Plastic bags, paper straws and a nudge: Fashion needs to change fast
London, United Kingdom
Of all the terms we have collectively learnt over the last few weeks ‘nudging’ may not be the one that lasts longest in the memory. Nonetheless ‘nudge theory’ is fundamentally underpinning the government’s response to coronavirus. Nudge theory is the concept that a relatively subtle policy shift can encourage people to make decisions in their broad self interest for example by requiring people to opt out of organ donation instead of opt in. This is why the government keeps telling you to wash your hands and keep calm, they are nudging you to do so.
Fashion, particularly fast fashion needs to change fast because it’s destroying the planet. As clothes are no longer being made to last and their cost continues to decline, consumers are buying more clothes and disposing them faster than ever before. This is problematic because most clothes aren’t sustainably made.
Nylon and polyester are synthetic fabrics. In fact they are the two most common synthetic fabrics and today more than 60 percent of fabric fibres are synthetic. The problem is that these fabrics aren’t bio degradable and this has a number of issues for the environment. Perhaps the biggest is water pollution. When you wash synthetic fabrics they shed micro plastics about 700,000 in your average washing machine wash. These microfibres pollute oceans, rivers and freshwater sources as they do not degrade and are beginning to pose a serious threat to sea life as half a billion tonnes of these microfibres end up in the sea each year poisoning sea life and disrupting sea and oceanic food chains. The production of synthetic fibres is also environmentally problematic as it relies on petrochemical industries for its raw material making it dependent on fossil fuel extraction. This has led to fashion now accounting for 10% of our global carbon emissions, a figure predicted to grow to 25% by 2050, whilst the fashion industry’s emissions are estimated to rise by more than 60 per cent in this decade alone.
“As we buy more clothes and dispose of them faster, production increases and with it environmental damage”
It is not just through synthetic fabrics and pollution that the fashion industry is harming our environment. Many of our clothes are made from cotton. However, cotton production is hugely water intensive as the production of just a kilo of cotton, or a pair of jeans for that matter, requires between 10,000-20,000 litres of water. This has led to increasing water scarcity in countries like Pakistan and India, where cotton is produced, and ever rising drought risk. Moreover, the use of pesticides and toxic chemicals in their farming, which then seem into the earth and water, does further environmental damage and according to the WHO contributes to 20,000 deaths and miscarriages in developing countries a year. Meanwhile the need to stand out online has also seen a growth in the use of vibrant colours, prints and fabrics. But many of these are achieved through the use of toxic chemicals which has seen textile dying become the second largest polluter of clean water globally.
All of these issues are exacerbated by fast fashion. As we buy more clothes and dispose of them faster, production increases and with it environmental damage. To put this into perspective the annual footprint of a household’s newly bought clothing, along with the washing and cleaning of its clothes, is estimated to be equivalent to the carbon emissions from driving an average modern car for 6,000 miles and the water needed to fill over 1,000 bathtubs.
On October 5th 2015 the government introduced a law requiring all supermarkets and large stores to charge a minimum of 5p for every single-use plastic carrier bag handed out. It was a response to the number of single-use carrier bags handed out by supermarkets rising for a fifth year in a row to 7.6 billion, the equivalent of 140 bags per person. This was problematic as they take 1,000 years to break down, use carbon producing resources to produce and can be extremely damaging to marine wildlife. The introduction of the charge was aimed at deterring people from constantly taking new bags and encouraging them to reuse them. It led to the number of single-use plastic bags being sold in 2017/18 declining to just 1.75 billion. It is also a classic example of ‘nudging’. By 2019 plastic bag purchases had dropped by 90% from it’s 2014 height. Plastic straws are equally damaging to the environment but the government took a different approach banning them from 2020. But consider the slow move over the last year or so towards paper straws and how towards the end of the year when at a bar that offered both you gravitated subconsciously towards paper - you were nudged.
A blanket ban on cotton or synthetic materials would be impractical when so many of our clothes are made from them. It may also lead to a knee-jerk embrace, by big brands, of replacements which end up being more damaging to the environment. Perhaps it would be a good idea for the government to put its Behavioural Insights Team to work on a new project: tackling fast fashion and nudging us to make more sustainable fashion choices. Because if the climate is to survive - fashion needs to change fast and so do we!
Samson Royston, March 2020
