Ethical and Sustainable Fashion

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

My Lords, I am pleased to open this second debate on ethics and sustainability in fashion, especially as there is a full-page account of a round-table discussion on the subject in today’s Guardian. I am particularly grateful to colleagues on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion for their hard work and to the Centre for Sustainable Fashion for providing a secretariat alongside MADE-BY. Special thanks go to Dilys Williams, the head of the CSF, for bringing me up to date on key developments.

Fashion is about so much more than the clothes we wear. It may be an expression of our professional and personal identities, an expression of where and how we see ourselves in relation to our peer group, our cultures, our families and communities, and an expression of our creativity and our sense of fun. However consciously or otherwise we do it, as we dress, so we make a statement, even if the statement is, “I don’t care or think about what I wear”.

In spite of its importance in so many people’s lives, the perception persists that fashion is frivolous and inherently ephemeral. However, better than most, the Minister will be aware of the size of the UK fashion industry and of its contribution to the economy. The estimated amount spent on clothing in the UK in 2011 was £43.9 billion. Despite the high level of garment manufacture carried out overseas, the estimated value of UK-manufactured clothing and textiles in the UK was £8.1 billion in 2011, and the overall estimated export value of UK clothing and textiles was £7.3 billion.

If we take the volume of clothing sales and look at the global nature of the supply chain, and then start to unpack what that means in terms of the relationship between the environment and consumption, a worrying picture emerges. The Waste and Resources Action Programme, known as WRAP, reported in Valuing Our Clothes that we have stashed away in our wardrobes some £30 billion-worth of clothes, unused for at least a year. About a third of the clothing we no longer need ends up in landfill—that is, around 350,000 tonnes or an estimated £140 million-worth of used clothes. On average, the global water footprint of a UK household’s clothing exceeds 200,000 litres a year—enough to fill more than 1,000 bathtubs to capacity.

We have to work much harder and be more creative and inventive about how we tackle these problems. Not enough of us make connections between “fast fashion” and climate change, environmental degradation, labour issues in developing countries and resource scarcity. This is not to suggest that nothing is being done. On the contrary, parts of the fashion sector supply chain and increasingly aware consumers, campaigners and legislators have embraced a range of measures, instruments and strategies to mitigate the damage caused by our current practices and processes.

Last month, I was in Copenhagen, where I gave a presentation to Danish MPs on the APPG on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion, which I chair. Jonas Eder-Hansen, the director of NICE, the Nordic countries’ umbrella group promoting sustainable fashion, and Michael Schragger of the Sustainable Fashion Academy work with Ministers and MPs from Sweden and Denmark, as well as representatives from the industry, to develop and deliver sustainable business models and other strategies to take us forward.

Here in the UK, the work of Defra and WRAP in promoting the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan, known as SCAP, is seen as a model of good practice and held in high esteem internationally. Indeed, WRAP and Defra were presented with the Global Leadership Award in Sustainable Apparel by the Swedish Sustainable Fashion Academy in Stockholm last month. At the event, I found a strong appetite for collaborating internationally with politicians and the sector. All of us are aware that in our contemporary, globalised world, pollution and unsavoury labour practices are no respecters of national boundaries.

Industrial dyes are a case in point. For a start, fabrics are dipped or washed in dyes that are made using copious amounts of precious water. In spite of regulations intended to ensure that the excess, dye-laden water is treated before being disposed of, it is cheaper to dump the dye effluent than to clean and reuse it. The Wall Street Journal’s report on an instance of severe pollution in China where a river literally ran red makes chilling reading. Of course, by not treating water, costs are kept low, as demanded by large retailers wanting to sell cheap clothes to their customers in the USA and Europe.

Consumers need to make the links between their desire for cheap clothing and the loss of livelihoods through depleted, polluted fishing stocks and ever diminishing food and water resources. Add to that the fact that more than 400 people have died in fires in Bangladesh and Pakistan in the past six months, with at least one of the factories involved producing garments for a British retailer, and we have to acknowledge that our current mode of “enjoying” fast, cheap fashion makes no sense whatever.

