On September 16th, 2016, the Business of Fashion asked the question \u201cHow can the fashion industry become more sustainable?\u201d This is not a new question; indeed, it has been a question asked of the industry both externally and internally for a number of years now. It was, however, a convenient coincidence that BoF asked this question on the same day that I began to write this piece and thus, this was the most contemporaneous asking of the question. Arguably, the idea of resource management, which is in essence what we are referring to, has been a common theme of industrialization for centuries, but often with a view to pursuing efficiency gains rather than societal or environmental benefits. It may therefore be worth recognizing that the question itself is not a new one, but rather that the nuances within the question have shifted to a broader sense of responsibility.<\/p>\n
Nor is this a challenge faced solely by the fashion and textiles industry; the dialogue around sustainability is in many respects sector non-specific. It is, in fact, the breadth of the discourse that indicates the import of the issues relating to sustainability, suggesting that solutions are likely to be multi-faceted and multi-contextual through changes in how we, as a society, manage factors such as energy, raw materials, people, the natural and built environment and importantly, stakeholder expectations.<\/p>\n
Future is at the heart of sustainability and one of the great challenges facing us, in the pursuit of sustainability, is our inability to see sufficiently far into the future to anticipate what it is that we are sustaining, what it is that we should be sustaining and for whom. There are, of course, BIG answers to these questions and these generally form the basis of the argument. We need to, for example, protect and sustain the planet, but possibly, more accurately, out place on this planet. Our problem is that, while we may want to sustain the planet, its resources, peoples, cultures, fauna and flora, we also want to optimize our own lives and that involves interventions and resource depletion…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On September 16th, 2016, the Business of Fashion asked the question \u201cHow can the fashion industry become more sustainable?\u201d This is not a new question; indeed, it has been a question asked of the industry both externally and internally for a number of years now. It was, however, a convenient coincidence that BoF asked this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[218],"class_list":{"0":"post-207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-social-responsibility","7":"tag-materials-science-and-textiles","8":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\n