how does slow fashion actually help the environment?
what is slow fashion?
Slow Fashion is a term used to describe the fashion movement that directly opposes Fast Fashion and its short manufacturing cycles that destroy our planet and exploit its workers. Fast Fashion quickly turns trends into clothes its customers can devour with no regard for its impacts on our planet and society, today, Fast Fashion is responsible for 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and for 20% of wastewater production that pollute our rivers and seas.
Slow Fashion promotes sustainable clothes, small brands, and an ethical business model that cares for the environment, the people, and the customers. It opposes the buy-n-throw Fast Fashion culture, overproduction, and unnecessary consumerism that generates tons of textile waste every year. We will talk a little bit in more detail about this subject because there is a lot more to be talked.
Slow Fashion combines other movements like Sustainable Fashion, which especially focuses on the ecological sustainability of its clothes, using organic and ecological materials and production processes, and Ethical Fashion, which focuses on the welfare of the textile workers who are exploited in the Fast Fashion industry. At the end of the day, they all want to achieve the same thing, a sustainable fashion industry but have different means of achieving that goal. If you want to know more about these differences be sure to check this article on What Is The Difference Between Slow Fashion And Sustainable Fashion.
how does slow fashion help the environment?
Slow Fashion helps the environment in many ways, we are going to explain some of the 5 ways that it does this. With this in mind, here are 5 ways Slow Fashion helps the environment:
- Slow Fashion fights against Fast Fashion, which is one of the biggest polluters of human history. Just by fighting against Fast Fashion, it is already doing a lot to make this planet a cleaner and more sustainable one.
- It promotes slow manufacturing cycles, these make creating sustainable and fair garments possible. One of the best examples of these slow manufacturing cycles is On-Demand production, which creates garments on-demand, which means when the customer orders the product. Not only storage costs are reduced, but also overproduction and potentially throwing the garments before they are even bought.
- Slow Fashion and Sustainable Fashion go hand in hand, one compliments the other, and they basically want to achieve the same goal. Sustainable Fashion especially focuses on the environmental aspect of the industry, but both want to achieve sustainability.
- It promotes a conscious mentality, Slow Fashion wants to avoid the unnecessary consumerism Fast Fashion promotes, and it supports healthy consumer habits like buying only garments that you will actually wear and buying more quality rather than quantity.
- Slow Fashion helps the development of producing countries, because Fast Fashion creates cheap, low-added-value garments, the producing countries do not see much of the wealth that the fashion industry produces. However, Slow and Ethical Fashion support fair trade and the humane treatment of the factory workers, with its slow manufacturing cycles and higher-added-value garments that can help the producing countries actually develop, which will also help them become more environmentally friendly in the long run.
These are some of the 5 ways this fashion movement helps the environment. You may have noticed that we have talked about Sustainable Fashion, but, how does it differ from Slow Fashion? We shall find out next.
what's the difference between slow and sustainable fashion then?
These fashion movements are often used as complete synonyms, however, it is not correct to use them that way, because there are some substantial differences between both terms. Here are the main differences between Slow and Sustainable Fashion:
Slow Fashion
This fashion movement focuses on the lifecycle of the garment, how it’s produced, how long it will last… Slow Fashion aims for, as its name implies, a slower and more sustainable production model for garments, directly opposing Fast Fashion. It searches for small producers and stores and high-quality clothes, strongly avoiding overproduction and unnecessary consumerism.
The best example of Slow Fashion, as we have talked about just before, can be an on-demand business model where garments are produced by command, eradicating overproduction completely as the items are produced at the time of the purchase. A business model like this is a complete game-changer to the industry.
Sustainable Fashion
Sustainable Fashion focuses more on the materials used and the production processes the garments go through. You can say it didn’t directly come from opposing Fast Fashion but rather from an eco-friendly green background.
It differs from Slow Fashion because it really focuses a lot more on the ecological materials they use, utilizing materials like organic ring-spun cotton, hemp, or other sustainable and biodegradable materials. If you want to know more about this fashion movement feel free to check out our articles on the subject.
At the end of the day, they may be very similar and may even seem to be the same, as they both promote sustainability in the fashion industry, but the difference, while small, is still there.
how to promote slow fashion to help the environment
Now that you know how supporting these fashion movements help the environment, and the differences between them, you may also want to know what you can do to support them. Well, one of the best things you can do is to spread awareness about the subject. Having said this, here are the best ways to promote Slow Fashion:
- Our duty as respectable inhabitants of this earth is to spread awareness on this important subject, and this can be done in many ways, just remember the VSB acronym. The first one (Voice) is very simple, which is simply telling your friends and family about the topic. Telling people you trust is a great way to spread awareness on any deserving matter.
- The second one (Social) is similar to Voice and consists of spreading awareness through social media, whether it’s your Facebook, your Instagram, YouTube… By this method not only can your close family and friends know about this movement but also people from the internet you may not even know! While using this method you should share informative posts, videos, news, that can make people at least informed on what fast fashion is and why sustainable clothing is important.
- The third one (Blogging) is what we opted for ourselves. It consists of creating a blog or any internet-related activity that is mainly focused on slow fashion and wants to spread information to as many people as possible. This can be extremely effective but also very time-consuming, we think it is totally worth it though.
Having checked all of these VSB’s off your list, you’re now an active member of the slow fashion movement, Congratulations! Now the only thing to do is to predicate with your own actions, you can learn how to do that here.
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We hope you have learned today everything you wanted to know, we invite you to check out our other articles on the subject, which you can find from the articles linked below, or by checking out our blog, where we have tons of different articles like these that you can enjoy!
We are thrilled to teach people all around the world 🙂 Also, did you really know what Fast Fashion really is and its terrible consequences for the environment, the planet, the workers, society, and the economy? Do you know exactly what the Slow Fashion or Sustainable Fashion movement is? You should really take a look at these articles about this forgotten and unknown but very urgent and important subject, click here to read „Can Fashion Ever Be Sustainable?”, Sustainable Fashion, Ethical Fashion, Slow Fashion or Fast Fashion 101 | How It’s Destroying Our Planet because knowledge is one of the most powerful strengths you can have, while ignorance is your worst weakness.
We also have a big surprise for you! Because we want to give you the right to know us better, we have prepared a carefully dedicated About Us page where we will tell you who we are, what our mission is, what we do, a closer look at our team, and many more things! Do not miss this opportunity and click here to check it out. Also, we invite you to take a look at our Pinterest, where we will pin everyday sustainable fashion-related content, clothing designs, and other things that you will surely love!
