ABSTRACT
High and increasing per capita fashion consumption is one of the primary causes of the globally significant greenhouse gas emissions from the fashion industry. This chapter describes how the emergence of fast fashion in the 1990s and now ultra-fast fashion in the 2020s is driving global fashion consumption to increase at an unsustainable rate. The fashion industry trajectory towards ever-increasing per capita consumption is identified as perhaps the most difficult issue for the fashion industry to address.
Not only is this consumption level driving the increase in emission it is also creating a global waste issue, with over 50 million tonnes of fashion products going into waste streams each year. The impact of large-scale fashion waste generation may also be related to climate change, depending on whether the materials can be used to replace virgin materials.
The fashion marketplace is difficult to change and consumer behaviour is fundamentally the driver of increased consumption. The emergence of large-scale direct-to-consumer e-commerce sales is enabling increased consumption and ultra-fast fashion driven by social media platforms such as Tik-Tok exemplifies the issue of extreme consumption. This chapter describes the need for regulation to enforce changes at a system level is identified as the most powerful and perhaps only strategy to change the fashion industry. It is also proposed that this regulation will be highly supportive of the fashion brands attempting to reduce waste and decarbonise, since it is argued that a level playing field is a pre-requisite for any of these initiatives to succeed commercially.
