The Wool museum and universitty in Covilhã, Portugal hosted the Designa conference, where Clothing Research’s Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Kate Fletcher were both key note speakers. Here is their report:
Kate and I felt very honoured and privileged to be able to open this conference together. Both the importance of the environmental crisis and of textiles was taken as read in the conference, and this made it easy to talk to this diverse group of designers representing a range of disciplines from all over the world.
The overarching theme was citizenship, a challenging one in a time of decline of democracy and increasing differences and distrust. The first Designa conference took place in 2011 and the themes have always been important and challenging. It also felt special to be able to attend an in-person conference in the heart of Covilhã.
The town is characterized by its steep hills and lies tucked into the mountainside, and is a tourist destination, made clear by the pictures of skiers in our hotel lobby. The hotel’s name was Solneve (sun snow in Portuguese) and it felt an apt choice in which to host researchers from Norway! It is also the main urban hub for the region with a long industrial tradition, a place where textile history is embedded in every house and stone. The university and the wool museum hosting the conference are interwoven, making this a unique place for a conference. Kate was told, time and again, how Covilhã was the Manchester of Portugal. However, in Norwegian eyes, it is more reminiscent of Lillehammer. The closeness to the mountains with rich pasture landscapes, wool (not cotton as would have been the case with Manchester) and water for dyeing and power, all had more in common with Lillehammer – and possibly Leeds (sans mountains).
Nonetheless, the textile industry has been important to the development of the local university, similarly to Manchester and Leeds. Lillehammer lacks that aspect.
The building in which the conference took place was part of the wool museum and was originally the site of the Royal Textile Factory from the 1760s. The museum and the university have brought new life to the old industrial buildings. The new institutions are literally building on old textile production locations, layering on top on old terrasses, and wells previously used for dyeing and scouring, and all the other stages of production.
After a formal welcome, Kate’s and my keynotes opened the conference. The session was led by the director of the wool museum, Rita Salvado. In her talk, Kate explored design themes and actions of nature relations, extending the ideas of citizenship to include the greater-than-human world. I followed up with “Clothing consumers as citizens, and the role of design” where I ended with wool as an example of design for and by citizens, with the example of Tingvoll ull. It was a fitting and soft place to land in this wool-town.
While Kate lifts and expands on concepts, my perspectives are often rooted in the technical and practical realm, as well as including material and political aspects. We were both able to respond to the many questions that followed our key notes, a both felt this was rare moment for us and our clothing research colleagues in the audience, Irene Maldini and Ana Neto.
Other conference-goers included fashion and design students from the local university and researchers from many other corners of the world, including a group from NTNU, representing Norway and brought with them warm greetings from Mari Bjerk, in addition to many excellent thoughts and reflections on the presented material. The themes that were discussed were broad, with a lot of emphasis on AI and different forms of design of systems and social relations. This was made possible by a responsive and positive audience, who were given ample time to ask their many questions.
In between we were also able to tour the wool museum, which impresses with its size, content and engagement with the town’s citizens and visitors, adding to the interesting discussions between Rita, Irene, Kate and myself. Rita’s background as a textile engineer, paired with an openness and curiosity about how wool’s history can come more to the forefront in understanding the places geographically and for tourist development, made it easy to find common ground.
The last keynote speaker, Nuno Jardim Nunes, represented the impressive initiative, the New European Bauhaus, with the talk “Bauhaus of the Seas”, in which he emphasized the importance of interviewing non-humans, and with that made a nice connection to Kate’s keynote. Nuno spoke on how they feed sounds from sea dwellers through AI.
It felt like it was not the last time our paths will cross the warm and sometimes snowy Portuguese wool town: Covilhã.
Join us for a thematic session at PLATE conference in Denmark (July 2025).
2025 is the last year for the CHANGE project and one of the closing activities is a thematic session at the Product Lifetimes and the Environment (PLATE) conference. The thematic session on “Rebound effects and critical views on product durability”, co-chaired by Irene Maldini, Ingun Klepp, Kirsi Laitala, Eléonore Maitre-Ekern, Harald Wieser welcomes contributions until November 29th, 2024. The conference will be held at Aalborg University in Denmark from the 2nd to the 4th of July, 2025, and you can read more here.
