PROBLEM STATEMENT

Over the past few years, countries around the world, namely the United States and majority of the countries in Europe have been encouraging and promoting a healthy lifestyle in terms of food, the environment and in general, living. Sustainable living methods are important in today’s day and age because all of the decisions we make now and the choices we take will affect the future by limiting the available resources in the future. At the rate that our finite resources are being utilized, the capacity of nature to regenerate these resources in order to replace them is rapidly slowing down. Therefore we must take action in different areas to try and live in a sustainable manner to protect and savor the very few resources left over. One branch of sustainability that has manifested over the past few years is that of sustainable fashion. So why do we need sustainable fashion? The fashion industry is one of the main industries that generate large amounts of waste through production and post consumer use. Through generating sustainable fashion techniques, we can reduce the amount of waste being produced as a whole. Although this movement is a great positive step towards promoting and implementing a sustainable means of living by using environmentally friendly and greener materials, is it really effective? Through analyzing the process of the fashion cycle, we can identify many flaws in the system. Firstly, the production process is not environmentally friendly with the amount of energy that is used, and the waste produced by the factories. Secondly, after the product is sold, there is a large amount of post consumer waste generated. The fabrics used do not decompose, the number of washes. Neither are the detergents and chemicals used to maintain the garments helping our environment. So ideally speaking, even though some fashion houses are trying to create sustainable fashion methods, the irony of the situation is the manner in which these garments are produced are in fact not eco-friendly at all. Therefore, there is no actual need for sustainable fashion when the industry and the process itself are contradicting the idea of sustainable fashion and as a result is ineffective.