How Can Circular Fashion Reverse Climate Change?

What Is Circular Fashion? 

Circular fashion is a regenerative process that keeps material fibers in the loop and reduces waste while reversing climate change. Instead of the typical cycle of purchase, wear, dispose, circular fashion designs out waste and relies on the reuse and upcycling of old clothes to make new ones.

This regenerative process expands on “reduce, reuse, recycle” to create a closed-loop for textiles. So instead of cradle-to-grave sustainability, the regenerative nature of circular fashion means your clothing goes from cradle to cradle. It essentially takes end-of-life and turns it into the beginning. 

Innovators like Shamini Dhana, CEO and Founder of Dhana Inc., continue to creatively implement circular fashion into our fashion industry. Dhana created the world’s first Circular Memory Jacket, which combines your favorite clothes with fair trade and zero waste materials to create a circular garment with true durability and a sentimental value that will ensure it withstands all closet-clean outs to come. 

This kind of closed-loop clothing production is changing the industry in the most welcome ways. We have an emotional connection to our favorite t-shirt that we wore in our most cherished moments; we hide our decades-old clothing at the back of the closet for the day it resurfaces on a magazine cover; and when we are ready to let go of the once-was piece of clothing we had to have, we all too often send it to a landfill.

Circular fashion means that when we part ways with our clothes, we put them back into the production cycle to be remade into something new. Not only does redefine the game for an industry that some estimate is responsible for 4% of the world’s waste, but it’ll also likely make letting go a little easier for us who only feel more attached to clothing with each new hole it earns.

A Brief History of The Fashion Industry 

The invention of the sewing machine during the Industrial Revolution catapulted the fashion industry into what we know today. Previously, shoppers would either source their own materials and hand-sew garments or go to a seamstress when they needed a new item. 

Inventory like we see now simply hadn’t been possible before, and consequently, overall demand for new clothing was fairly low.

When the sewing machine burst on the scene, demand skyrocketed. Determined to keep up with demand at any and all costs, textile factories and sweatshops began to appear. Chasing this steep rise in production and sales opportunities at all costs, factory workers were subjected to harsh conditions and lack of safety procedures.

Then, at the end of 1989, the New York Times put a name to the practice, noting the emphasis on  “fast fashion” by the newly opened Zara, who had new styles every two weeks due to a shortened production time. Other fashion brands followed suit and soon Forever 21, H&M, J Crew, and The Gap followed suit, producing thousands of styles and creating “micro-seasons” that made it nearly impossible to stay “in season.”

Throughout the world, fast fashion invaded: cheap clothes that allowed consumers to keep up with the ever-changing trends the fashion industry created. 

The Realities of Fast Fashion

While low-cost fashionable clothing might seem like a great thing, it can’t be (and isn’t) cheap for all stakeholders involved. We are talking about a couple groups specifically: there are those who pay the price during production i.e., the low wages and poor conditions for factory workers, many of whom are child laborers, and there are also those paying the price at disposal…and those would be anyone who lives on earth.

The average American throws away 68 pounds of textiles per year, and that doesn’t even consider the amount of waste coming out of the factories that produce these clothes. 

Fast fashion relies on high supply and low cost, leading companies to cut corners in quality— if a shirt is only supposed to be in style for a few months, what’s the use of making it last any longer?

When clothes end up in landfills, the chemicals they are treated with make their way into our soil, food, and water. Much of it breaks down into microplastics that affect humans from health to economy. Fast fashion companies notoriously abuse their workers and our planet with little corporate accountability. 

Sustainability in Fashion

Once you’ve weeded out those garments that just aren’t holding up, you’re often left uncertain with what to do with old clothes. And after likely overestimating your ambition to embrace the new, organized you, motivation to conduct in depth research and quality assurance checks can be in low supply.

Fortunately, the movement around sustainable clothing is making these answers more plentiful and complete. Despite being relatively new, the sustainable fashion movement focuses on tackling the issue of fashion waste at every step from ethical sourcing of materials, proper conditions for factory workers, and low environmental impact. Thrift stores have grown in popularity as Gen Z and Millenials are finding value in either donating clothing for resale or shopping secondhand. 

Consumers are the driving force behind the sustainable and circular fashion economy and retailers are rising to the challenge by creating textile recycling programs, utilizing deadstock fabric, and creating zero waste alternatives to fast fashion. Conscious consumers, unite!

The Budding Circular Economy of Fashion

In circular fashion, nothing is wasted. Yep- nothing. 

When the durable, ethically made t-shirt becomes unwearable, it is simply processed back into fibers and put back into a new product. One of the leading advocates for designing waste out of our economy is the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Their mission to accelerate the transition to a completely circular economy includes the fashion industry and is reflected in their Make Fashion Circular initiative. 

The foundation accomplishes this with three core pillars: 

1. Design out waste and pollution by using overstocked fashion or deadstock fabric. 
2. Keep products and materials in use by making repairable, reusable, and remanufactured clothing. 
3. Regenerate natural systems by actively improving the environment through sustainable material cultivation, like organically grown cotton. 

But implementing the changes needed to see this transition to a green strategy doesn’t happen if companies in the fashion industry don’t execute on the plan. And Shamini Dhana is one designer reinventing the way people shop and wear clothing to make circular fashion the norm. Dhana only creates clothing that adheres to strict rules on climate impact and is changing the game by giving customers a unique insight into how their clothing is made.

Plus, did we mention the circular memory jacket? Oh, we did? Coolcoolcool.