April 24, 2013 began as a normal day at the Rana Plaza garment factory in Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital.
The eight-story building, constructed several years earlier on a reclaimed swampland, was its usual hive of frenetic activity.
Some 2,000 workers – mostly women – were busy sewing T-shirts, jeans and other clothing items for major Western fashion labels, under pressure to complete orders on time.
But under the surface things were far from normal. Employees had been forced back to work only a day after the factory had been evacuated following the discovery of cracks in the walls.
It proved to be a deadly decision.
Just before 9am in the morning, the building collapsed, killing more than 1,100 in the worst accident ever in the apparel industry.
The Rana Plaza disaster exposed the true cost of cheap manufacturing – not least the poor working conditions faced by sweatshop workers – in Bangladesh, where many of the world’s best-known fashion brands manufacture their garments.
More than 80 per cent of Bangladeshi textile factory workers are women and young girls who support their families with an average wage of just USD50 a month. They work in dilapidated buildings that often lack fire doors, modern ventilation and other safety standards. Only five months before Rana, at least 117 workers were killed in another tragic accident, trapped inside a burning fashion factory in the outskirts of the city.
But the fashion industry has other problems to confront too. Not least its growing environmental footprint.
Global fashion and textile businesses are responsible for a fifth of the world’s water pollution and a staggering 85 per cent of all anthropogenic debris on global shorelines.
What’s more, the USD3 trillion-industry is on course to use up 35 per cent more land by the end of this decade and is set to consume a quarter of the world's entire carbon budget for 2C warming by 2050.1
“Rana Plaza created a lot of noise for a short space of time. But a lot of those brands went straight back to doing exactly the same things all over again. (It’s) down to the competitiveness of the market in which those brands are operating,” Patrick Grant, Scottish fashion designer focusing on sustainability, explained in a recent Found In Conversation podcast.
“Their model is to sell the consumer something new every week. And something new is replacing it. It's an incredibly fast turnaround. It's just stuff that is… made to be worn once and thrown away.”
Grant, who shot to global prominence after revitalising traditional English bespoke tailors and textile manufacturers, practices what he preaches.
He uses natural, sustainable and regenerative materials, produced locally in collaboration with fibre and dye growers to help reduce the environmental impact.
“Every piece we design, we try to design it with a 25-year lifespan in terms of its style, at least. And we make them in such a way that they should last that amount of time,” he says.
“Great clothes can make us feel great. But if we are on this constant hamster wheel of consumption and disposal, nobody feels great about it. The clothes that are produced in that system are no good for anybody.”
Changing styles
Eight years since the Rana disaster, it appears the fashion industry has dug itself into an even deeper hole.
Labels including Burberry, H&M, Louis Vuitton and Nike have recently come under fire after admitting to burning or destroying their unsold items.
Equally troubling is the revelation that 70 per cent of garments continue to use artificial fibres – material which takes some 200 years to biodegrade.
The industry’s environmental footprint becomes even bigger once water use is taken into account.2
Wastewater from garment production contributes to pollution and biodiversity loss.
The industry is responsible for nearly a fifth of wastewater produced globally in a year; the dying and washing processes of synthetic materials release toxic chemicals and microplastics into rivers and oceans, which harm wildlife.3
Worse still, research shows that no major clothing brand is paying workers in Asia, Africa, Central America or Eastern Europe enough to escape the poverty trap.4
After so many ugly years, there are hopes that the Covid pandemic could be a catalyst for change.
The global health crisis disrupted supply chains, shut retail stores and brought the curtain down on the catwalk events responsible for the constant churn of new clothes and designs.
It has also brought about a change in consumer attitudes and behaviour.
Consumers emerging from lockdowns are now reassessing their spending habits and voicing concerns about how their clothes are made. A growing number steer away from the “take, make and dispose” approach in favour of sustainable practices that respect social and environmental aspects.
Highlighting these behavioural changes, more than two-thirds of European consumers surveyed last year by consultancy McKinsey said they consider the use of sustainable materials and a brand’s promotion of sustainability to be important purchasing factors post-pandemic.5
And brands which embrace sustainable business models are reaping the benefits. Separate research showed the global ethical fashion industry has grown at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 9 per cent since 2015 and is expected to top USD15 billion in value in 2030.6
A recent report by environmental think tank the Stockholm Resilience Centre has called on the industry to adopt a circular economy-based framework to reduce its social and environmental pressures and align its business decision making to society’s long-term goals for people and the planet.
Specifically, it recommends six action points for the fashion and textiles system, including the setting of environmental targets.
On trend: mushroom leather
The SRC report, produced for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, says prevention of waste – one of the key pillars of a circular economy – requires innovative ways of designing and producing products.
The industry is experimenting with various novel ways to switch away from animal and synthetic-based materials.
One of the sustainable and circular alternatives that has caught the attention of garment manufacturers is a natural skin based on mycelium, a complex network of durable fibres that support fungi.
Engineered mycelium skins look and feel just like traditional leather, but can be grown in eight to 10 days – compared with anything between 18 months to as much as five years for raising cattle.
The production process uses half the volume of water needed for that of cotton.
Mycelium’s environmental footprint, including CO2 emissions and land usage, is also significantly smaller than that for animal- and petroleum-based counterparts.7
Hermès, Adidas and Kering are among the global fashion labels that have partnered up with biotech start-ups such as MycoWorks and Bold Threads to deliver mycelium-based products which are starting to hit the shelves.
Grant says fashion and sustainability are a powerful combination that could drive positive change and bring trust back to the industry.
“Sustainability has often been seen historically as a drag on innovation. But now it's really become a driver. If you're a pioneering brand in sustainability, (you are a) brand that people are trusting. Trust, more than ever today, is becoming such a high value commodity,” he says.
“The world will not change without a certain amount of pressure being placed on brands to behave in a better way. But we will do the very best we can and we will try and encourage people to get behind that.”
