When nosotros recall of the world'southward almost polluting industries, we tend to focus on obvious culprits like oil and gas. Later all, here in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency takes an active role in regulating industries that the government deems dangerous to the environment, including agriculture, oil and gas, transportation, electrical utilities, and construction. But why not the $1.4 trillion global fashion sector, which is responsible for an estimated viii% of global greenhouse gas emissions?

In France, fashion is getting the scrutiny it deserves, thanks to Brune Poirson, i of three secretaries of state within the ministry building of "ecological and inclusive transition." Poirson has been systematically addressing various forms of pollution generated by her country'south fashion sector. The New York Times recently declared her France's "unofficial minister of fashion."

Brune Poirson [Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images]

Her role is not explicitly focused on waste generated by wearing apparel and footwear, but in her three years on the job, she has worked to prevent fashion labels from destroying unsold merchandise and drafted a zero-waste law that, in part, makes washing machine filters mandatory to stop microplastics from leaching out of clothes and into the h2o stream.

Her role prompts the question: Why don't more than governments accept a minister of way, official or otherwise?

No uncertainty, part of the reason is that the scale of the industry's environmental footprint is a relatively new problem. When the EPA was established in 1970, the global fashion industry was far smaller than information technology is today; fast fashion didn't nonetheless exist. But as brands focused on making wearable equally inexpensively as possible—effectively transforming clothes into disposable objects—the sector ballooned.

Today, manner is a global industry, with a circuitous supply bondage whose tentacles extend around the world, every bit companies seek out the cheapest possible place to buy raw materials and brand apparel using low-toll labor. Resources like cotton and wool are typically produced in ane country, then shipped to another to be turned into fabrics, and so shipped to nevertheless another to be cut and sewn into clothes. The finished garments are distributed to markets around the world. In 2000, Euromonitor estimated that 50 billion units of apparel were manufactured worldwide; by 2015, that had doubled to 100 billion. There are new business organization models, like clothing rentals and online secondhand markets, that aim to cut down on the total number of clothes manufactured every yr. There are brands that have been producing environmentally conscious goods for years, similar Eileen Fisher and Patagonia, and some startups take attempted to regulate themselves, like Everlane'south decision to replace all new plastic in its supply chain with recycled plastic, and Allbirds's decision to impose a carbon revenue enhancement on itself. Simply ultimately, consumers and brands can only do and then much to impact such a vast, global industry. A more impactful fashion to create change would be for governments effectually the world to brainstorm regulating the fashion sector, much like they regulate oil or agronomics.

What might that look like? Mayhap it would be a matter of following the French example by devoting a minister to a special department within the state and federal government, or alternatively inside a branch of the EPA, to tackling fashion pollution. This person would be focused on agreement the environmental harm acquired past the fashion sector, regulating companies, and punishing those that don't comply. Might we advise this office beofficially chosen the Minister of Way. Here'due south how the government could dramatically alter the confront of the industry.

Gathering data

For decades, the fashion industry's bear on on the environment wasn't well understood, partly because governments weren't funding research. Some experts estimated that the fashion industry was the second biggest polluter on the planet, after the oil industry, simply it was hard to basis this effigy in data. Environmental nonprofits and other organizations are now beginning to written report the problem, and the data they've uncovered is staggering. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that textile manufacturing consumes 98 million tons of nonrenewable resource—from oil that goes into synthetics fibers to fertilizers to grow cotton, and 93 billion cubic meters of h2o annually. And the International Free energy Bureau estimates that the textile industry also generated 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, which is more than all international flights and maritime shipping trips combined. This is just scratching the surface of the trouble. Government agencies could get a long way toward quantifying this impact on the planet. In the end, governments have the incentive to do this because it will fall on nations to clean up the mess that companies create, from paying for recovering efforts from natural disasters caused past climate alter to cleaning up toxic chemicals in waterways from toxic textile dyes.

Writing legislation

All of this research could aid governments write laws about how manner companies should comport business. In the case of France, for instance, Poirson spearheaded legislation to prevent companies from called-for goods. Only there are plenty of other policies that they could put in place. Way brands are notorious for wrapping their products in single-use clear plastic as they work their fashion through the supply chain: The authorities could force brands to use recycled plastic for this packaging, or find a way to use reusable bags. Some other policy could exist to foreclose brands from using virgin plastic, now that high-quality recycled polyester is available. This would increment the price of recycled plastic, which would compel plastic recyclers to get their hands on as many discarded plastic bottles every bit possible.

Creating consequences

It's going to take a lot of money to build infrastructure to deal with manner's waste. For instance, the technology for recycling fabrics into new fabrics is inside our accomplish, but governments still oasis't developed systems on par with say, aluminum recycling or plastic recycling. (Though our plastic recycling infrastructure isn't great, either.) The government could taxation companies that don't comply with regulations, then use these taxes to fund the cosmos of apparel and footwear recycling. And with these systems in place, governments could force companies to create products that are recyclable.

Brands like Levi'due south are already beginning to remember about how to create recyclable clothes, like creating fleece trucker jackets where the synthetic fleece is recycled in one system and the denim can be separated to be recycled in another. This would usher in a new era of circularity in fashion, where nosotros wouldn't need to produce new cotton, wool, synthetic fibers, and other raw materials, but use materials that already exist. This would dramatically reduce carbon emissions since the majority of emissions are generated early in the supply concatenation, from the sourcing of raw materials.

France is a well-known manner capital letter, and the fashion sector is the second most profitable sector in the nation after aeronautics. And its initial efforts to address way's pollution problem within the authorities are laudable. Merely given the international calibration of the problem, governments effectually the world need to get on board, too. Concerned citizens should vestibule leaders to devote more resources to the problem.

Here in the United States, this may seem like an uphill battle, since the electric current presidential administration has focused on reversing ecology protections, and has already rolled back nearly 100 laws. Simply in the midst of all of this, states accept been stepping upwardly to protect the planet. California, for instance, is actively working to increase fuel emissions standards so they are higher than the federal government's. Hawaii and New York are amid us that are phasing out unmarried-utilize plastics. State and local governments could play a role in establishing clothing recycling facilities or compelling washing machine companies to include microplastic filters or punishing companies that burn backlog inventory.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel to recall of way as frivolous. But the truth is, it's an manufacture that is actively destroying the Globe. If we are going to have a livable planet to pass on to our children, we need to overhaul the manufacture. Authorities regulations are a crucial part of that effort.