Can Consumer Education Fix Fashion Overconsumption?
We’ve all had that feeling of buying something and then getting to the next day and to start pondering why we purchased it, and then the real struggles comes with trying to find space in our wardrobe for it. You’re probably thinking the easy solution is to just buy a bigger wardrobe but there is an underlying issue here impacting our environment. This issue is called overconsumption and according to oxford dictionary, the definition states that “Overconsumption is a situation where the resource use has outpaced the sustainable capacity of the ecosystem. This definition tents to look at overconsumption as an environmental impact, Although overconsumption does cause an environmental impact, what is overconsumption in a fashion context?
At centre of human existence are emotions, and overconsumption could be seen as the consumption of hendonic goods (Niinimaki, 2015). Therefore overconsumption is really just our constant need of shopping endorphins, which could almost be seen as a addiction. Consumer overconsumption is a problem that we face in the fast fashion industry due to the low offshore garment costs and sped up fashion cycles (Niinimaki, 2015). Once upon a time companies would spend 6 months on a collection compared to today where places like zarah can produce from sketch to store floors in just under 12 days (ABC, 2017). One of the main consumer contributors to the overconsumption of fast fashion clothing according to the ibis world clothing and retail report in Australia is the shopping patterns and behaviours of millennials.
Australian millennials have been raised in a glamorous world of advertising, materialistic culture and a throwaway society with little to no education that promotes the reflection of consumerism or sustainable practices (Fien & Skoien, 2000) While many young Australians identify as being conscious for the environment, little know how their consumption impacts the environment. According to the united nations report in 1996 Australia’s consumption levels were among some of the highest in the world, although these statistics are outdated and the levels vary year to year you can still speculate that Australians still live a comfortable life, living beyond ones needs. In a study by YouGov in 2017 it was found that Australian millennials had the highest proportion of new clothing, they said “38% of millennials say they have purchased at least half of the clothes that they own in the past year alone”. They also go on to say that millennials were more quickly to dispose of their clothes and were more likely to get rid of them through unsustainable methods, with 41% of millennials saying that they throw unwanted clothes in the bin.
Millennials are also more likely to throw away their clothes for being unfashionable or they are bored of wearing them compared to baby boomers who are more likely to take their clothes to charity due to it no longer fitting or having damaged parts due to the longevity of having the item (YouGov, 2017). This is just another example of how millennials growing up in a materialistic world and the world of social media has shaped their shopping behaviours. Once upon a time you could wear the same dress to multiple events and nobody would know but now we have the constant pressure of having to look different and this needs to change. This problem needs addressing now not only due to the profound amounts of clothing that is being sent to landfill and the countless amounts of resources being wasted, but because no matter how many sustainable innovations or changes we make in the fashion industry and its production line, unless we change the consumer behaviours and shopping patterns the problems we face with environmental sustainability will continue (Fletcher & Grose, 2012).
According to the ABC program the war on waste (2017) Australians throw 36 tons of clothes to landfill every hour and millennials are a huge contributing factor to that however there are brands, designers and organisations who are trying to change this. Fashion revolution is an organisation who educate consumers to think about all the important questions such as where your clothes are made and who made them (Fashion Revolution, n.d). Designers such as Vivienne Westwood who is famously known for her ambiguous methods and fashion protests. She has a strong ecological belief in the need to buy less and choose well (Adam & Karaminas, 2018). Patagonia are also another interesting example of the anti-consumer movement with their “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign which featured on the front of the New York times. The campaign was supposed to make consumers buy less on black Friday sales but instead prompted the opposite effect. Although the campaign might have gone the wrong way Patagonia stores and systems still promote the need to shop less, with their repair stations and marketing. When you buy a Patagonia jacket you know it will last and be passed on (Chanmi & Lee, 2016). So where does this leave us? Did you ever get taught to reflect on the impacts your purchases would make to the world because you should have!
Reference List:
Adam,G & Karaminas, V 2018, Vivienne Westwood’s Unruly Resistance, Bloomsbury Academic, Viewed 27 March 2020, .
Chanmi, H & Lee, Y 2016, Don’t Buy This Jacket, Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management.
Fast fashion: Three in ten Aussies have thrown away clothing after wearing it just once, YouGov 2017, Viewed 31 March 2020, <https://au.yougov.com/news/2017/12/06/fast-
fashion/>.
Fien, J & Skoien, P 2000, Youth sustainable consumer patterns & life cycles, United Nations.
Fletcher, K & Grose, L 2012, Fashion & Sustainability, 1st edn, Laurence King.
Niinimaki, K 2015, Handbook of Sustainable Apparel Production, 1st edn, CRC.
Tom Miller 2019, Industry report clothing and retailing in Australia, Ibis World 2019, Viewed 15 March 2020 <https://www.fashionrevolution.org/about/why-do-we-need-a-fashion-revolution/>.
War on waste (Fast Fashion) 2017, Television program, War on waste, ABC TV, Sydney.
Why do we need a fashion revolution, Fashion Revolution n.d, Viewed 13 March 2020, <https://www.fashionrevolution.org/about/why-do-we-need-a-fashion-revolution/>.