With this session we would like the PLATE community to press pause for a couple of days and reconsider: Are we moving in the right direction? What are the assumptions that underlie the claimed benefits of durability? Are our efforts really helping to reduce material depletion at a significant rate? What are the material and behavioural conditions that need to be met for durability to have the desired effect? And are these conditions present in real product lifetimes and in our everyday lives? What new ways of thinking can help us in advancing the field for more significant impact? These are questions that we (co-chairs of this session) find very relevant today and would love to address together with the presenting authors, while building on the quality research that we know this community can deliver.
The European Sociological Association’s main biennial event this year took the clothing researchers to Porto!
When: 27th – 30th August 2024 Where: University of Porto, Portugal
Set on the beautiful backdrop of Porto, the main themes of the 16th ESA conference were “Tension, Trust and Transformation”. About 20 researchers from Consumption Research Norway SIFO participated in the conference this time around, which for a long time has been a very important arena for the institute, in particular, through the Sociology of Consumption Research Network.
Between sessions, we also had time to visit the city, eat some Francesinha and get acquainted with the chickens living on campus.
Four presentations from the SIFO Clothing Researchers
Vilde presenting at ESAAnna presenting at ESA
In the session ‘Clothing consumption 1: Fashion’, Vilde Haugrønning presented the paper ‘Gender Dynamics in Clothing Consumption: Examining the Inflow and Outflow of Clothing from a Practice Oriented Perspective’ based on results from the wardrobe studies of her PhD project in the CHANGE project.
In the session ‘Clothing consumption 2: Identity’, Anna Schytte Sigaard presented her paper ‘Social Practices and Identity-Work: Life Course Changes as Drivers for Textile Disposal’ based on results from the wardrobe studies of her PhD project in the Wasted Textiles project.
Kirsi presenting at ESALisbeth Presenting ar ESA
In the session, Imaginaries of Consumption, Lisbeth Løvbak Berg presented a paper from the IMAGINE project, “Futures Literacy: Norwegian imaginaries of food and clothing consumption”, co-written with Justyna Jakubiec and Atle Wehn Hegnes. The paper explores how futures literacy of food and clothing consumption is exhibited in the material collected in the project, across the three stakeholder groups, consumers, businesses and policymakers.
In the session ‘Clothing consumption 3: Sustainability’, chaired by Anna, Kirsi presented the paper ‘Wardrobe Revelations: Rethinking Repair Practices and Clothing Consumption’. The paper is based on survey data collected in the CHANGE project.
In the same session, our research friend, Réka Tölg, PhD Candidate at Lund University, also presented the paper ‘Caring Circularities: Enacting Circular Consumption by Caring for and with Clothes’, co-authored with Christian Fuentes.
UNESCO has championed futures literacy since 2012, highlighting its importance in the context of imagining alternative futures and directing change towards desirable futures. It follows that futures literacy allows people to actively engage with the plurality of images of the future and relate them to their own choices and ideas of (un)desirable futures. While this includes understanding the role of the future also in people’s everyday consumption practices, which inevitably play a major role in the green transition, efforts are largely focused on policy planning, business innovation and higher education. We, therefore, ask what level of futures literacy Norwegian stakeholders exhibit related to food and clothing consumption. Based on stories collected from 137 Norwegian consumers, advertisements, and business strategy and policy documents, we highlight the different stakeholders’ narratives of food and clothing consumption to compare their engagement with present imaginaries of future consumption. We find that businesses and policymakers display a higher level of future literacy than consumers. In general, the narratives of food consumption are richer and more well-developed than those of clothing consumption: business and policy documents’ narratives of sustainable clothing futures are limited to the repeating narrative of ‘repair, reuse, recycle’, whereas food consumption narratives range from self-sufficiency to alternative protein sources. The latter suggests a higher level of future literacy, which may reflect a more mature discussion of food futures: adversely, the lack of attention to alternative forms of clothing consumption decreases the likelihood of a larger transformation of clothing consumption patterns.
