worried because it knew the petrochemicals industry was still going to continue to grow and talked about how demand for plastics and chemicals was going to mean they

stayed in business forever.

Giulia Bottaro (38:06)
Yeah, I think

you shouldn't have said that because if you hadn't, I would have said that. But let's absolutely not mention this topic at all.

Felicia Jackson (38:10)
hahahaha

No, but

the point is that we do need plastics for some things. Again, Covid is the prime example. If you want barrier material, plastics is some of the best, you know, it's the best stuff you can get. But the point is we don't need to just keep throwing the same solution at every problem. That's what's so weird. It's like, well, there's something that works for X, Y, Z. So we're going to use it for ABC.

Just because that's a really effective way for one part of the industrial system to sell its goods doesn't mean it's a useful solution for the rest of us.

Giulia Bottaro (38:51)
So just to provide some figures on the topic, global plastic production increased from 2 million tons per year in 1950 to 475 million tons today.

And the OECD is projecting an even faster growth rate to reach 1.2 billion tons annually by 2060. there are some expectations by Pew that

plastic pollution entering the environment will more than double by 2040, which sounds really far away, but it's actually in only 14 years. And we thought that we had enough pollution as it is.

Felicia Jackson (39:32)
it was three or four years ago, the world decided that we were going to have a global plastics treaty. there was a piece of research that showed there were 200 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the ocean. And this is obviously a problem for everything, it's a problem for the food chain, it's a problem for the ocean's ability to trap heat.

Giulia Bottaro (39:38)
gosh.

Felicia Jackson (39:57)
Big discussions, everyone agreed we should definitely deal with plastics, but nobody can agree how. there was really big hope last year, I remember writing about it, that we were going to come together and actually really find a way of addressing the problem. But it's challenging to get agreements from countries who rely on support from establishment processes, you know?

Giulia Bottaro (40:24)
Yeah, now the expectation is that it might be finalized early next year. But the danger with all of these things is that it could be agreed, but in a very watered down version from the initial draft.

Felicia Jackson (40:29)
we hope.

nothing really happen. Yeah. Because I do think,

and you mentioned earlier the health issues with the endocrine disruption caused by plastics, but every now and again the Lancet Countdown report comes out and it tries to calculate the impact of particular problems on health. And I think it was last year that it released an estimate saying that the plastic crisis specifically

is responsible for about a trillion and a half dollars in health costs annually. Okay, that's around the world and it's health related damages. So it's not strictly speaking the cost of healthcare. But then when you look at air pollution, know, one of the reasons China moved towards doing something about air pollution was because the productivity costs of

Giulia Bottaro (41:11)
That's crazy.

Felicia Jackson (41:30)
lost days of work from asthma and all sorts of things like that. None of these things are problems in isolation. And again, we are ignoring the implications of how we do the things we do because we can't see them.

we do know that politicians are beginning to take it seriously in the global north, the extended producer responsibility scheme,

brands and manufacturers are being asked to take responsibility for their products. That means they need to contribute to the costs of collection and sorting, disposal or recycling. This is important because it's a shift in where responsibility lies. And I think that is the first time producers are really being asked to take responsibility for the impacts of what they do. And there are digital

product passports coming in, that's going in the same direction. That's the idea that we are going to have information about a product's materials. What are they actually made from? Where do those materials come from? What is its life cycle? that is a recognition that the design and production decisions about a product play a huge role in how sustainable it could be.

You and I are always having this debate about who's responsible, is it consumers, is it not? I talked about advertising, you how do we persuade people to buy things differently or to buy different things? But actually, what I'm hoping we're beginning to see is a discussion of how we change the conditions under which products are designed, manufactured and sold, because they include all these external costs. It doesn't mean consumers are irrelevant.

obviously what we choose to buy has an impact, but just because they can have an impact doesn't mean it's their responsibility. this is where we have the biggest conundrum, which is can fashion become more sustainable, more resilient, and perhaps most importantly, fairer, without becoming more expensive? Because when we talk about decisions

Okay, and we've just talked about how responsibility is going to producers. But actually any industry's major decisions are often made by investors, by banks, lenders, insurers, the regulators. We spend so much time talking about demand, whereas actually the people we interviewed for this arc are really talking about the importance of where you put your money, how you make purchasing decisions and over what timeframe.

and actually how you're going to manage risks. So, you know, the people with the greatest power to change the way things work might not actually be consumers.

Giulia Bottaro (44:23)
as consumers, we can give a nudge to the market. But the real people who can make the difference are the ones you just listed.

Felicia Jackson (44:32)
we do have to think about the challenge of that because if we want brands to ensure that the people who work in the supply chain get a living wage, that costs money. Where's that going to come from? Cleaner energy at the moment in a lot of places, although I still stand by the fact that solar is the cheapest form of electricity possible, that costs money because in fashion, you need sometimes a lot of steam.

It's quite hard to electrify steam. Traceability systems for digital passports, they cost money. Where's that going to come from?

Giulia Bottaro (45:01)
control.

you're absolutely right. The cost is a huge challenge. I suppose the tiny little consolation is that this is a problem across many, many industries, not just fashion.

For fashion, it turns out that the affordability question is much more nuanced than it first appears. The choice is really not between cheap and expensive clothing. The real question is which costs are currently included in the price and which costs are not. A garment can be inexpensive because the system producing it has become genuinely more efficient. A garment could also be inexpensive because part of the cost has been transferred elsewhere.

One of the surprising things in this series is that the more we talk about fashion, the less it seemed to be about clothes. We started with garments, but we're now talking about forecasting, logistics, waste systems, labor conditions, climate risk, energy infrastructure, and international trade. Fashion often presents itself through products, but the conversations repeatedly point to systems and processes.

that underpinned the industry as a whole. Perhaps that is why so many sustainability debates in fashion feel difficult. We tend to experience the industry one item at a time, while many of its challenges emerge from the way the wider system operates. Thank you very much Felicia for this great chat.

So this is the end of our fashion arc. Next week we have a very special episode that will be recorded live at London Climate Action Week. If you would like to attend, we have all the details on our social media and website. And thank you so much for listening again. We are on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube. We have a newsletter. We are on all podcast platforms that you can think of. So thank you very much for listening. Absolutely. See you next week.

Felicia Jackson (46:58)
You can't get away from us.