Sustainable fashion refers to clothing that is designed, manufactured, distributed and used in ways that are environmentally friendly.

Ethical fashion, a related term that is also prevalent in the conscious consumerism world, refers to clothing made in ways that value social welfare and worker rights.

Because environmentalism goes hand in hand with socially equitable practices, however, ethical and sustainable fashion are intricately tied together.

WHY MOST OF FASHION TODAY IS NOT SUSTAINABLE

The word sustainable is defined as “capable of being sustained.” Therefore, a sustainable fashion industry is one that must operate in ways that can continue working for years and decades to come.

Unfortunately, this is not true of today’s dominant ‘fast fashion,’ which refers to clothing that's intentionally designed to be consumed quickly at cheap prices, leading shoppers to view clothes as being disposable—wearing them just a few times before throwing them out or moving on to newer and trendier cheap clothes.

The fast fashion cycle is far from sustainable, because it depletes the Earth’s natural resources at exponential rates, exploits workers around the world, and results in an overwhelming amount of waste.

In contrast to traditional fashion houses that only have a few seasonal collections per year, fast fashion brands may churn out as many as one new collection per week (or more) in efforts to drive continuous, mindless consumption.