Gender Dynamics in Clothing Consumption: Examining the Inflow and Outflow of Clothing from a Practice Oriented Perspective
Vilde Haugrønning
The present-day consumption of clothing is marked by excessive production and consumption, leading to issues of water scarcity, microplastic pollution, chemical contamination, CO2 emissions, and textile waste. In order to mitigate the environmental impact of clothing, there is an urgent need to examine the factors influencing the high volume of garments in wardrobes. This study explores the influence of gender and age on clothing consumption based on a qualitative and quantitative wardrobe study of 15 households in Norway from a practice oriented perspective. Each household had a man and a woman living together as partners to enable a gendered comparison between couples that take part in many of the same practices and share the everyday life. In the wardrobe study, the participants conducted a counting exercise of all the garments they owned, including underwear, socks and accessories. Following this, each participant was asked to register all inflow and outflow of clothing for 6 months. The analysis focus on the turnover rate of clothing and employs Evan’s (2019) six moments of consumption that focus on processes of acquiring and disposing in relation to practices. Preliminary findings show that female participants acquired a higher quantity of clothing compared to male participants. However, age also play a significant role in determining the turnover rate of clothing. The study highlights the social mechanisms and gender dynamics that shape clothing consumption patterns and challenges the prevailing studies on clothing and fashion that often overlook the nuanced practices and actions that influence clothing volumes.
Social Practices and Identity-Work: Life Course Changes as Drivers for Textile Disposal
Anna Schytte Sigaard
In this contribution, the complex interconnections between social practices and textile consumption are explored. Based on wardrobe interviews in 28 Norwegian households, investigation is carried out of the influence of two major life course changes, cohabitation, and parenthood, on disposal of clothing and other textile items. In the transition from living alone to cohabitation, it is found that the disposal of clothing and textiles emerges not only as a functional act but as a symbolic act of divestment. Spatially and temporally separated practices, such as pre-move closet purges and post-move decoration, underscore the profound identity-work involved in this transition where discarded items come to symbolize remnants of single life. Parenthood introduces a challenging balance between environmentally conscious practices and time constraints, unveiling compromises made in sustainable practices amidst the demands of parenting. The disposal of impractical gifts and inherited baby clothes reflects the negotiation of a new parental identity. In this contribution, the importance of individual reflexivity in the negotiation of identities during major life transitions is emphasized. Thereby, it contributes to expanding the understanding of clothing and textile consumption as both routinized and mundane practices at the same time as involving intentional and reflexive discursive activities.
Wardrobe Revelations: Rethinking Repair Practices and Clothing Consumption
Kirsi Laitala
Global clothing production and consumption pose significant challenges to environmental, social, and economic sustainability, particularly driven by the fast-fashion business model linking the global North and South. This study, based on a Norwegian consumer survey (N=1200), investigates factors influencing volumes of clothing consumption. Analyzing acquisition, ownership (wardrobe size), and disposal volumes, principal component analysis (PCA) factor extraction was used to identify key constructs related to respondents’ preferences and perceptions of clothing acquisition, use and repair practices. Gender and age emerge as pivotal determinants, with women reporting higher acquisition, ownership, and disposal levels than men. Those in their 50s possess the largest wardrobes, while younger individuals exhibited a higher frequency of clothing acquisition and disposal, and thus higher turnover rates of their wardrobe contents. Surprisingly, the study reveals that higher repair intentions or focus on quality do not correspond to reduced consumption. These counterintuitive results challenge conventional assumptions about the relationship between these practices and overall consumption. Similarly, factors such as the allure of sales, impulse buying, and the desire to appear well-dressed contributed to increased consumption levels, emphasizing the influence of psychological and social factors. The lack of correlation between reduced consumption and the intention to focus on buying fewer quality items and repairing more implies a need for alternative strategies that consumers can apply to address their consumption levels and related sustainability challenges in the fashion industry. This research emphasizes the urgency of reevaluating current practices and fostering a more sustainable and conscientious approach to clothing consumption.
