NATIONWIDE — Navigating the world responsibly means making an effort to do as little harm as possible, both to the environment and to other people. Doing your part means choosing to buy products that do the least harm to the earth and the people involved in their manufacture. 

A sustainable company needs to both minimize its impact on the environment and be fair and equitable to the human components of their supply chains.

According the Environmental Protection Agency, “Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. To pursue sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations.”

That said, sustainability does not have a set legal definition, and companies are able to promote themselves as sustainable or eco-friendly without having to make specific commitments. This is called “greenwashing,” a practice that makes prioritizing sustainable shopping choices difficult.

When ‘fast’ harms

One area that can be especially confusing is apparel. The current model, called “fast fashion” after the fast food industry, sets up microtrends based around cheap, disposable items intended for one wear. Once these pieces are used, the expectation is that they will be discarded for another new item. 

These statistics from roundup.org put it into perspective: fast fashion is the second most polluting industry after oil. It creates four percent of the world’s total carbon emissions each year, 20 percent of the world’s wastewater and 35 percent of the world’s microplastics. Eighty-seven percent of the materials used to make clothing end up in landfills, with only one percent being recycled into new clothes. 

Earth.org states that the average U.S. consumer throws away 81.5 lbs of clothes annually.

Slavery might seem like a problem of the distant past, but our cheap, mass-produced clothing would not be possible without modern global forced labor networks. According to the Global Slavery Index report, almost $468 billion worth of goods, supported by modern slavery, was imported by G20 nations in 2021. Garments accounted for $147.9 billion and textiles almost $13 billion of overall at-risk imports. 

The United States is the biggest importer at $57 billion. 

Most cases of forced labor are at the bottom of supply chains, such as gathering raw materials and the earliest production stages.

What you can do

It may seem daunting to try addressing this issue; after all, each shopper is only one individual among many billions of consumers worldwide. 

There are some basic steps that can be taken toward more sustainable apparel shopping. 

For example, it’s safe to say that if your T-shirt costs $1.99, the people producing it are not being paid a living wage. 

Pay attention to which countries are most likely to supply forced labor and read the tags on your clothing for their country of origin before you buy them. 

Seek out brands with transparent supply chains that provide detailed information for each step of the process. 

Buy items that are not made overseas, as domestic products are more likely to be made fairly.

The number-one way to shop for apparel sustainably is to buy used clothing whenever possible. These clothes have already had their social and environmental impact, often have a great deal of life left in them, and many times can be purchased at a fraction of the cost of their new counterparts. 

Many used clothing shops sell designer brands. Items made from premier materials such as cashmere and leather can be available.