SDES 9352: Imperatives for a Sustainable Future Assessment Task 3: Systemic Design: Between Ecology, Economics and Politics
Qing He Z5123897
Contents
Introduction / 2 The Influence of Fast Fashion to Thrift Stores / 3 Does Clothing Donation System Really Sustainable? / 5 A Tiny Change, A Step to Sustainability / 10 A Sustainable Future Depends on All of Us / 14 Reference List / 15
1
Introduction I remembered I unwittingly purchased my first renewed denim jacket in a clothing store in Leeds four years ago. Because of the disappointment of Zara’s low-quality clothes, the good quality of this denim jacket really surprised me and changed my mind of second-hand clothes. I used to think buy second-hand clothes is weird because they are old and used, and may not cheaper than a new cloth, but from that jacket I realized that they were well taken care of and own a new appearance before showing up in stores. Besides, following the gradually demand of sustainability, I thought secondhand clothes are not only a choice for low-income groups and vintage lovers, but also should be promoted as a sustainable behaviour to more people, and encourage them to know and give a try of these donated clothes instead of blindly consume from fast fashion retailers. Although increasing number of people are consciously join in the pursuing of a sustainable life, most of them just follow the trends of alleged sustainable activities without a basic understanding of sustainability, such as they believed put unwanted and old clothes into donation bin is a sustainable behaviour and so they can continuously consume clothes, but aren’t this is a vicious circle? Does clothing donation system really sustainable?
2
The Influence of Fast Fashion to Thrift stores The first impression thrift stores give to me is the smell and outdated style of secondhand clothes when I past a small thrift store in a shopping mall. At that time, I cannot understand the reason why people buy second-hand clothes, and the understanding of the thrift store is one of the ways to help low-income groups. After getting in touch with sustainable design, I realized thrift stores are not only for those people who need help but also as a tool to help clothing donation system develop a sustainable environment for people and society. However, a negative influence has existed in thrift stores because of the development of fast fashion, an article written by Mary Hanbury (2018), a retail reporter in Business Insider, noticed that because of people’s wasteful shopping habit caused by fast fashion, thrift stores like Goodwill are filling up with cheap pieces that no one wants, and, some retailers directly donate unwanted stock to thrift stores. (figure 1)
Figure 1. Some retailers donate unwanted stocks directly to thrift stores (Hanbury 2018)
As sustainability becomes to a trend in current society, most people include me might treat ‘donation’ as a kind of sustainable behaviour without the consideration of the process after donation bins because we think ‘donation’ is the end of the life cycle of a 3
cloth. So, in my previous experience, I do not care about how many holes or broken parts my donated clothes have, I only thought the donation bin is better than garbage bin. But, does clothing donation really a sustainable behaviour after our selection of unsustainable consumption at the beginning?
4
Does Clothing Donation System Really Sustainable? Due to the limitation of income and the pursuing of fashion, the consumption of clothes from fast-fashion retailers is gradually rise. It is because fast fashion retailers aim to provide clothing collections which based on the most recent fashion trends to people with cheap price but in poor quality. These disposable clothes developed an unsustainable fashion habit to people, that they can easily throw away these clothes with less consideration and then buy more and more new clothes, and this behaviour causes a huge amount of fashion waste to landfill yearly. (Press 2017)
Figure 2. Fashion waste (wornthrough.com n.d.)
I used to like to shop clothes with these fast fashion retailers because of their various classifications of clothing, fast updated speed and lower prices than other branded clothes. And, indeed, I was easily throw them away while they were broken without consideration because I cost less on them. But after throwing away those clothes in several times because of the poor quality and the uncomfortable feeling caused by polyester fibre, I limited my buying behaviour from fast fashion retailers and started to seek the material and quality of clothes. According to the increasing disposability of clothes and the response of sustainability, fast fashion retailers such as Zara developed clothing donation program to collect 5
people’s unwanted clothes and promise to give a new life for these clothes. (figure 3) Excepting those programs within fast fashion clothing stores, people also can donate these unwanted clothes to thrift stores through donation bins (figure 4) or donate directly to stores.
Figure 3. You can recycle your unwanted clothes at @ZARA collection bins. The clothes will be donated to our charity shops! (British Red Cross 2017)
Figure 4. Donation bin (Donner, K 2018) 6
However, as Sara Tatyana Bernstein (2016), the founding editor of Dismantle Magazine, mentioned in her article, another purpose of the clothing donation program that fast fashion retailers like Zara promote is to solve the overproduce problem themselves created, so that people will keep consuming. So, these kinds of donation programs not give a solution for people’s unsustainable consumption but encourage them to buy more clothes from fast fashion retailers because people believed ‘donation’ will compensate their unsustainability. Then, does clothing donation system really sustainable? To help to better understand the question, a diagram of clothing donation system is created and shown below (diagram 1).
