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Will Clothing Be Sustainable? Clarifying Sustainable Fashion

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Textiles and Clothing Sustainability

Part of the book series: Textile Science and Clothing Technology ((TSCT))

Abstract

The Mistra Future Fashion research programme (2011–2019) is a large Swedish investment aimed at reducing the environmental impact of clothing consumption. Midway into the programme, research results and insights were reviewed with the intent to see what picture appears from this interdisciplinary consortium, developed to address the multiple sustainability challenges in clothing consumption and the tools for intervention. Such tools comprise product design, consumer behaviour changes, policy development, business models, technical development, recycling, life cycle assessment (LCA) and social life cycle assessment (SLCA). This chapter quantifies the extent of the sustainability challenge for the apparel sector, via an analysis of five garment archetypes. It also considers to what extent different interventions for impact reduction can contribute in society’s endeavour towards sustainability, in terms of staying within an “environmentally safe and socially just operating space”, inspired by the planetary boundaries approach. In particular, the results show whether commonly proposed interventions are sufficient or not in relation to the impact reduction necessary according to the planetary boundaries. Also, the results clarify which sustainability aspects that the clothing industry are likely to manage sufficiently if the proposed interventions are realised and which sustainability aspects that will require more radical interventions in order to reach the targets.

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Appendix

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chalmers University of Technology, 41296, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Sandra Roos, Bahareh Zamani, Greg Peters & Magdalena Svanström

  2. Swerea IVF, Box 104, 431 22, Mölndal, Sweden

    Sandra Roos

  3. SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, Eklandagatan 86, 412 61, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Gustav Sandin

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  1. Sandra Roos
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  2. Gustav Sandin
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  3. Bahareh Zamani
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  4. Greg Peters
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  5. Magdalena Svanström
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Correspondence to Sandra Roos .

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  1. Environmental Services Manager- Asia, SGS Hong Kong Limited Environmental Services Manager- Asia, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu

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Roos, S., Sandin, G., Zamani, B., Peters, G., Svanström, M. (2017). Will Clothing Be Sustainable? Clarifying Sustainable Fashion. In: Muthu, S. (eds) Textiles and Clothing Sustainability. Textile Science and Clothing Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2182-4_1

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