Global Climate Change

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I very much welcome the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, set out the terms of this debate on climate change and the urban environment. It has inspired colleagues outside your Lordships’ House to contribute to my words today. I will focus on fashion and I am therefore grateful to Professor Dilys Williams, director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at University of the Arts, Gillian Mead of Hubbub and Dr Andrew Brooks from King’s College, London, for their helpful comments on this subject.

Cities are hungry beasts. Given that the percentage of the world’s population living in cities is now 53%, and that, according to World Bank data, 82% of the UK’s population lives in urban areas, with this figure set to rise, how we learn to live in cities will shape how well we are able to live in the world. While many people now seem to have accepted the science of climate change, lifestyles played out in our urban environments do not reflect this understanding. Our production, consumption and management of waste associated with fashion in particular is problematic.

As co-chair of the APPG on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion, as a member of the advisory council for Fashion Revolution and a board member of Cotton Made in Africa, I have heard from a wide range of people working in all parts of the fashion industry’s long, complex supply chain, and all agree that there is a huge problem that needs urgently to be addressed. You do not need to be a climate scientist to understand that.

In so many ways the British fashion industry is a huge success story, contributing more than £20 billion to the economy and employing 800,000 people. Fashion enables us to express our identities and its importance is economic, social and cultural, but our rates of consumption are unsustainable. In 2010, the global apparel industry produced more than 150 billion garments—enough to provide more than 20 new articles of clothing for every single person on the planet. Here in the UK, where 90% of our clothes are made overseas, we are importing finished products made predominantly from oil-based materials, or land-intensive and water-intensive cotton. And after all that growing, processing, use of toxic dyes and transportation across the world, what happens? We wear the garments briefly, clean them excessively, then discard them, creating low-value waste. According to the WRAP report in 2011, we throw away 350,000 tonnes of clothing into landfill each year. One senior Marks & Spencer executive told a recent APPG meeting that 10,000 garments went into landfill every five minutes in the UK.

The way in which we produce, consume and dispose of clothing not only has negative environmental impacts for us but affects those in other, vulnerable parts of the developing world. If our unwanted clothing does not go into landfill, what we do not want is exported to other markets, where local industries, often in south Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, may be diminished and local creative and craft talent frustrated by the lack of opportunities because of a clothing market saturated with the West’s unwanted clothing.

The toxic processes of the fashion industry are devastating, as demonstrated by Greenpeace’s Detox report. On receiving an award for her creation of an ethical and sustainable fashion brand at a recent event, Eileen Fisher told the audience that fashion was the second most polluting industry in the world after oil. And let us be clear about the impact of pollution. As a number of noble Lords have said, it kills. Pure Earth claims that in the developing world more people die as a result of pollution than die from disease.

One area where government could work more effectively with the industries concerned to help the public to change their choices and habits is with respect to the care of clothes once they have been bought. I would like to hear from the Minister his sense of what more the Government can do in this respect. A 2009 Defra report, Reducing the Environmental Impact of Clothes Cleaning, points to evidence gathered in France which shows that the use phase of a pair of jeans contributes between 35% and 59% of climate-changing greenhouse gases and water eutrophication, and between 10% and 34% of ozone layer depletion and water consumption. Washing, drying and dry cleaning clothing use large amounts of energy, thus contributing to global climate change, and can cause air and water pollution and toxicity that have a significant impact on urban environments.

Everyone has a part to play in diminishing the impact of these destructive practices. Behaviour change such as reducing washing temperatures from 40 to 30 degrees can help reduce the problem. Less frequent washing and cleaning of clothes would also help. Recently, cleaner alternatives based on water and natural soaps rather than toxic chemicals have been identified for use for clothes that would otherwise be dry cleaned. More and smarter campaigns targeted at specific markets are needed to raise awareness of “clever care” in the public at large.

More generally, there are some signs of hope within the industry and of change. For example, collaborative consumption in fashion that creates wider social benefits, such as Rentez-Vous and Swishing, are examples of social interaction through the exchange of fashion; Antiform in Leeds and Here Today Here Tomorrow are examples of businesses based on creating community cohesion and operating as a hub rather than as just another retailer; and business models based on the whole life of a product, such as Nudie, offer a mending and alteration service as well as a take-back scheme for its jeans.

Action on climate change and the protection of the urban environment depend critically on what citizens consider to be socially acceptable habits. We need to make taking action on climate change more visible, the social norm, culturally appropriate and enjoyably creative.