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THE LONGVIEW – Christina Dean: We Shouldn’t Have to Be the Sustainability Police
Christina Dean is an icon in the sphere of NGOs committed to improving the fashion industry. The native Englishwoman uses publicity campaigns to draw attention to the grievances caused by fast fashion consumption and environmentally harmful production processes. Her organisation Redress educates and raises awareness. In order to highlight the problems caused by textile waste, she only wore outfits from the garbage dump of Hong Kong, her home of choice, for an entire year. Interview: Stephan Huber. Photos: Paul Sunga, Redress A woman with a mission: Christina Dean, the founder of Redress, believes that resource depletion and textile waste are thorns in the fashion industry’s side.
You started Redress in 2007, at a time when the topic of sustainable fashion was not really on the international agenda. Was it an uphill struggle? Well, it was not on anyone’s agenda back then apart from a few people. On a graph of change, you always have the early adapters who are aware of the issue. Back in 2007, though, the early adapters were focused mainly on agriculture and the rise of organic cotton. They were probing the conversation in their particular area and it hadn’t yet ignited with the rest of the business. Still, I would not say it was an uphill struggle. The issue was more that people needed to be convinced and the challenge was constantly having to try and explain it.
The young activist, Greta Thunberg, has done an extraordinary job of raising eco-awareness in the past year. Overall, there seems to be a big change in the mindset of people, especially here in Europe. Do you also get the impression that, now, the climate crisis is on everyone’s agenda, whereas just 10 years ago it was on no-one’s?
It is not on everybody’s agenda yet, but it’s absolutely mainstreaming. Ten years ago, when these issues were still very much in their infancy, we didn’t have all the data behind us that we do now. For instance, the fact that fashion is supposedly contributing up to 10% of global greenhouse gases annually – more than the shipping and aviation industries – that stat is now absolutely everywhere. What statistics like that have done is to seed understanding in people’s brains. Journalists are on it right now and that is a great thing. The media today are so well-informed, asking very probing questions, going beneath the surface of topics. That reflects the richness of understanding, but also the need to dig deeper.
Up to 10% of global CO 2 emissions coming from the fashion industry alone is quite literally a breath-taking statistic. In the scope of your work at Redress, you not only address air pollution, but also the industry’s impact on water and chemical pollution, as well as waste in general. Can you give us a better idea about the dimensions of fashion’s overall damage to the environment?
Ultimately, when we talk about the overall impact of the fashion industry on the environment, we need to look at various supply chains and where the industry is sourcing from. For one, it is sourcing from agriculture, so here we can talk about cotton or the impact on water. For instance, the World Bank estimates that 17% to 20% of all industrial water pollution is caused just by the textile dyeing and finishing process. But the fashion industry is also sourcing from petroleum and oil. In terms of oil refinery, you can talk about
CO₂ as well as the damage caused by extraction. It is sourcing from forestry, for tree fibres to make things like viscose and lyocell. It’s sourcing from metals and mining, and there is obviously an impact there. And it is sourcing from animals and animal farming, so you can also talk about issues of animal welfare. And then there is the aspect of wastage. The industry itself generates 92 million tonnes of textile waste every year.
So, basically, fashion is a climate killer?
Well, I would say it certainly is one of the world’s biggest polluting industries. At the foundation, fashion is an un-eco industry. Full stop. Even if you do things nicely and use nice chemicals, if you then multiply that by 100 billion pieces per year, it’s going to have an inherent impact on the environment, which is the impact we have now.
I read that about one third of fashion being produced goes directly into the trash. Would you say that the primary problem facing the industry we need to start dealing with is overproduction?
Overproduction and overconsumption are two of the main issues. On the one hand, there are too many clothes out there; we are creating too much. That’s because the business model is founded on growth; our whole economy is focused on growth. And growth in the fashion industry can only happen through selling more units. That is why we find ourselves in this effing state; because we’ve made too much crap and it’s everywhere! On the consumption issue, there are two nasty realities. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, since the year 2000, clothing consumption had doubled to 100 billion pieces by the end of 2014. That is just fourteen years. Especially in emerging markets, fashion consumption is increasing. And secondly, the very cheap, fast fashion brands – not the famous global ones – are doing pretty well. These brands are ultra-cheap bottom feeders that aren’t under any scrutiny whatsoever and people are buying their stuff.
Shouldn’t end consumers also share the blame in terms of waste and overconsumption? Or does the burden of responsibility lie solely with the industry, advertising, and retail trade?
