Barriers for consuming sustainable fashion

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Unsustainable fashion

The fashion industry faces many challenges when it comes to sustainability. It is a resource inten-sive process with several negative impacts that causes environmental degradation. Also, human rights are being violated in the production chain and international regulations fail to offer a bal-anced distribution of finances within the sector.29 The industry has been pushed toward fast fash-ion, where the production lead-time has been decreased in order to give the consumer the latest trends. This has led to overconsumption which causes extreme waste in landfills.30 Even though there are national rules and laws regulating chemical use, not much is done to actually prohibit these chemicals from actually being used.
Only a few chemical tests are being done on the finished garments before sending them to the retailers.31 Another sustainability issue that is prevalent has to do with working conditions in the supply chain. According to Arnold, several popular fashion brands have been involved in sweatshop scandals over the years. There is a competitiveness in theindustry that creates a potential risk of exploiting workers in the production countries.32 Pookulan-gara & Shepherd mentions the bad publicity of multinational fast fashion companies33. An example of this is the Rana Plaza scandal where over a thousand workers lost their lives when the factory collapsed due to the poor conditions of the building34. De Brito et.al. write about the three axes of sustainable development as specifically fragile in the discussion of the fashion supply chain35. This is illustrated in the figure below.

Initiatives for sustainability in fashion

The throwaway fashion culture during the 1960’s also noted the start of initiatives for sustainability in fashion. Hippies and other movements were the pioneers of recognising the harmful effects of the fashion industry, and they inspired today’s sustainable fashion advocates39. Even though fast fashion is the dominating concept in the world of fashion today there is a growing counterforce in the form of sustainable fashion. As reported by Moon, Lai, Lam and Chang, there have been an increase in research about sustainability and fashion in recent years.40 Furthermore, Cataldi et.al. state that education centres for sustainable fashion and research have been starting to crop up around the world, for instance in Argentina, UK and the USA. Many fashion brands are starting to make use of sustainable fashion labels such as Fairtrade and Certified Organic Cotton which is also an indicator that change is coming.41
This is followed by fashion brands like Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood as they are making efforts to become truly sustainable42. Vivienne West-wood is also a vocal sustainability activist, especially through her website Climate Revolution43. Moreover, even though fast fashion brands are mainly considered unsustainable some initiatives have been taken, for instance by H&M who aims to make all their cotton products organic by 202044. Other initiatives such as the brand consultancy Eco-Age work together with organisations, brands and businesses to find sustainable business practices45. They started something called the Green Carpet Challenge (GCC) which intends to raise awareness about sustainable fashion by dressing celebrities in sustainable garments at high profile red carpet events: ‘[t]he GCC is now a dynamic project, pairing glamour and ethics to raise the profile of sustainability, ethics and social welfare’46.

READ Determinants of women’s labour supply in Bangladesh and Pakistan

1 Introduction
2 Purpose and research questions
3 Background
3.1 The global fashion industry
3.2 Unsustainable fashion
3.3 Initiatives for sustainability in fashion
4 Theoretical frameworks
4.1 Sustainable fashion
4.2 Attitude-behaviour gap
4.3 Previous research
4.3.1 Consumer attitudes and behaviou
4.3.2 Barriers for consuming sustainable fashion
5 Method
5.1 Mixed methods approach
5.2 Survey
5.3 Interviews
5.4 Data analysis
5.5 Demarcations
5.6 Validity and reliability of the study
6 Result
6.1 Respondent
6.2 Informants .
7 Analysis
7.1 Style/design
7.2 Price
7.3 Convenience
7.4 Knowledge/information
8 Discussion
9 Conclusions