My Response to Tearfund’s Ethical Fashion Guide
As someone who has seen the inside of the harm, both human and environmental, created by the global fashion industry I believe passionately in the importance of encouraging and empowering consumers to make better, more ethical purchasing decisions. Following my experiences travelling in the developing world, I ran a small, ethical clothing line for three years that specialised in creating new garments out of secondhand clothing. This brand and the conversations and research that it created opened my eyes to the challenges of the fashion industry and the many different issues that are involved in achieving a “low-harm” approach to clothing manufacture and consumption.
The fashion industry is one of the most complex, wide-reaching, and damaging industries on our planet—with a significant human and environmental cost hidden behind each garment. It is an industry that has been hugely impacted by COVID-19, from major fashion houses failing to pay for goods, to 1 million workers in Bangladesh losing their jobs in April alone. Disruption in supply chains has had major consequences for an industry that is already particularly damaging and exploitative. Each year, Tearfund releases a report aimed at providing consumers with a quick guide to help them to shop more ethically. Where the simplicity of the report has caused problems in the past, this year’s offering should be applauded for its clear outline of the fashion industry’s issues and strong encouragement to consumers.
What is “fast fashion” and why does it matter?
“Fast fashion” is the name used to describe the processes used by major fashion brands to produce and turn over stock of clothing at an increased rate – it is disposable, low cost, and mass produced, so as to provide consumers with a regular stream of new clothing. Since the early 2000s, major low cost brands, such as H&M, Uniqlo, Zara, or Glassons in New Zealand, have moved away from a marketing model focused on seasonal trends, prioritising rather a constant turnover of new stock. As a result of this, the rate of garment production has drastically increased with an estimated 150 billion new garments produced globally in 2015, up at least 400% on the industry two decades prior. This increase in growth is driven by the fast-fashion industry creating a system where consumers have greater access to a wider variety of clothing at ever more affordable prices. Due to the affordability of replacing old pieces and obtaining new fashions, clothing has turned into a perishable good that is used briefly by consumers instead of being made to last. The consequences of these changes to the fashion industry are manifold, ranging from issues of ethical labour, to the impact of each part of the complex supply chains on people and the planet. Environmental impacts raise clear concerns, particularly in terms of the waste produced by fast fashion, both in production and post-consumer.
There’s no clear line between ethical labour concerns and environmental impacts. More and more research is being produced to show the disproportionate impact of environmental degradation on communities that are already the most vulnerable to the sorts of labour exploitation that are at the centre of the problems of the fashion industry. The destructive nature of the fashion industry is not something that can be ignored by Christians. We are not passive observers of an exploitative system. Instead, as consumers, we are active participants in encouraging a production model that harms millions and has a significant impact on the created order.
And what’s the “Ethical Fashion Guide”?
It is in response to this climate that Tearfund—following on from the Baptist World Aid reports in Australia—generates its annual Ethical Fashion Guide. In previous years I have found myself frustrated with the reports that Tearfund has produced. While acknowledging the complexity of the task that they are endeavouring to complete, I have felt that the reports have fallen short by oversimplifying an increasingly complex problem. (New Zealand ethical fashion icon @ethicallykate published a really helpful discussion about this last year.)
In Tearfund’s defence, the full read out of the report generally provides detail and nuance for the results that they provide. However, the presentation of the results in a fun graphic with a letter grade for each brand does a disservice to the complex issues that are at the heart of the ethical fashion industry. I have too many friends who simply picked up the last page of the report and felt validated in shopping at a large fast-fashion house due to the fact that it received a B rating. This is not good enough.
The reason why unethical and unsustainable brands could receive so high a rating in the past was due to both a poor weighting system and a reliance on self-reporting. This is where, again, I must acknowledge that the task that Tearfund has taken on in producing this report is nearly insurmountable. When considering the ethics of any clothing producer a number of factors must be considered:
Where and how are the raw materials for this company produced? What are the impacts on this production on communities and the environment?
Where and how are these raw materials turned into the fabrics that will be used to produced clothes?
Where and how are these fabrics turned into clothes? How are these workers paid and in what conditions do they work?
Is the fashion company’s business model environmentally sustainable? What is the environmental impact of the clothing after it has been used? What are they doing with the unsellable clothing that they produce?
And—potentially most controversially—what is the post-consumer consequences of this company’s business model?
All of these are significant ethical considerations which are incredibly complex to track and Tearfund, by necessity, must rely on business’s self-reporting and policy statements to make their assessments. These policies are far more heavily weighted than actual evidence about how workers and the environment are being treated by fashion companies. I have also felt that the environmental impact assessment has been particularly undervalued as a key ethical consideration. If a company is producing fast-fashion, with new styles on the shopfloor each week and an encouragement for consumers to purchase in high volumes, then their post-consumer environmental impact will necessarily be significantly higher.
Was this year’s report any better?
It is for these reasons that I was overjoyed when I saw that the fashion report this year would not heavily feature grades, and rather provides a series of encouragements and directions for consumers to consider. The 5 steps at the end of the guide outline an incredibly helpful framework for shoppers who are new to the ethical fashion conversation:
Stop and think – consider the impact of your purchases
What does the research say?
Educate yourself
Treat your clothes kindly
Join the movement – spread the word
These simple steps are key to shopping more wisely and with consideration of the human and environmental impact of your purchases. To me, this is the purpose of an ethical fashion guide. Rather than providing somewhat misleading letter grades, let’s think about how we can educate consumers on how to educate themselves. For Tearfund in the future, it would be great to see more work into this space—more information provided on what the key issues in the fashion industry are and more empowerment of consumers to learn how to do their own research.
And for those of us who love fashion but also love people and the planet? Let’s take care and shop wisely. There’s no one approach to the ethical fashion journey. I choose to only buy secondhand, some choose to only buy from ethical, New Zealand brands, some choose to buy fast-fashion but to buy less and make it last a lifetime. The most important thing is to try and remember, every time you hold a piece of clothing, the number of hands that have already held it and to make purchasing decisions that honour the true costs of the garment industry.
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Jaimee van Gemerden is currently an editor at Metanoia.
