Credit: Trendstop
It’s time to detox!
Let's commit to Greenpeace's "Detox My Fashon" campaign.
Around the world, an expanding movement of people are using their creativity, design skills and purchasing power to demand fashion without pollution.
United by a shared belief that the clothes we wear should carry a story we can be proud of – activists, bloggers, fashionistas, designers, scientists and models have been pushing, persuading and proselytizing many big brands to commit to toxic-free fashion.
Since 2011, the environmental organization have been relentlessly shining a spotlight on the use of hazardous chemicals within the clothing industry.
In fact, Greenpeace Germany have now published an update of the results in the form of a paper dubbed “Destination Zero: Seven years of Detoxing the clothing industry”.
According to this report, a total of 80 major fashion brands have made progress in their pledge to remove hazardous chemicals from their production lines by the year 2020.
They singled out fast-fashion companies such as Inditex (which owns the high street chain Zara), H&M, Benetton and Fast Retailing (which owns Uniqlo) as leading the way in the mission to reduce the use of chemicals that pollute the planet.
But while these 80 companies that include major brands such as Adidas, Nike, Mango and Puma – they only make up 15 percent of the fashion industry as a whole, and Burberry and Valentino are the only two fashion labels from the luxury sector to have signed up to the pledge.
Kirsten Brodde, Greenpeace Germany project lead of the Detox-my-Fashion campaign admits: “While we are extremely happy to see the progress of Detox companies towards cleaning up their supply chains, 85 percent of the textile industry is still not doing enough to eliminate hazardous chemicals and improve factory working conditions”.
Still, we do need to recognize that there are already multiple initiatives put in place to clean up the fashion industry’s image and environmental impact have come to fruition over the past few years.
Commendable efforts by PVH Group (which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger) to reduce the waste generated by their brands, as well as a water economy programme launched by Gap Inc and recycled fashion collections launched by labels ranging from H&M to The North Face all make a difference.
Sure, we still have a long way to go – but the successes achieved so far prove that when we work together, big businesses and big brands are compelled to stand up and deliver. For a better world.
I support Detox Fashion! What about you?
