Sustainability and Socially Responsible Labels for Clothing
Teresa Moore 1 Writing II – Summer 2016 Sustainability and Socially Responsible Labels for Clothing A comparison of current clothing labels of sustainable fashion brands practicing corporate social responsibility, sustainable clothing stores, and clothing labels’ effects on consumer purchase intentions. “Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky We fell them down and turn them into paper That we may record our emptiness” – Kahlil Gibran Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American writer poetically described the process of environmental destruction for the creation and manifestation of our emptiness, our neuroticism, our search for creating something better, which perhaps leads us back to the origin of our search; ourselves, the simple soul looking to make itself better. Surely we can’t deny the practical advances civilization had made in search of science, knowledge, and policy, including the paper on which we write these ideas and record our collective knowledge to advance our lifestyle. The Situation in 2016 – Current Overconsumption of Resources If Kahlil Gibran were alive today, some eighty-five years after his death, he would see the speed at which prioritizing the advancement of lifestyle and knowledge has taken its toll on the environment. In “Natural Capitalism” Hawkins, Lovins and Lovins state, “in the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s resources, its ‘natural wealth,’ has been consumed” (Hawken et al. p.4. 1999). According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “in the U.S., industry admits to releasing over 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals a year” (EPA. 2005). With these eye-opening statistics, it is clear current industry practices, resource consumption and waste production are not sustainable.
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