Diagram 1. Clothing Donation System
7
Through the diagram, those organizations within the system tried to maximum the reusability and minimum the discard of donated clothes to try to create a sustainable cycle. But, due to people’s unsustainable consumption caused by uncontrollable fashion habit and the shallow understanding of donation system, raising amount of unwanted clothes has brought unsustainable phenomenon to the system, such as those cheap pieces accumulated in Goodwill, one of the biggest U.S. landing points for donated clothes. (Strutner 2017) According to the diagram shown below (diagram 2), Goodwill developed a system to try to better dispose these donated clothes and decrease the waste, as Danielle Cronin (2015), community relations manager for Goodwill Industries’ Hampton Roads and Central Virginia operations, noticed, “does everything we can to keep the items out of landfills”.
Diagram 2. Goodwill system
Within the system, the first step Goodwill take is sell donated clothes which were selected and determined by stuffs to people in Goodwill retail stores; secondly, the clothes were sent to Goodwill outlet stores if they were not sold in 4 weeks, lower 8
prices were provided in outlet stores to encourage consumption; then, Goodwill auctions aimed to sold those unwanted clothes from outlet stores by bins to consumers without tell them what is inside; next, for those clothes which cannot be sold in the first three stages, Goodwill sent them to textile recyclers, who can decide whether the donated pieces were resold in U.S. or were sent to oversea market; clothes which were moldy, wet or contaminated were sent to landfills by textile recyclers and then end their journey of donation. (Strutner 2016) Although Goodwill limited the discarded clothes in only 5 percent, it “contributes to the 12 million tons of U.S. textile waste that end up in landfills annually�. (Krehbiel 2017) As textile waste is worldwide, it takes decades to decompose and releases methane, (Marshall 2017) which influenced the climate and made bad environmental impacts to the planet. Besides, the action that sent donated clothes to oversea second-hand markets was broke down local economies, in Africa, for example, local people would like to buy second-hand clothes in low price because of the population of American clothes and the low income they earn, instead of intently develop their own textile industry, so, according to Bama Athreya (2006), deputy director of the International Labor Rights Fund in Washington D.C., said, the well-developed textile markets in Africa were virtually disappear over the last decade or two. As things are all double-edged, we cannot say Goodwill is totally a sustainable business, it does try to decline the unsustainable phenomenon through reuse donated clothes within its system, but other unsustainable phenomenon is appeared. Thus, how to increase the sustainability for the development of the system and decrease bad environmental impacts for the planet?
9
A Tiny Change, A Step to Sustainability By reviewing diagram 2, consumer is an important role within the clothing donation system, because firstly their unsustainable consumption causes amount of unwanted clothes which will go to thrift stores through donation; secondly, those donated clothes demand them to consume; and thirdly, their discarded clothes purchased from thrift stores and second-hand markets to donation bins again help to create the cycle within the donation system. Hence, the idea of the improvement of the system focuses through the declining of unsustainable buying behaviour to decrease unsustainable practices. As Kate Power and Oksana Mont (2010) mentioned in the article ‘Dispelling the myths about consumption behaviour’ that except individuals, “businesses, civil society and policy makers all have extremely important roles to play in promoting more sustainable consumption patterns and levels”, the consideration of the easier way to decrease unsustainable buying behaviour might be promoting the thrift store to attract consumers from fast fashion retail stores through offer vouchers and discounted activities. Following the information of the donation steps on Goodwill’s website (capture 1) it can be seen that there has no promotion of encourage consumption of donated clothes because Goodwill aims to notice people the importance of helping others.
10
Capture 1. Donation steps at Goodwill
But, according to previous content, because the root of unsustainable phenomenon in clothing donation system is from people’s unsustainable consumption with fast fashion retailers, encouraging people to try and consume clothes in thrift stores would distract their attention from fast fashion retailers, hence, I added an reward system into the donation steps (diagram 3) to not only attract people to give a try to thrift stores but also encourage people to donate unwanted clothes rather than directly throw them away to landfills.
Diagram 3. Redesigned donation steps
11
The reward system within Goodwill donation steps allows people to get a 10$ voucher when they donate clothes directly to store; other rewards such as a 10$ off in first purchase and buy one get one half price are provided to all consumers and those people who donate clothes through donation bins. To compare the difference between original system and redesigned system, diagram 4 is made. In the diagram, people’s consumption to fast fashion retail stores could be decreased, and the consumption to thrift store could be increased because of the reward system.