A new initiative from Sweden has surfaced, The Good Wool Collective, started by Lisa Bergstrand. As part of their inaugural webinar, Australian Wool Innovation’s Angus Ireland and I gave talks.
The theme was the shortcomings of EU’s Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and how it disadvantages natural fibers. The audience was mainly Nordic brands, but also some from further afield.
Lisa Bergstrand is a wonderful Swedish woman with an extensive design background who has embraced wool and its benefits, while Angus Ireland has been an important driver in the PEF process, and for wool’s sustainability credentials, and part of the ongoing work in PEFCRs. He is Program Manager for Fibre Advocacy and Eco Credentials at AWI, with extensive experience in wool’s environmental impact and advocacy in EU sustainability initiatives.
During the hour and a half long webinar with breakout-rooms towards the end, Angus Ireland first described the role of the wool industry in the PEF process, but also the work outside ‘the box’ in Make The Label Count (click here), and who are key players in this landscape. Next, he went on to PEF’s 16 parameters, with details about shortcomings and how plastic waste and microplastic release are not accounted for. With recent publications from Nature (click here for access) and from Changing Markets Foundation, have more or less upended the arguments that we do not have enough knowledge on microplastic release during laundering (a main argument from industry), as the Precautionary Principle is now being called into action, as laundering only represents a microscopic percentage of the total release over time, according to the Nature study.
The endemic bad quality of data and questionable parameters were Angus Ireland’s main focus. He also brought into play Consumption Research Norway’s research that relates to duration of service, that France’s Ecobalyse has been sniffing around, alongside the natural fiber sector seeing a ‘French opening’ with ADEME’s approach (sorry, only Scandinavians will see the humor in a French opening).
There is hope, as Angus Ireland described, even though the new LCA commissioned and peer-reviewed, still has not been accepted un GaBi – the database used by the EU – a process that has taken close to two years with no results so far. The Holistic Durability Working Group in PEF for apparel and footwear will hopefully succeed in their work to make for a more even playing-field.
Next up was myself, questioning whether natural fibers will ever get a fair rating in LCAs. I did a historic backtrack to the Made-By assessment tool in 2011 (wool labelled as ‘red’, recycled polyester as ‘green’) and fast forwarded to the Pulse of Fashion Report in 2017, where recycled polyester is what consumers should be ‘enhanced’ to choose. Certainly, over cotton, but obviously over all natural fibers. Amazing Grazing and other wool projects, such as the Textile farmer were introduced to the audience.
Alternative thinking needed
Changing Markets Foundation recent report Fashion’s Plastic Paralysis: How brands resist change and fuel microplastic pollution, was also something I came back to, especially the implications for our health related to microplastics. This is, as Angus talked about, something that should enter under the precautionary principle, not be continually dragged out in endless debates and delaying tactics.
Talking about “durability” and the general misunderstanding that ‘more durable products’ are going to save the world, when we are drowning in products, I went on to talk about TPR and work by the OR Foundation, which has been inspired by the waste audit approach.
My talk then turned to the functional unit, and pointed to a new PhD (click here to access) that has raised the million-dollar question not addressed in PEF; what is actually the functional unit for apparel? Is it number of wears, really? I used the example of my bunad and my daughter’s imminent marriage (wedding dresses are worn once, at least by the first owner), and my national costume’s 50 years of service, while my daughter’s is inherited from my mom, so the functional unit and duration of service will be exponential. I chose my bunad for the event (first part) and another not-enough-worn for the second disco-dancing part, and the functional unit of feeling worthy, safe, socially acceptable and dressed for the occasion – delivered!
