Can marketing ever hope to help fashions sustainability problem? [Video]

Fashion is an industry all about driving consumption: selling clothes by making them popular. Marketing is also about driving consumption, of course, so on the face of it asking whether marketing can solve fashion’s sustainability problem might seem a bit like asking whether McDonald’s can solve the burger crisis.

Still, there’s a problem there that does need solving, and it’s big. In a much-cited 2018 report, the UN quoted estimates that the fashion industry contributes between 2 and 8% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. A 2020 McKinsey report put the number at 2.1 billion tonnes of emissions every year – roughly equivalent to the emissions of France, Germany and the UK combined. Those numbers sound incredible until you hear that we produce around 100bn garments every year.

(And contribution to the climate crisis isn’t the only way in which the fashion biz’s unsustainability rears its head, with rife and well-documented unethical labor practices from modern slavery to sweatshops.)

There are glimmers of hope: a …

Tags Social Impact, Social Responsibility, Sustainability