The consumer is obviously majorly a part of this, driving the industry, consuming, etc. But there is a growing awareness among them these days. Fast fashion has lost its supposed ‘glamour’ and younger consumers are realising the problems. They are moving toward capsules with timeless, durable fashion. Still, in order to be sustainable, consumers not only need to consume less, but the fashion industry needs to produce less. There is no sugar-coating that fact. Yet, according to a report released during the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, 50% of the fashion industry hasn’t done anything to do with sustainability. Now, if that isn’t a wake-up call I don’t know what is. That is absolutely atrocious. I’m appalled.
What if there were a trade-off: hugely reduce the number of garments produced, but pay a slightly higher price for better-made clothing?
I don’t think it is realistic to say that consumers are going to want to pay much more for clothes. If you think about the fashion retail market, you’ve got every kind of palette of consumer in there. There are the price conscious, the consumers that are going to want to buy once. Then you have your luxury consumers who want to buy a luxury piece every day. You have some who only want to buy independently. Overall, I would like to see reduced consumption, but you have to do it in a way that is empathetic to the actual driver, which is that people do love to shop. And they do love to wear different clothes, though I deliberately do not use the term “new” clothes here to really give you an understanding of the true picture. From the retail perspective, we have to respect people’s characters, their preferences, their demands and expectations, because at the end of the day we are human beings driven by desire. There is not one solution that says, “Thou shalt not shop.” That is just not going to happen.
On the subject of solutions, the mission of your NGO is to inspire positive environmental change and put the fashion industry on a path to a more sustainable future with less waste. Would that take something radical to happen at this point or can it be achieved through a series of small steps?
There are already a lot of little, nice things going on and good things happening on a linear system. But if we are just focusing on making the linear system less bad, we’re going to get nowhere quickly because we are still extracting a lot of raw materials and just chucking them away. We could keep going on with little bits of innovation, a little less water, less processing, slightly better chemicals, switching to solar energy in factories, and obviously that would all be good. But the elephant in the room is that we are still extracting 53 million tonnes of fibres every year. And then 75% of those end up in a landfill or incineration within a year. The only optimism I have for a solution is for something radical to happen. The real thing I want to see happen in my lifetime is recycling, like the actual scaling up of fibre-to-fibre recycling to reuse them as clothes. I am waiting for it to kick off.
In other words, recycling fibres could be the panacea for all the fashion industry’s ailments?
Ideally, in a nirvana state, we could recycle fibres and keep them circulating. Then people could go to shops and they could enjoy buying, they could feed the economy, they could give jobs, they could love the fact that they want to wear pink today and then purple tomorrow. They can do all of that and enjoy
the creativity of fashion. And that should actually be the goal. We shouldn’t have to be the police coming down on people to say you can’t enjoy fashion.
Why hasn’t that happened yet? Is it a technical question?
It is in a sense a technical question. The issue of recycling those fibres requires quite a complicated systems chain that includes logistics, collection, sorting and warehousing. That whole reverse logistics problem of scooping up all the stuff is a whole problem in itself. Do you have curb-side textile collection? Will it be just clothing bins? Will governments be responsible for doing it? Where do the textiles go? Which countries will this stuff be sent to? And then, once it’s all collected we have the problem that it can’t very easily be recycled at the moment from a technological perspective. Right now, textiles are being downcycled – you take clothes that have lovely fibres and you are turning them into rags and carpets. But the goal is to keep the clothes as clothes, what we call fibre-to-fibre. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, though, of all the fibres that go into fashion every year, only 1% of them are recycled back into clothes. We can make recycled toilet paper. People are wiping their arses with recycled toilet paper, yet we are just chucking fibres into landfills!
I get the picture [laughs]… Isn’t it just a matter of time before technology catches up? After all, there are fibres that are more easily recyclable.
Well, that is the solution and I think we will get there in terms of technical ability. The big gold rush will be in finding a way to separate blended fibres such as polyester and cotton. Cotton-to-cotton is quite easy. But many of today’s clothes are a blend of natural and synthetic fibres and they cannot be processed because they have different compositions. The big race is to figure out how to separate these two chemically different compounds.
Once that’s done, would all of the industry’s problems be solved or would it just ease some of the ill effects surrounding the bad production habits in certain parts of the market?