Diagram 4. Redesigned Goodwill system
Besides, based on Hambury’s article that currently young people not only donating to thrift stores but also shopping in them because these stores have collections of specific things and offer lower prices which suit young people’s financial status, another reason why the reward system is added to thrift store is it might attract more young people to consume in thrift store instead of going to Zara first. And, like Carmeron Tonkinwise (2007, p.10) said, design is “precisely about intervening in artefact-enabled practices”, 12
thrift store’s reward system is like a tool to help to gradually decline people’s unsustainable consumption to close to the sustainable loop. Furthermore, following the clothing donation system, the improvement is limited on the part of the economic system of oversea market, because the improvement of local economies needs the understanding and positive thoughts for the problem of development from local people and local industry. So, the idea of redesign might bring the influence on local second-hand market and then might affect the development of the industry and the improvement of economic system, but it can not say that the redesigned system is directly affect local economies.
13
A Sustainable Future Depends on All of Us Different from before, I gradually interested in vintage things. I remembered I bought my first second-hand shirt in a small vintage shop, the old-fashioned Tory Burch sunglasses case purchased in another vintage shop, and the old ring I got in a secondhand market named Lost and Found. In fact, there have many good things discarded in thrift stores and vintage shops and waiting for people to discover instead of only go to fast fashion retail stores because of their low prices and fashionable trends. But, as these thrift stores mostly pay attention on the promotion of helping people rather than the promotion of encouraging consumption, the accumulation cheap pieces have already given a big pressure to them. So, to increase people’s consumption in thrift stores and decrease people’s bad fashion habit, the reward system is designed and added, which could be used as a tool to gradually decline the unsustainable phenomenon within clothing donation system to get closer to sustainable loop. A sustainable future not only depends on individuals but also businesses, society and policy makers, so, what will fast fashion industry do in the next step? To sustainably survive or to unsustainably die?
14
Reference List 1. Hanbury, M 2018, ‘Goodwill stores are filling up with cheap pieces no one wants - and it reveals a huge problem with the way people shop for clothes’, Business Insider, 24 February, accessed 5 June 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com.au/goodwill-overrun-with-fast-fashiondonations-2018-2?r=US&IR=T 2. Press, C 2017, ‘Sustainable Style: What happens to the clothes you donate to op shops?’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 March, accessed 5 June 2018, https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/sustainable-style-what-happens-to-theclothes-you-donate-to-opshops-20170328-gv8hgl.html 3. Bernstein, S.T 2016, ‘Do Fast Fashion Retailers “Promote Sustainability” Through Clothing Donation Programs?’, Dismantle, 3 January, accessed 5 June 2018, http://www.dismantlemag.com/2016/01/03/hello-world/ 4. Strutner, S 2016, ‘Here’s What Goodwill Actually Does With Your Donated Clothes’, HuffPost, 24 October, accessed 5 June 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/what-does-goodwill-do-with-yourclothes_us_57e06b96e4b0071a6e092352 5. Morman, E 2015, ‘What happens to thrift-store donations? A behind-the-scenes look’, The Virginian-Pilot, 12 July, accessed 5 June 2018, https://pilotonline.com/business/consumer/article_624b929c-dd99-54a3-9698155fb84eef4d.html 6. Krehbiel, A 2017, ‘Here’s What Happens To Your Goodwill Donations’, Simplemost, accessed 5 June 2018, https://www.simplemost.com/what-reallyhappens-to-goodwill-donations/ 7. Marshall, D 2017, Fashion and climate change – what role does the industry play? Image Label Systems, accessed 5 June 2018, http://www.image-labelsystems.com/blog/posts/2017/fashion-industry-climate-change.aspx 8. Lee, M 2006, ‘The Truth About Where Your Donated Clothes End Up’, ABC News, 21 December, accessed 5 June 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/WN/truthdonated-clothes-end/story?id=2743456 9. Power, K & Mont, O 2010, ‘Dispelling the myths about consumption behaviour’, Knowledge Collaboration & Learning for Sustainable Innovation: 14th European Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP) conference and the 6th Environmental Management for Sustainable Universities (EMSU) conference, conference paper, accessed 5 June 2018, <uuid:b251462a-25bb-45c0-bd0a-b0adca58fa04> 10. Tonkinwise, C 2007, ‘Practicing sustainability by design: global warming politics in a post-awareness world’, Scapes, 2007, p.8-10 15
Figures 1. Figure 1: Hanbury, M 2018, Some retailers donate unwanted stocks directly to thrift stores, digital image, Business Insider, accessed 5 June 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com.au/goodwill-overrun-with-fast-fashion-donations2018-2?r=US&IR=T 2. Figure 2: wornthough.com n.d., Fashion waste, digital image, Carmon Busquets, accessed 5 June 2018, https://www.carmenbusquets.com/journal/post/sustainable-fashion 3. Figure 3: British Red Cross 2017, You can recycle your unwanted clothes at @ZARA collection bins. The clothes will be donated to our charity shops! digital image, Twitter, accessed 5 June 2018, https://twitter.com/britishredcross/status/824980475974471680 4. Donner, K 2018, Donation bin, digital image, Hill Rag, accessed 5 June 2018, http://hillrag.com/2018/01/11/goodwill-seeks-donation-bin-locations/
16