By Allie Cohen, EIC, News/Opinion
The fashion industry has come under major scrutiny for causing significant environmental damage. Specifically, “more than 8 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions are produced by the apparel and footwear industries,” according to a report by McKinsey and Qantis. Additionally, “around 20 to 25 percent of globally produced chemical compounds are utilized in the textile-finishing industry,” according to a textbook titled “Handbook of Textile Effluent Remediation” (2018). In response to this, conscious consumerism efforts like purchasing from sustainable brands have risen. This is reflected in the fact that “73% of millennials are willing to spend more on a product that comes from a sustainable or socially conscious brand,” according to an article published by Luxe Digitals’ Editorial Team. While consumers have leaned into responsible consumption by focusing on where they are getting their items from, they continue to buy exorbitant amounts of clothing, making their efforts futile. Specifically, “the average consumer buys 60 percent more pieces of clothing than 15 years ago;” “Each item is only kept for half as long,” according to the UNEP. Additionally, “nearly three-fifths of all clothing ends up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being produced” according to a report by McKinsey and Qantis. This poses concern because clothes can take more than 200 years to break down, according to The Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Given the following, this begs the question, should purchasing less be part of the conscious consumer dialogue, and if so, how should it be implemented?
Planned Obsolescence, Fast Fashion, and Consumer Behavior
In short, conscious consumerism is “the buying practices driven by a commitment to making purchasing decisions that have a positive social, economic, and environmental impact” according to Pepperdine Business Blog. In other words, consumers deliberately buy and do not buy, from companies based on their commitment to a whole host of social causes – e.g. workers’ rights and sustainability. However, even when consumers opt for their more sustainable and socially conscious counterparts, fast fashion continues to impact consumers and the environment by driving consumer behaviors. Specifically, fast fashion has successfully altered consumer behavior by adopting a model akin to planned obsolescence: “a policy of producing consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete and so require replacing, achieved by frequent changes in design, termination of the supply of spare parts, and the use of nondurable materials.” This has been done by not only making it possible for consumers to constantly revamp their closets cheaply and speedily but by creating a desire for it. Specifically, a study found that the medial prefrontal cortex, in particular, seemed to be “responsive not necessarily to price alone, or how much (they liked) it, but that comparison of the two: how much I like it compared to what you charge me for it.” This process has been found to create happiness from shopping as the medial prefrontal cortex, where cross-benefit analysis occurs, experiences “hedonic competition between the immediate pleasure of acquisition and an equally immediate pain of paying,” causing happiness “from the sensation of wanting something.” Fast fashion activates this neurological process by being cheap and offering new items frequently, which makes it easy for consumers to purchase frequently and thus experience the utility of purchasing. Thus, even when consumers buy more sustainable options their behaviors remain unsustainable through their excessive buying.
Utility Futility?
If people are programmed today to excessively buy then this begs the question, how can we alter this? Britain’s Utility Scheme may lend some ideas. During World War 2, Great Britain’s Board of Trade imposed the Utility Program – “a program of economic regulation (which imposed) price and quality controls on every stage of production in the clothing industry, from the price and type of cloth produced by textile mills to the price of a finished garment on the sales floor,” according to Amanda Durfee. The program focused on three distinct areas to control the number of clothes purchased: clothes rationing, which was essentially imposing limits on the number of clothes a consumer could purchase, austerity restrictions, which restricted the production process by imposing limits on the “design, style, and make of the clothes themselves,” and the utility scheme, which regulated prices and quality of clothes. For each area of concern, the Board of Trade imposed various measures. For example, to help achieve utility, the Board of Trade “fix(ed) maximum prices on almost any item,” according to Amanda Durfee. The purpose of the program was to “keep prices down and quality consistent to ensure that middle and working-class wartime British citizens could afford good quality clothing,” according to Amanda Durfee. This was a preemptive measure by the government to mitigate sharp increases in prices as a lack of raw materials and labor due to the war would likely cause this. While the program was only somewhat successful, the main reason for its lack of success was due to its’ name. Specifically, calling “the project the ‘standard’ clothing scheme,” caused “connotations of standardization and uniformity,” according to Amanda Durfee, sparking negative reactions by consumers and retailers alike. Contrary to those beliefs, the clothes provided under this scheme still appealed to fashionistas. To do this, they created a board called the IncSoc Committee which was composed of the top designers of the time who were charged with garnering excitement and creating clothes under such measures; they even hosted fashion shows!
Considerations
Although the Utility Program only had marginal success, having a marketing failure be the main reason for its’ non-success is significant in the discussion of implementation, especially concerning the free market. Opponents of government regulations in favor of the free market would likely argue that the freedom to consume, the freedom of the seller, the freedom of the producer, the freedom from government interference, the freedom to lower costs, and the promotion of democracy would be violated with government regulation. However, literature has explored and identified the “incoherence” in these multi-tiered free trade tenets, specifically in the context of global survival; “A rule-based international economy which accords rights and protections to broader human and environmental interests than those of private international capital is compelled by elementary logic as well as requirements of global survival,” says John McMurtry. Therefore, because our purchasing behaviors and the fashion industry concern global survival due to the environmental damage they cause, arguments against government regulation in favor of the free market can be deemed invalid. Additionally, Britain’s utility program was operated under the guise that there is a finite amount of raw materials and labor. Considering we have a finite amount of resources, and that there are concerns about excessive use of these finite resources, the implementation of such a program would likely serve a similar function, making it worthwhile to consider. Finally, critics may pose questions over who is responsible for altering consumer behavior – e.g. the consumer themselves, businesses and the industry, the government, etc. While arguments can be made that the responsibility lies on consumers or other shareholders and stakeholders, governments certainly have a responsibility to intervene. Furthermore, governments should regulate how many clothes we purchase.
