The Consumption Demand Of Sustainable Fashion Has Been Awakened. How Does The "Green Trend" Promote The Industry?

The coming of sustainable consumption needs aggregation.

Roland Bart, a French thinker, said: "every new fashion is a rejection of inheritance."

While creating great value, the development of the fashion industry has also brought serious environmental pollution and social problems.

Data from the United Nations High level political forum for sustainable development in 2018 show that the fashion industry produces 20% of the world's total wastewater annually and releases 10% of the total carbon dioxide, which exceeds the sum of all international flights and ocean shipping emissions. Moreover, in the process of washing synthetic materials such as polyester, nylon and acrylic fabrics every year, a total of 500 thousand tons of fine plastic fibers are discharged into rivers and oceans. Cotton, which is one of the main raw materials for clothing production, consumes 24% of the world's pesticide and 11% of its pesticides. The most serious thing is that a large proportion of the 80 billion garments sold annually in the world are eventually buried in garbage dumps.

Smart brands no longer Shun this fact and start to make a thorough adjustment of the supply side. As far as the consumer side is concerned, consumers are beginning to understand the impact of fashion consumption, and the environmentally conscious movement in fashion is becoming more and more accepted by people.

Sustainable consumption continues to develop

What is sustainable consumption? Its earliest definition appeared in 1994. In the "sustainable consumption policy factor", the United Nations Environment Programme described the concept as "providing services and related products to meet basic human needs, improving the quality of life, and at the same time making the use of natural resources and toxic materials the least, resulting in the least waste and pollution generated in the life cycle of services or products, so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations."

As of December 2018, the United Nations has issued nearly 20 sustainable development goals. Of the twelfth goals, "ensuring sustainable consumption and production mode", it clearly defined: "while improving the quality of life, we can increase net welfare benefits of economic activities by reducing resource consumption, environmental degradation and pollution in the whole life cycle of products and services." It can be seen that sustainable consumption can not be unilaterally understood as saving resources, protecting the environment and eliminating pollution in the final consumption link of products (including services), but at the same time considering all stages, including raw material procurement, production and processing, spanportation and storage.

That is to say, promoting sustainable consumption requires the cooperation of all parties concerned. In addition to the enterprise itself, the state related infrastructure system and the implementation of national policies, consumers' willingness and participation also affect the sustainable results, and even play an immeasurable role in sustainable consumption.

Practicing the concept of sustainable consumption has become a global consensus. Especially in Europe, sustainable fashion consumption is almost universal. In everyone's mind, including children, it has become a universal concept and even a part of life style. Designers are also promoting this concept, not only in the fashion industry, but also in all walks of life.

It is worth mentioning that in recent years, with the publication of the "outline for building a textile power" (2011 - 2020), the China Textile Industry Federation launched the "China Textile ecological civilization ten thousand miles" publicity campaign, "China Textile ecological civilization evaluation system", "green fiber" certification, "textile supply chain chemicals management innovation 2020 actions", 2018 China Textile and garment industry social responsibility annual meeting and some textile and garment enterprises' efforts in sustainable products, etc., all strongly publicizing and promoting sustainable consumption.

Green prosperity is a long way to go

As China will become the world's largest fashion market in 2019, environmental protection, green and sustainable development are crucial and will have an impact in Asia and beyond. What is China's sustainable consumption situation?

According to the report issued by the China Chain Store Association (CCFA) in August 2018, a questionnaire survey of 10 cities and nearly 100 thousand consumers in China revealed that more than 70% of respondents believed that "personal consumption will have a direct impact on the environment". In the survey, "safety and health" is the primary consideration for consumers to choose sustainable products and services. The two major factors of "environmental protection" and "quality" are closely followed.

According to Christina Dean, Redress founder of Hongkong environmental non-profit organization, which is committed to reducing the waste of fashion industry, "for the whole world, the great power of China's middle class is undoubtedly promoting the progress of Chinese market by promoting moral fashion."

She said: "in just ten years, great changes have taken place in China. Ten years ago, sustainable fashion was still a "green trend" and has now become the force of the whole industry.

In January 7th, the newly released "2018 Yili China sustainable consumption report" shows that more than 90% Chinese consumers have a certain sense of sustainable consumption, 70% of consumers are more concerned about sustainable consumption, and sustainable life is being pursued by more and more consumers.

And there are seven bright spots.

First, there is a difference between consumers' concern about sustainable consumption and their perceptions.

Women have higher awareness of sustainable consumption than men. 91.1% of female consumers believe that their consumption behavior will help environmental improvement, and male consumers account for 89.5%. Young group's concern for sustainable consumption is higher than that of older consumers. Consumers aged 20 and below have the highest degree of concern about sustainable consumption, accounting for 81.8%. The survey also found that 76.5% of the group over 60 had a higher degree of concern for sustainable consumption.

Two, consumer concerns about the sustainability of different product categories.

More than 90% of consumers have voluntarily bought sustainable products. Consumers believe that home building materials and decorative products are the most relevant to sustainable consumption, accounting for 81.5%, followed by food, automobile and accessories, clothing and apparel, household goods and electronic appliances.

Three, consumers have a premium on the sustainable development of different categories of products.

For apparel, electronics, home building materials and decoration products, consumers are more likely to accept a lower premium.

Four, consumers are less aware of sustainable product identities.

Consumers generally have a low level of cognition on the identification of sustainable product certification. Consumers know better about domestic certification marks than international ones.

Five, consumers' attention to corporate social responsibility issues is on the rise.

The report compares the survey results in 2017, and found that consumers account for only 27.53% of their products in terms of "CSR" (corporate social responsibility) commitment to manufacturers, while the survey data in 2018 reached 43.2%.

Six, consumers' habits of sustainable living are gradually forming.

The report also shows that when choosing clothes and clothing, consumers have begun to consider the choice of fabrics for environmental protection fabrics, and turn them into use or spanfer friends after they reach their useful life. 70% of consumers have already been able to buy clothes on secondhand and rental platforms.

Seven, consumers still face certain difficulties in choosing sustainable products.

The report also points out that consumers still face varying degrees of impediment in the selection of sustainable products. Sustainable products can not be effectively identified (81.4%), prices are too high (77%), they do not know where to buy (76.9%), and sustainable product choices are limited (71.8%).

As can be seen from above, there are still many blanks in sustainable consumption education, and all relevant regulations and policies need to be perfected. Market demand is far from satisfying. Even domestic sustainable fashion is still small. "When the purchasing power of the market is relatively strong, the consumer groups also value the stars with the same goods." Zhang Na, the founder of fashion recycling bank and a designer who insists on sustainable fashion, thinks that even the topic of fashion sustainable development is still a slogan of public interest for many fashion industry professionals. It is believed that sustainable fashion should be what the government does.

Therefore, there is still a long way to go for the prosperity of sustainable consumption. To form such a consumer market, we need to strengthen the full recognition of the sustainable consumption of the masses. We need to think about how to promote sustainable consumption from the perspective of the whole industry chain.