Slowing Down on Fast Fashion
Clothing production has doubled in the past two decades, and consumers only keep items for half as long. Low prices and fast-changing trends, combined with poor quality garments, fuel the fast fashion industry. This industry produces 10% of global carbon emissions, is the second largest consumer of the world’s water supply, and 35% of microplastic particles found in the ocean are a result of laundering synthetic textiles. Aside from the environmental harm, fast fashion is also critiqued for its unethical treatment of labour, where workers can make as little as $68 per month. Today, we are joined by incredibly knowledgeable experts to discuss the harmful socio-ecological global impacts of the fast fashion industry to help us understand this issue.
Rachel Miller is an artist, educator, design consultant, and researcher from New York and based in Toronto. She received her MFA in Fiber from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and her BFA in Craft and Material Studies/Fiber from the University of the Arts. She has taught textile design, fiber & material studies, and sustainable practices for over 16 years at many universities and institutions in New York, Pennsylvania, Ontario and India. Through sculpture, installation, performance, and garment, her work explores environmental patterns and how they interconnect with our own patterns of growth, departure, and rejuvenation. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and can be found in private and public collections.
Sabine Weber studied Apparel Engineering in Germany and worked for nearly twenty years in Europe as product manager/head of design/and international buyer in the fashion industry before coming to Canada ten years ago. While teaching at Humber College, she discovered her passion for ethical and sustainable fashion and decided to go back to university to earn a Master’s degree in Environment and Resource Studies at the University of Waterloo, focusing on waste management and social marketing. In her thesis, she examined textile waste and studied the ways consumers manage their unwanted garments to develop strategies to change behaviour. While still working on her PhD, she became a Professor at Seneca College in the School of Fashion. She co-founded the Ontario Textile Diversion Collaborative (OTDC), and since then, has worked on numerous textile waste-related projects. Her dream is to make fashion circular.
Dr. Paola Deda holds a master’s degree in Architecture from the Polytechnic of Milan and a Ph.D. in Land and Environmental Planning from the Polytechnic of Turin. She has worked in the UN system since 1998, including at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York and different United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) offices in Montreal, Bonn, and Geneva. She has been with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) since 2008 where she is currently the Director of Forest, Land and Housing Division. Paola has addressed sustainable fashion in various publications. She launched the Forest for Fashion initiative at the UNECE and is one of the founders of the UN Fashion Alliance.
Produced by:
Faria Amin - Junior Producer
Mycala Gill - Junior Producer
Erin Christensen - Executive Producer
Music:
“Black Sheep” by Metric
“You’re the One” by Kaytranada
