Buckle down! Let’s talk about sustainable fashion

Quick question—how much do you love buying clothes?

Whether you’re the fashion-savvy type who goes for the latest trends or the casual type who decides what to wear based on what’s most comfortable, you probably would agree that the faster and easier we can get our clothes, the better.

Fast fashion has changed the game for many of us. Not only are clothes bought and delivered to our doorstep in just a few clicks, they’re often low-cost and trendy, appealing to the needs of both the fashion-savvy and the casual buyer.

It’s unsurprising, then, that the growing middle classes of Southeast Asia have been buying a lot more clothing in the past 15 years. Fast fashion has propelled demand to the point that the six main apparel markets here (Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore) currently have a value of more than USD 50 billion.

But how many of these new clothes last as long as they used to? The lifetime of clothes has quickly shrunk due to their low cost and convenience. To make things worse, the average person today buys 60 percent more clothing than in 2000—but not even 1 percent of clothes thrown away are recycled.

All these actions add up to bigger regional carbon footprints, unregulated water usage, and an appalling amount of waste generated by fast fashion. As fast fashion prompts us to demand more, manufacturers produce more, making the industry’s negative impacts both huge and irreversible.

For now, sustainable wear remains a small sector of the Southeast Asian fashion industry. Many consumers aren’t aware of these brands, but make no mistake—they’re growing fast.

And grow they must, for these six core markets have immense potential to become the next global hotspots for sustainable fashion.

Think about it—the combined population of the region is larger than the entirety of the United States. Fashion-savvy consumers from the rapidly growing middle class have rising levels of disposable income, and they make up a large proportion of the population. These buyers also tend to be young and digitally savvy—40 percent of consumers in the region are below 25 years of age, with social media users growing from 360 million to 402 million in just one year.

That means we’re in luck. There’s an incredibly large population of middle-income consumers here who can likely afford raised prices for sustainable wear. They’re also often easily updated on new eco-friendly options and sustainability campaigns.

The best part? These buyers are already interested in—and acting on—being more eco-friendly with what they wear.

Throughout the region, 80 percent of surveyed consumers want to purchase from companies that have specifically committed to reducing overall negative environmental and social impacts. They also strongly value sustainability and have already made slight to major changes in their lifestyles to become more eco-friendly.

Of course, consumers from different countries have varied preferences on how sustainable they wish to be. But even Singaporean consumers—who prefer sustainable products much less than their neighbours—feel positively about eco-friendly fashion and how to get clothing sustainably.

Currently, the amount and variety of sustainable fashion brands is still lacking—but thankfully, that’s not stopping conscious consumers from being eco-friendly anyway. Many young, middle-income consumers still remain fashionable, yet are immensely less wasteful, as they participate in practices such as clothes upcycling, recycling, and swapping.

These seemingly simple acts do save a lot of waste. For instance, swapping one shirt instead of purchasing a new shirt will save enough water for a person to drink for 2.5 years. Swapping 20kg of clothing saves a lot of energy, enough to leave a television turned on for 1.7 years.

In Thailand, brands such as Madmatter, Taktai, and Maison Craft base their entire business plans on upcycling old fabrics. Purchasing recycled clothing is common in the Philippines, and clothes swapping is getting increasingly popular in Singapore. Secondhand-clothes shops have been common in the region for quite a while.

So, it’s not all about buying. These eco-friendly practices are very viable options to us. As we’ve seen, these methods are solutions that are already in play; all we need to do is promote them further for other consumers to follow suit.

As much as we want it to, the shift towards sustainability isn’t necessarily easy or smooth-sailing—and it often involves people who might not be major stakeholders or profit-makers.

Moving away from fast fashion could increase poverty and worsen inequalities among the millions of workers in the apparel industry, as it’s difficult for them to adapt to rapid changes in the industry. Organizations, governments, and NGOs need to ensure a gradual and proper transition for these workers, while they push manufacturers towards innovations and practices that use recycled, renewable, and biodegradable materials.

It shouldn’t stop there—consumers and manufacturers may have a part to play, but policymakers also need to emphasise the need to educate young consumers on sustainable wear. Many of us often hear of how pollutive the oil and coal industries are, but we rarely hear about the massive pollution caused by the apparel industry—the one thing out of the three that we can easily do something about, even at a young age. More importantly, the curriculum could teach younger consumers about misinformation regarding the apparel industry and how to watch out for greenwashing, ensuring that they become well-informed, conscious consumers in the long run.

The ASEAN region’s consumer market is predicted to be worth USD 4 trillion in the next 10 years. If we are all a little bit more conscious about what we wear, the results could be astronomically positive.

There are eco-conscious brands and secondhand fashion shops near you—and if you have an abundance of old clothes you wish to throw away, there are plenty of places for clothes swapping, sharing, and renting as well.

It’s not too big a change for us. With the increasing amount of options we have, we can now get fashionable and sustainable clothes easily—and conveniently, as we’ve always wanted.