Summing up, it all comes down to common sense, which is currently lacking in the whole shebang, and that the small ray of hope is that France has understood that solutions and how one evaluates companies and products needs to address the business model that underpins everything, not the product-specific criteria. This was followed by passionate and very good questions and engaging break-out discussions, showing that once one gains insight into the process surrounding PEF, people in the industry understand that the EU is currently headed on a fast track in the wrong direction.
Some more thoughts on this theme can be accessed here, if you’re on LinkedIn.
Chalmers University In the heart of Gothenburg hosted the defense for Erik Klint on September 6th. Klint’s PhD, consisting of 5 published articles and some additional published material, was discussed with professional curiosity and benevolence, and the atmosphere was positive throughout.
Author: Ingun Grimstad Klepp
It is not easy to work interdisciplinary, but as the head of the Grading committee Professor Michael Zwicky Hauschild, Denmark’s Technical University summed up: Here we have well-defined research questions, identified knowledge gaps and an exciting journey between the two different academic traditions, a travel from environmental impact to psychology and then back again to Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs).
Functional unit must define a function
The work’s most important conclusion is that what people do – and what psychologists call behavior – must be included in LCAs. The functional unit cannot be kilos of laundry, but rather what the function is or can be. The most important function of clean clothes is to make us feel socially safe. This is the functional unit that Klint argues for and was supported by the LCA expert from the Technical University of Denmark. A FU must be a function, something the product or test is used for in order to achieve an outcome.
There was a lot of discussion about this point during the defense, both from the opponent, Professor Wencke Gwozdz, Justus Liebig University of Giessen, and from the audience. Because: Doesn’t laundry also have other functions? And can this be a function or functions that is or are actually difficult to measure? Yes, but as Klint demonstrates, it is this (that is, what is needed to perceive something as clean) that has changed the most and also has the greatest impact on the environmental footprint of laundering.
Both during the discussion and in the thesis, Klint draws in clothes and their functions, and I took the opportunity to point out that the use of LCAs is much more problematic for clothing than for laundry, and that his work will thus possibly have greater consequences for this field.
Better data
After the defense, the supervisors and the committee took part in a tour of the Living Lab, flats inside the Chalmers campus area that has been trialing new solutions and more community-based services. A shared laundry room was located centrally in the building by the entrance, and together with a pleasant living room that included tools for repairing clothes, exercising, or a space just for hanging out. The Living Lab has student housing and apartments, and those who live there must approve that data from their laundering is included in research.
Greg Peters explains how data was collected from the washing machines. He holds up a chip similar to those sewn into the clothes to provide data on washing frequency. Not surprisingly, the ethical aspects of this type of data collection were also discussed during the defense.
Supervisor Gregory Peters Professor, Environmental Systems Analysis, Technology Management and Economics, proudly showed off how they had modified the machines to collect data and also the chips they had sewn into the clothes to collect details about washing frequency – among other things. In his work, Klint contrasts what people say and what they do. And the difference is big! Not least, this applies to washing “full machines”, where the result shows that that what people think is a full machine, varies greatly. This has major consequences for the environmental impact of laundry, which easily becomes more than twice as high if the filling rate drops to half capacity. In the comparison of self-reported data and data from the Living Lab, Klint also used pictures to illustrate what the machine looked like when it was fully loaded. This gave a clear picture closer to the actual degree of filling, than words alone.
Numbers and culture
The work done by Klint is based on quantitative analyzes and a lot of number crunching – as is expected in a thesis that seeks to improve an LCA tool. But Klint himself found that the cultural aspects of cleanliness and changes in these, alongside that there are so many different ways of thinking about how things should be sorted and what can be washed together with what, were a very interesting aspect to explore. It was thus with great respect for the nuances of human nature that his analyzes were made. He found that attitudes towards the environment played no role in washing frequency, but that other variables could explain quite a bit. Another nail in the coffin for the idea of ”enlightenment” as important for changing people’s actions.
Increased sensitivity to disgust, shame, or cleanliness norms were associated with a higher washing frequency per person. Thus, most important were shame and disgust – i.e. the discomfort perceived in what dirt and smell causes in social settings.
