'Rise and Resist' - considering high fashion and global carbon emissions

The face of pollution is not limited to dirty fossil fuels or raw sewage in our waterways. 

University of Melbourne’s Sustainable Society Institute,
 deputy director, Dr Sangetha Chandrashekeran (right)
 talks with author and sustainability editor at large for Vogue
 magazine, Clare Press.

The fast fashion we buy each season is creating a negative impact on our planet– The clothing production and selling process is often convoluted; the process entails textile manufactures, various suppliers, raw materials, quality checks, global and domestic shipping, retail, and the inevitable discarding of the item. 

Calculating the overall footprint of this industry is a feat of its own; a comprehensive analysis would take into account not only the clothing production process, but also the farming, harvesting, extraction, and manufacturing needed to create the materials.When examining the lifecycle of clothing there is a shocking amount of emissions and waste from both the production and disposal stage. 

It would be a monumental task to calculate the overall emissions of any single product. However, there are clear steps that industry players can make to reduce this footprint. Items that are made from reused or recyclable material all make a difference in creating a circular economy.

One who has thought a lot about fashion and its contribution to the world’s carbon dioxide problem is the sustainability Editor-at-large for Vogue magazine, Clare Press, who has written about that in her heart book, “Rise and Resist: How to change the world”.

Clare talked with the deputy director of the University of Melbourne’s Sustainable Society Institute, deputy director, Dr Sangetha Chandrashekeran, about her book and then answered questions from the more than 100 people in the audience at the university’s School of Design.