The next time my daughter complains about her university-level chemistry course I’m going to urge her to stick with it.

It seems there are tremendous employment opportunities for young chemists and biologists to figure out ways to unwind the mess that the synthetics industry has created over the past 60 years.

Today the fashion industry sells 80 billion apparel items every year, and if the global population swells to 8.5 billion by 2030, we will buy 63% more fashion, or about 102 million tons of the stuff.

About 20% of that stuff never even gets sold. Much of it ends up in landfill. And we all now know what happens to the microfibres it generates: they get into everything including the fish we eat, even into the waters of Antarctica.

Then there is the environmental impact of all those dyes and their associated deadly chemicals that get into the rivers and lakes, and the pressure of production on our poorest citizens.

Fortunately, as Dana Thomas points out, there are entrepreneurs and industry leaders investing in methods and technologies to lead us away from our worst instincts; the instinct to buy, buy, buy without due regard for the consequences.

A sidebar to this conversation is the one I regularly have with whomever will listen: eCommerce has stimulated an orgy of courier shipments, and in the fashion industry, as many as 75% of their customers will send back ill-fitting or used online purchases. Each return will result in another courier pickup and delivery.

When you factor in that many of these purchases will stimulate at least four courier trips, the trips to the customer may mean single package trips, you are adding immeasurably to the pollution in our cities and the costs of maintaining our roads.

The returns in my business are about 3.5%, far lower than industry averages, and another reason why shopping in local stores not only is good for local employment, but good for the environment as well.

In theory the mass retailers are more efficient than the neighbourhood store. But if people have little idea what they are buying those efficiencies go out the window. ( )

One of the most interesting, well researched insights into the world of fast fashion and its impact on its workers, consumers, the environment, and beyond. ( )

Understanding the fashion industry

This is an excellently researched book with good high level insight into the various ways fashion is currently unsustainable and unethical and how various new and old companies are trying to address both. Additional props for the citations at the end. ( )

Fashionopolis es el nombre que Dana Thomas da al sistema de producción y consumo de moda en la era de la globalización. Seamos conscientes o no, vivimos inmersos en esa ciudad simbólica que contiene todo lo malo y lo bueno. Lo malo ya lo conocemos. Este libro es un largo viaje a lo largo de todo el planeta en el que la autora visita a aquellos emprendedores que han decidido poner freno a la producción desquiciada de la moda rápida y apuestan por investigar métodos de fabricación textil sostenibles, eficientes y éticos, que preserven el medioambiente y los derechos de los trabajadores. Y asistimos a formas de producción lentas, tradicionales, más humanas y a otras ultratecnológicas, robotizadas o, simplemente imaginativas. Dana Thomas culmina con Fashionopolis, la más amplia investigación que se haya llevado a cabo sobre la actual industria de la moda.