The Fast Fashion Brands Of Polluters Should Find A Balance.

Fashion and environmental protection seem to be a group of natural paradoxes, let alone the fast fashion industry with rapid product iteration and high energy consumption.

Nowadays, the speed of fast fashion brands' upgrading has crossed the "season" scale and is moving towards the amazing speed of "Zhou".

Zara today's new product development cycle is only 5-15 days, with an average of more than 200 new launches per week.

As a huge and complex industrial chain with lots of resources, fast fashion is a huge source of energy and resources, and a high pollution that is hard to ignore.

"We are really trying to ensure that our products convey positive information, both at the social level and the environmental level, and their negative impact is lower than that of our competitors."

Henrik Lampa, H&M brand's environmental sustainability manager, said in an interview with Quartz, "we must adopt a systematic plan for this purpose.

But in this long process, the use of resources is always closely related to the negative impact.

The reality is always cruel. Ironically, before the announcement of H&M's plan to increase the development plan, Newsweek launched a blockbuster cover story in August 21st, pointing to the disastrous pollution caused by H&M, Uniqlo, Zara, Wal-Mart and Gap to the India southern town of Tiruba (Tirupur) and the harm to the local residents.

Always on these

The vigilant news media named the five thousand word article "toxic fashion".

If Zara has 20000 new models every year

The figures on the shelves have been a bit of a shock. Think of the size of the H&M factory producing at least 600 million products a year, which is unthinkable.

The brand has more than 3200 stores in 55 countries around the world.

If you count the sub card like COS, then this number will turn into 3500 shops. Don't forget, H&M is expanding at a rate of 10% to 15% every year.

Just imagine how much cotton, electricity and water needed to meet the huge production demand of the factory.

And even if we explore every year on the road of environmental protection, there is no doubt that this fast fashion giant is far from the real environmental sustainability.

According to the most frequently cited data from H&M, the company claims that Textile Exchange, a non-profit organization, has certified H&M as the world's leading enterprise for organic cotton.

Organic cotton has less impact on the environment and reduces the use of pesticides that may cause cancer.

But in fact, only 13.7% of cotton used by H&M is organic cotton.

In most cases, a large number of resource consuming crops, whether organic or inorganic, are the bloody truth hidden behind these data.

"Environmental unfriendliness" has been criticized by the fast fashion industry.

Putting green into the direction of brand development in order to reverse the negative impression of the public sounds too much like a marketing tool for the public and environmentalists, so that the public will look at it and question it, calling it "green washing".

To be honest, the suggestion that consumers should change their consumption concept is merely "very beautiful", which is no less difficult than letting people truly admit that "money is not so important".

Under the shadow of consumer culture, "buy and buy" is an inevitable fate.

Seeking a balance between fast fashion and environmental protection under the existing framework may be a possibility to break the "original sin".

In recent years, many fast fashion brands represented by H&M have gone to the "green washing" road without exception.

Puma has launched a reliable biodegradable In Cycle series. UNIQLO has launched a full product recycling program. The parent company of Zara, Inditex, has built more than more than 1300 eco stores worldwide since 2007.

Exploration and attempt never stop.

In 2012, Esprit began developing self recycling system for waste regeneration.

Mixing 20% of the waste material with 80% of the new fabric produces the same quality of the T-shirt as that of the new fabric.

At the same time, the brand is recycled with a certain proportion of polyester PET plastic, the final product has also achieved satisfactory results.

H&M is also doing the same thing: the old clothes recycling project has been running for some time, and you can see the eye-catching old clothes recycling logo in the stores.

According to the annual report of the brand in 2014, the number of products made from old clothes collected from customers' wardrobe has increased by 300%.

Even to a certain extent, environmental protection is an excellent marketing tool to help a brand to establish its own image, but from this perspective, if fashion and environmental protection are doomed to be paradoxical, then a delicate balance can be found under the logic of fast fashion industry itself, and it will also be memorable progress.