How Can A Fashion Brand Create Social And Environmental Impact

I recently spoke at the Social Enterprise Conference in Birmingham. One of the positive messages that were highlighted at this tw0-day event is the rise in socially aware brands that are creating change through sustainable and ethical practices. The recent Pulse of the Fashion Industry 2019 update report highlighted that 75 percent of consumers believed sustainability was either ‘extremely’ or ‘very important’ to them. Over 33 percent of shoppers revealed they switched brands to support those that back environmental change. 50 percent of consumers reported their intention to switch brands in favor of those embracing eco-friendly practices. People are questioning how things are produced and how they affect the world's ecosystem. Fashion is still one of the most polluting sectors in the world and so sustainable fashion is not a trend to highjack but a practice that should be at the foundation of any brand.

At the moment, the footwear industry doesn’t have a great reputation when it comes to being ethical or sustainable. Here are just a few statistics that highlight the scale of the problem:

* Less than 5 percent of waste from post-consumer shoes is recycled.

* Just 2 percent of the final price of a shoe goes to the workers who made it.

* 85 percent of the world’s leather is tanned using chromium, which is considered to be the fourth worst pollutant in the world.

Modern footwear is surprisingly damaging in various ways. As the pace of fashion has quickened people have begun buying more shoes and throwing them away more easily. Traditional shoe-crafting has given way to mass-production, eating up resources and sending an average of three pairs of shoes per person to the landfill every year. The quest for cheaper and faster production has also encouraged the exploitation of vulnerable workers through long hours, low pay and dangerous working conditions.

How can one address this?

One of the ways that the practices in the footwear industry are being addressed is through an increasing focus on vegan shoes. The vegan trend has quadrupled in the five years between 2012 and 2017.  It now gets almost three times more interest than vegetarian and gluten-free searches in Google. If the world went vegan, it could save 8 million human lives by 2050, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds and lead to healthcare-related savings and avoid climate damages of $1.5 trillion. In 2018, the UK launched more vegan products than any other nation. Over half (56 percent) of British people adopted vegan-buying behaviors and checking if their toiletries are cruelty-free, as per the research carried out by Opinion Matters for The Vegan Society between 14 and 16 July 2017 involving a sample of 2,011 UK adults.