Corporations Start Pollution, They can Stop it…
By Dr Mark Liu
In 1971 an Italian American actor dressed up as a caricature of a native American pretended to shed a tear after seeing how polluted the land had become with food packaging waste. The advertising campaign’s message was simple “People start pollution. People can stop it.”. This iconic commercial would become the blueprint for many environmental awareness campaigns that inspire individuals to take responsibility to reduce pollution. This campaign was misleading because it was sponsored by the Keep America Beautiful organisation, a group of beverage and packaging corporations who were the leading cause of the pollution itself.
This campaign framed people and their personal choices as the cause of pollution over any corporate or government responsibility. It guilted people to think they were responsible for destroying the environment offering them one chance for redemption consumer choice. By consuming the right products, corporations tell their customers they can magically stop all the pollution problems, including overconsumption. By buying the right green branded products, we can save the planet, and if there is still pollution, we are not buying enough of them or should be convincing our entire community to buy more of them.
Corporations continue to run business as usual in the fashion industry while launching new green product lines. Green products have become a way to virtue signal, and due to the cost of so-called “sustainable” products, it has become a new way to signal wealth. Green properties in a product are just another feature that adds value to existing products. People who have bought green products can feel absolved of this climate guilt as their single purchase has saved the planet and can shame others who have not. Consumers are encouraged to constantly consume more green products, which is supposed to address the problem of systemic overconsumption. For corporations, it does not matter what products they sell; it just matters that they can continue to sell them.
The idea that consumer choice can save the planet is entrenched in a belief that free-market capitalism can solve our problems. From a business perspective, all the different fashion companies compete for a finite amount of consumers' money. When a consumer buys from a sustainable label, it takes potential sales away from a fast-fashion company. Therefore, if enough people buy sustainable fashion, fast fashion will become unprofitable and cease to exist. This perspective oversimplifies how the fashion supply chain works and fails to consider the environmental impact of fast fashion.
In reality, fast fashion companies need to sell a critical mass of garments to remain profitable due to their low prices, targeted advertising and the addictive nature of their products. In mass production, the more garments produced, the cheaper they become. Fast fashion maximises profits by overproducing garments and promoting the overconsumption of their products. They pay so little for the labour in the production of garments that any sale has a massively profitable return. The fast-fashion business model anticipates waste, and there is little consequence for creating it as it will not affect its profits.
Suppose you look at the same scenario from a climate science perspective. A fast-fashion company has a disproportional impact on the environment if you choose to buy their products or not. Regardless of your personal choices, a factory will overproduce many garments using energy, materials and release CO2 emissions somewhere on Earth. These garments will be shipped around the world and eventually go into landfills. It does not matter if you purchased them or not between their creation and going to landfill. The fast-fashion companies' very existence already does damage to the environment.
From a climate science perspective, just because you bought from a sustainable fashion brand does not magically erase the damage done by a fast-fashion brand. The products we buy have already been manufactured, and your choice does not alter the amount of CO2 emissions, energy or pollution in the environment. Unless we can change the overproduction of fast fashion companies, our consumer choices are nothing more than the illusion of choice while fast fashion companies continue business as usual. Sustainable fashion will function to do nothing else but make us feel better about ourselves while we are in denial of humanity's effect on the environment.
Incredibly, you do not see information and literature about how consumer choice alone cannot make the fashion industry more sustainable. This idea is toxic to the media as their platforms sell so much green advertising. Having an article that talks about how lousy fashion is for the environment are great for business as after you read it, an ad will play selling you a green product a few seconds later. Educational institutions and environmental consultancies need to sell advice that aligns with business as usual for companies. It is easy to sell people the idea they can save the planet by cutting up an old shirt and making it into a funky looking top. It is hard to commission experts to do fundamental scientific research or challenge political and corporate interests. Consumer choice is a great suggestion that makes everyone happy without doing anything.
Changes that do not affect business as usual are steps that fast fashion companies will adopt but have little effect on the problem of overproduction. For fashion companies swapping their regular fabric to one made from organic or recycled materials is as easy as changing materials for a new trend. The materials used in the process become trivial when so many garments are produced and end up in landfills. This business model can only exist if it uses exploitative labour practices that do not share its massive profits with the people who created the garments. The technology and infrastructure to recycle their products are still early research. Companies justify that there is nothing they can do but wait and thus have little accountability for the environmental crisis they are making.
The real problem of the fashion industry is the perverse systems of laws and loopholes that allow these companies to run without facing any consequence for their environmental impact. The labour laws allow fast fashion companies to pay workers so little for their work. Laws such as the Modern Slavery Act of 2018 are supposed to protect workers worldwide but, in reality, requires a company to submit a document around 30 pages long describing the thousands of workers in their supply chain and has no financial or legal penalties. The tax codes mean that fast fashion companies buy products from outsourced supplies. They do not need to pay taxes in the countries they produce in.
Corporations and governments want people to protest in predictable ways that have minimal impact on business as usual. A group of people who are dissatisfied with the climate crisis can make banners and protest or post messages on social media, but this has a limited effect on the government. It is the coordinated actions of ordinary people doing extraordinary things with their skills and resources which can make a difference. An accountant familiar with the tax code could propose a change of legislation to close tax loopholes that fast fashion companies exploit. A member of a workers union could ask their member of parliament to enforce laws that would protect workers' rights in the fashion industry. Bankers could choose to de-carbonise their portfolio and support green technologies. Engineers or scientists could develop green technology instead of working for a bank. A wealthy individual could lobby the government for climate reform. A teenager could choose a career path with climate science or legal activism. These are all difficult decisions to make that require deliberate effort.
Without systemic legal reform to address overconsumption and the development of green recycling infrastructure, consumer choice alone will do nothing to stop the fast fashion industry. Individuals need to ask for legal reform and see if there are ways their expertise can make a meaningful change to corporations and governments. Corporations and governments create pollution, but people need to keep corporations and governments in check so they can stop it.