Fashion today is both global and local, and even much of the produce of many of our high-profile “heritage” British brands, such as Burberry, Aquascutum and Crombie, is often all or mostly made outside the UK. The global nature of the fashion industry means that it is imperative that we work with colleagues internationally to secure more effective international standards on, for example, sophisticated factory inspection measures, labelling countries of origin, instituting traceability mechanisms and so on. Thanks to the horsemeat scandal, the general public is becoming acquainted with the unforeseen complications brought about by globalised processing and trading practices. The longer and more dispersed the supply chain, the more difficult it is to ensure transparency and accountability.

One equivalent to the horsemeat issue, if I may put it that way, in clothing terms is cotton. There are many people who would not wish to wear garments made from cotton harvested by children forced to work in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan instead of attending school—I should declare an interest here as a patron of Anti-Slavery International, which has worked ceaselessly to try to persuade Governments and the EU to work harder to stop this practice—but it is impossible to know the source of your shirt, skirt or trousers. Yet some of our largest fashion retailers will not undertake to demand that the companies in their supply chain stop using cotton gathered by state-sponsored forced labour.

Businesses and consumers alike can be powerful agents of change, and it is clear that education and awareness-raising have a crucial role to play. However, there is also a need for leadership from government in hosting platforms for initiatives, supporting change-makers and investigating the risks of not thinking through the consequences for environmental sustainability. This leadership role should also be concerned with working in partnership to educate consumers and skill up young people on manufacturing and other skills, as well as investing in sustainable fashion SMEs and other projects focused on a sustainable future still infused with excitement, individuality and style.

We have all the incentives we need to act and to act quickly, and we have the individuals and organisations with the talent, so what more can government and politicians do to enhance the effectiveness and reach of these people? Clear, vocal leadership is important, and government Ministers and their officials can fulfil a useful role in supporting initiatives across the spectrum of departments with a stake in finding solutions to the problems we have created. The Sustainable Clothing Action Plan is a good example of government leadership, with an NGO and industry working together to find solutions to complex problems.

I cannot mention all the different departments that could have some sort of purchase on this issue. Some time ago, DfID, for example, introduced the Responsible and Accountable Garment Sector Challenge Fund. Fashion, of course, lies within the DCMS’s remit. It is also within the BIS agenda because of the manufacturing element and also because of the potential of the Green Investment Bank. In fact, in November last year, Business Secretary Vince Cable promised government support to breathe new life into UK textile manufacturing as a study revealed that the cost gap with Asia is narrowing. Can the Minister tell the House how far such plans have gone and the extent to which sustainability and ethics in fashion is a priority consideration? Other departments, such as the MoD or the Department of Health, can support sustainable clothing via the purchase of uniforms and so on through ethical procurement procedures.

Will the Minister undertake to set up a meeting with me and other Members of both Houses on the APPG to discuss how we can best help to support the development of this part of the fashion sector? We need to get a commitment to develop practical, effective strategies across the different departments for realising the potential of rethinking how we “do” fashion. Because of its experience with the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan, Defra is perfectly placed to broker and animate the necessary discussions.

To end on a positive note, technological innovation is crucial. I look forward to the day when waterless production techniques, air-purifying textiles, as being developed by Professor Helen Storey and Professor Kate Storey, and closed-loop technologies, in which the garment is manufactured, sold and eventually reformed so it can go back into the manufacturing process, will be the norm. Then we will know we are getting somewhere. However, we should also acknowledge that there is no single magic potion that can cure our environmental excesses. We need multiple strategies and to work collaboratively and internationally to effect sustainable change.

At the British Fashion Council’s Esthetica Showcase at London Fashion Week last month, a young designer showed the collection with which she won a competition for fashion designers. The material she had to work with was the discarded clothing and waste materials of Veolia, whose employees collect our rubbish and sweep our roads. It just goes to show that with support, creativity, vision, skill and invention, even the fluorescent strips from a refuse collector’s jacket can be turned into a garment of true beauty.

[Baroness Northover]

I remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate and, if my maths is right, we have no spare capacity. When the Clock shows four, noble Lords have had their four minutes.