You wear a story.

Every article of clothing you wear has a history - it tells a story. Each piece is a combination of many resources and many hands from across the globe. We represent those people and that story when we purchase and wear garments. By purchasing clothing, a vote is cast in support of the ways it was produced.

The consumer is indeed responsible to support sustainable practices through purchases; however, the most power lies on the designers clothing industry. Garments have an energy and resource intensive production, distribution, and use cycle. Because retailers and brands are at the top of the supply chain, they are the ones propelling the production cycle, which boils down to the destruction of ecosystems and people around the globe. The Ecosystem Millennium Assessment reports that humans have changed ecosystems “more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history.” The clothing industry is a direct contributor to this manifestation of mass irresponsibility.

The clothing industry is worth $1 trillion worldwide and employs 26 million people, according to the 2007 Fashioning Sustainability report, and proves unsustainable in its practices. Fierce competition and massive global supply chains are the primary factors inhibiting the industry from sustainable practices.  Examples of the effects of the industry include fiber production, distribution, and disposal. Cotton production is the largest produced fiber in the world according to the report. And requires mass amounts of water for irrigation and highly chemical pesticides which seep into the ground and run into the oceans, killing sea life. According to the EMSA, approximately 20% of the worlds coral reefs were lost and 20% degraded in recent years. Distribution of clothing reaps major CO2 emission consequences, which as the EMSA tells, has dire effects on the Earth’s natural cycle and ecosystems around the world.

These external outputs of production are termed “externalities,” according to Walsh and Brown in their Pricing Strategy report. Currently, in general, these costs are not incorporated into the price of clothing. Walsh and Brown created a system that set a monetary number associated with environmental costs incurred of a traditionally grown cotton shirt and an organic cotton shirt. The system relies heavily on assumptions, but would be useful as a costing technique for assigning priorities to an environmental performance project, according to Walsh and Brown. Externality accounting methods are young, but are progressing. Developing useful externality accounting methods will increase industry transparency and allow customers to cast a more educated vote for the story they wish to represent.

Take your vitamins.

It is much easier to convince a person to take a pain pill than it is to convince him to take a daily vitamin. In the current state of the global environment, the world seemingly cannot be convinced to take a proactive approach; they instead seem to be waiting until the pain becomes so unbearable that they resort to the pain pill. What they do not understand is this way out will certainly not be comfortable, if possible. As Ecosystems and Well-Being, a report of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, states changes in ecosystems generally take place gradually. The report claims some changes are nonlinear, however “ once a threshold is crossed, the system changes to a very different state” which can be abrupt, high magnitude, and costly or impossible to reverse.

As evidenced in the case of Easter Island in A New Green History of the World, the poor resource monitoring habits of modern societies are not new. However, the current global situation we face is of a new scale. Easter Island is a prime example of how finite resources inhibit flippant civilization; as it is an island, so too is the Earth. The Earth, until recently generally acknowledged, has a finite resource base that humans depend upon for survival. Humans and their environment have been inexplicably intertwined since the beginning of human life. Yet, human life has never before reached this state of industrialism, nor the current population level.  Both of which are direct contributors to global warming and climate change, according to the Ecosystems and Well-Being report.

Societies around the world have expanded consumption with little regard to resources largely due to poor education over the centuries, but this is quickly changing to irresponsibility. Ecosystems are being affected before our eyes at a high rate, and now humans are starting to feel the consequences. According to the Ecosystems and Well-Being report, in the past fifty years “humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet demands.” Consequently in the next fifty years, food from crops is projected to grow by 70-85% and demand for water by 30%-85% to meet current and projected population growth. This demand creates a separate set of degradation – agriculture.  A further 10%-20% of forestland is to be converted to crop bearing land before 2050. Agriculture produces nitrogen and phosphorous run-off which in turn creates dead zones in coastal areas killing all sea life, affecting the dependent economies of fisheries and tourism.

The largest attested environmental issue facing the globe today is undoubtedly global warming and climate change. The current means of production and industry is primarily dependent on the burning of fossil fuels which release CO2 or its equivalents which become trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere and have caused the globe to warm at an alarming rate, in affect large shifts in the climate are changing. When climate changes, ecosystems alter and humans depend on these ecosystems. Some believe it to be a hoax. Rick Perry was recently quoted claiming he believes " there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have follars rolling into their projects" (texscience.org.) However the evidence is clear - 97% of climate scientists believe climate change is anthropogenic (human caused.)

The report concludes that significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices can help to reverse the degradation of ecosystems to support humankind. As the Ecosystems and Well-Being report urges, I encourage you to educate yourself on remaining sustainability issues and be an agent of change.