Both concepts were discussed based on psychological theories and literature on these feelings. Klint argued that people do not load a load of laundry to use (or not use) energy, but to have clean clothes, or because the laundry basket is full. This is obvious – but as long as LCAs are developed with a technical starting point, e.g. how efficient a machine is – it is necessary to point this out and change the LCAs so that what people actually do, is taken into account.
Changes in technology and infrastructure also change habits, and this interaction disappears if only kilograms of laundry are studied, not the need for clean clothes. This then immediately raises bigger questions because what is really a need? And how is it that what is perceived as necessary, common, decent, etc. changes? Klint couldn’t answer everything, and this was not expected. Nevertheless, we couldn’t help ourselves – because his work opens up big questions that will probably become even more urgent if we transfer the discussion from laundry to clothing.
Despite the fact that we at SIFO is neither an LCA expert, nor a strong psychological approach, the conclusions was just as much what we have – or could have – done a lot. The will to find better data than what people themselves report, and not least the combination of technical and social science approaches, made the work familiar in a certain sense. There were also plenty of SIFO references in all the articles.
Cheers for Chalmers
It was fun to take part in this defense, everything from small technical details and information, to the big questions, were handled quickly and professionally. There was a good mix of friendly conviviality and academic celebration over the ceremony.
In the back, from the left, supervisor Greg Peters, Professor of Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Scientific Director Swedish Life Cycle Center, Division of Environmental Systems Analysis, Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Professor Lars-Olof Johansson University of Gothenburg, Department of Psychology, Grading committee member Dr Alessio Mastrucci, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Next row: Grading committee members Professor Michael Zwicky Hauschild, Denmark’s Technical University and Professor Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Oslo Metropolitan University, Opponent Professor Wencke Gwozdz, Justus Liebig University of Giessen. In front Erik Klint.
For me, this was an educational trip that shows that other subjects and traditions have a lot to contribute, but also that ideas and traditions we have advocated for decades, such as the importance of the use phase, are indeed supported in other subjects and methodologies.
In the recently published report, What Fuels Fashion?, issued by Fashion Revolution, Consumption Research Norway SIFO’s suggestion for a Targeted Producer Responsibility method has received substantial attention alongside the Plastic Elephant report. In addition, the ruling by the Norwegian Consumer Authority against the Higg consumer-facing label also is brought forward.
All in all, What Fuels Fashion? gives much attention to the research from Oslo Metropolitan university, which is an important part of the Wasted Textiles project. What Fuels Fashion? is a single-issue, special edition of Fashion Revolution’s annual Fashion Transparency Index. They have reviewed 250 of the world’s largest fashion brands and retailers and ranked them according to their level of disclosure on climate and energy-related data in their own operations but primarily in their supply chains.
A key finding is that there is hardly any transparency around over-production. “The fashion industry wants to have its cake and eat it too. Most big fashion brands (89%) do not disclose how many clothes they make annually. Alarmingly, nearly half (45%) fail to disclose neither how much they make nor the raw material emissions footprint of what is produced, signalling the industry prioritises resource exploitation whilst avoiding accountability for environmental harms linked to production.”
On page 36 in the report, we can read: “Governments are now cracking down on greenwashing. In addition to investigations into several brands’ environmental claims taking place in the UK and Australia, the Norwegian Consumer Authority ruled the Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI) unlawful to support such claims from retailers. These actions, which have resulted in accountability, illustrate why transparency is crucial to enable change. Nonetheless, the need for robust evidence-backed claims remains a persistent issue.”
Furthermore, on page 38, we find this quote: “Already we are seeing that overestimating the importance of garment durability and underestimating the environmental impact of overproduction is shaping the policy landscape. Research by Oslo Met University reveals the “Plastic Elephant in the Room” – which critiques the EU’s Sustainable Textiles Strategy, particularly its focus on durability. The research argues that the most effective way to reduce the fashion industry’s environmental impact is to cut production volumes rather than merely extending product lifespans (and that focusing on durability unintentionally supports synthetic fossil fuel-derived fibres).” Let’s hope someone from DG ENVI and DG GROW actually read this report!