The overall solution is to find a recycling solution. And that is particularly for the people who are fast at consuming and disposing of clothes. But, in essence, there is not just one solution for the whole thing. You also have to look at each market, each demographic, to look at how they could do better. For example, you could look at the woman who is buying luxury fashion. There is no reason why she shouldn’t buy luxury second-hand fashion. Actually, the data suggests that the luxury resell market is likely going to outpace the new market for luxury. That demographic could easily
satisfy their love of fashion by buying second-hand. Recycled fibres, on the other hand, would best deal with the fast fashion industry.
And there is also the designer rental market…
Yes, and they very much serve a purpose. When we look at the whole pie of the consumer market, rentals serve those who want to have new, different clothes without consumption.
Most people I know wear what I call “advanced basics”, not really high fashion items. For them, it would seem meaningful to buy better-quality garments that last longer. But, instead, the industry pretends to be reinventing fashion every three, four, or six months. Should we be re-defining fashion cycles and do away with seasonal fads?
You are talking about a certain circle of people, let’s call them “Steve Jobs” types. They have a basic, comfortable, durable, useable wardrobe. But, that’s just one demographic for whom durability is key. For them, that would be a solution, but it is never going to satisfy an 18-year-old girl who is going to a club every night. Which brings to mind Boohoo, one of these ultra-fast online retailers. Since they went public in 2014, their revenue has grown 680%. Their demographic is the next generation of activists, the kids that are marching for climate, they are following Greta, they are doing all that. That same age group, though, are also driving up the revenue of Boohoo by 680%. The beauty of the world is that we are all different. That’s why we need solutions that appeal to the consumption of diverse groups. There is no onesize-fits-all answer to that. We are a colourful world.
Redress not only engages with the industry through collaborations across the entire fashion supply chain to change practices, but you also do a lot to educate end-consumers to make better choices around buying, wearing, and disposing of clothing through various campaigns. Can you shed some light on how that’s done?
Yes, we do use the word education, but that’s so tedious for consumers. What we do is we try to inspire them about better practices with their clothes and we try to instil the love of fashion and the idea of taking better care and caring for longer. We were commissioned to write a book by the really great British publisher, Thames & Hudson, called, “Dress [with] Sense: The Practical Guide to a Conscious Closet,” which has come out in a number of countries and languages. It gives fashion consumers practical tips on how to buy, wear, care and dispose of their clothes and provides them with the know-how to have a more conscious closet. We also have a TV series called, “Frontline Fashion,” which has now gone on to digital format, so you can watch it on YouTube. The documentary cultivates a lot of excitement for consumers by following talented, emerging fashion
designers – all finalists for the Redress Design Award – determined to redesign the future of fashion. And then, mainly in Hong Kong, we stage a lot of events, hold DIY workshops, give lectures and talks.
You are based in Hong Kong, but the issues you are tackling are global ones. Could you envision expanding your mission to include Europe?
We deal with a number of European companies, not just Asian ones, but most of our on-the-ground work tends to be with brands and businesses in Hong Kong, that is true. At the moment, expanding, solidifying, growing the team, and improving our KPI reporting and our impact assessment are my biggest hopes with Redress. We have had a lot of interest in perhaps having a regional office in other markets outside Asia, but it’s currently not a possibility. It’s a question of prioritisation. We would love to, but it would be fragmenting our capabilities right now.
Despite being an NGO, does your organisation work with governments? After all, on an issue of this scale that is in such dire need of change, wouldn’t it make sense to involve international politics?
To make a level playing field, you need government legislation because some companies have already put a lot of effort and money into the supply chain to make their processes better. In the absence of legislation, competitors could just do whatever they like, and that’s not fair. Ultimately, we need a massive kick up the arse and the only stakeholder that should do it is the government. That being said, Redress does not work at that level. It’s outside of our mission and, quite honestly, our capability to be doing lobbying.
Finally, the best way to learn is through positive example. Based on your experience, are there any changes you see happening, even on a small scale, that might signal things are changing for the better and we are moving in the right direction?
All the things that come to mind have to do with waste reduction, which is obviously our mission. I am excited about the rise of upcycling, and by this, I mean taking waste materials and turning them into clothes, which is definitely becoming more mainstream. Then there is recycling, which is not yet at scale, but it’s happening and that is exciting in terms of unlocking immediate, good benefits. And of course, the rise of the resale, re-commerce, and rental markets. The scope of this is very exciting, not just for me, but for a lot of people.
An almost unsolvable problem. Every year, 92 million tonnes of textile waste end up in our landfills. Often the pieces weren’t even worn for a year. As recycling is still in its infancy, Christina Dean strives to educate consumers. They can continue to have a positive shopping experiences, but should make more conscious decisions.
