We consume for pleasure, we consume for expression, we consume for belonging and we consume for consuming. Who doesn't feel good about just buying a new sneaker? Few manage to escape and resist the daily advertising stimuli that arouse almost instantaneous needs on a daily basis. Everything feels like it was designed especially for you, and buying any new piece of clothing just seems to have the power to change a lot in your life.
Undoubtedly, whoever the reader is must quickly recall an episode of compulsive and unnecessary spending accompanied by a slight later regret that he has already lived. This happens because we give material objects characteristics that are not natural properties, but social ones. Consumption in modernity has become the main form of expression and sense of belonging of the human being, and all this compulsive behavior comes with risks that will not harm the well-dressed contemporary buyer, but rather future generations, who will pay this debt with interest. so high that they possibly won't even have a place to tread with the thousands of sneakers that are deliberately produced every day.
Every second, the equivalent of a garbage truck full of fabric scraps is burned or disposed of in landfills.
That's about 500 billion dollars thrown away a year with clothes that have had very little use and are almost never recycled. In addition, another aggravating factor is the production on a global scale, in which the clothes are made and designed in different countries. This makes the fashion industry add to its list of complications the emission of 1,2 billion tons of greenhouse gases per year, a figure that exceeds that of the shipping industry and commercial aviation combined.
If we stop to think about the size of the impact that the habit of unbridled consumption generates on the environment, we will understand the urgent need for a solution to the consumerist largesse that we provoke.
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Fortunately, the remedy that fashion shoppers need already exists on the shelves, and it's called sustainable fashion. But since nothing is perfect, sustainable Spanish fashion faces problems that impede its growth.
First, everything that claims to be sustainable seems to erroneously refer to attitudes like veganism, activism, animal protection, social engagement, and so on. While in fact something sustainable is only basically defined as any practice that allows for present actions that will not aggressively impact the future of humanity or damage new generations. It is necessary to understand that being sustainable today is essential for any brand that wants to grow. Apart from the fact that, of course, there is a trend of conscious consumption in the country today, sustainable fashion is not just something that needs to pass and go away as a fad, but a mission that needs to merge with the world imagination to generate a more than necessary change. at an extremely critical time.
The second major setback that sustainable fashion faces in España is the lack of production scale. Because the number of people who invest in sustainable fashion is very small, low demand shrinks the scale of production, and this is due to the fact that product prices are very high. And prices, in turn, are only high because of this insufficiency.
Unfortunately, it is still difficult for the Spanish consumer to understand the added value of sustainable fashion, and paying a little more not only for the appearance or quality of the product but for the sustainable awareness added to the garment seems like a distant idea. There is a need for greater dissemination of the benefits of sustainable consumption in contrast to the harms of the rampant large scale of large corporations. The sustainable market cannot stabilize itself in a niche of selective and inexpressive consumption of the population, it is necessary to grow, promote and generate turnover in this type of market.