On page 39, the report has a full-fledged explanation of TPR as a viable alternative to EPR (see illustration). Which is good news for the on-going discussion on how we can make fast fashion actually ‘out of fashion’ with regulatory instruments, and halt business as usual. Being taken seriously in such an important report, will hopefully garner further attention to SIFO’s research.
Three days of multidisciplinary perspectives to overcome our society’s obsession with economic growth, sounds like a good way to round out the month of June? Obviously…
Consumption Research’s Irene Maldini took the trip to Spain to talk about durability’s role in our obsession with growing the textile sector, perhaps one of the sectors that really needs the opposite, or?
June 19th-21st 1200 academics, activists, and civil society organizations came together at the ESEE/Degrowth conference in Pontevedra, Spain to discuss the urgency, barriers and levers to enable a post-growth society as a way to tackle the current poly-crisis. The conference was hosted by University of Vigo. It was the first time for this conference to include a session on clothing and another one on consumer goods more generally, chaired by Katia Dayan Vladimirova.
Economic activity is a means for humans to live a good life considering that of other beings. But confusing the role of economic growth with an end in itself is hindering progress towards a more sustainable society. In the sector of clothing, fear of confronting economic growth is preventing sustainability actions to focus on the challenge that really matters: reducing production volumes.
In this context and as part of the CHANGE project, SIFO researcher Irene Maldini presented a study conducted together with Professor Ingun Klepp on the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, published in March 2022. In an analysis of the policy making process, they identified two main factors that hindered the inclusion of measures to tackle production volumes in the strategy:
a) the framing of the strategy in terms of competitiveness, with a focus on companies as main stakeholders, and the associated fear of economic decline in a market where fewer products are sold, and b) a policy-making process prioritizing input from anecdotal knowledge (through participation of interested and available stakeholders), rather than empirical knowledge on the effect of applied actions or lack thereof. As a result, the EU Strategy avoided a focus on production volumes, aiming instead at the softer and politically objective of improving product durability, with questionable environmental benefits.
This was just one of the presentations analyzing how the growth logic underlies western policy and law, preventing significant progress towards climate targets, and the only one focusing on environmental policy for consumer goods.
The conference included scholars from a variety of disciplines such as environmental economics, political science, geography, law, marketing, indigenous knowledge, industrial ecology, etc. who discussed very diverse subjects related to social inequality and the environmental crisis. Next year the event will take place in Oslo, hopefully an opportunity to consolidate an international community committed to question consumerism and our dependence on growing volumes of consumer goods in circulation close to home. Next year’s conference will be June 24th till 27th, and CHANGE will plan something in conjunction with the conference, so clear your diary already now!
Economic activity is a means for humans to live a good life considering that of other beings. But confusing the role of economic growth with an end in itself is hindering progress towards a more sustainable society. In the sector of clothing, fear of confronting economic growth is preventing sustainability actions to focus on the challenge that really matters: reducing production volumes.
In the photo: Irene Maldini, Meital Peleg Mizrachi, Amy Twigger Holroyd, Katia Dayan Vladimirov.
Here the abstract:
More durable, or fewer products? A case study of the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles
The volume of durable goods consumed in Europe, and clothing in particular, has increased dramatically in the last decades, with significant environmental damage globally (Manshoven et al., 2023; Niinimäki et al., 2020). While early environmental policy to mitigate such damage focused on better production and waste management, more recently, increasing product durability to extend product lifetime has become a central approach. In a review of EU and Norwegian environmental policy applicable to consumer goods, Heidenstrøm et al. (2021) found little focus on product lifetime between 2011-2015, and a massive increase in 2015-2020 in line with the growing influence of the circular economy framework.
However, the environmental benefits of product durability for clothing and other consumer goods are questionable. Achieving environmental savings from keeping products and materials longer in use presumes that there will be a reduction in the production of new items, but this expected effect has not been sufficiently studied. The empirical evidence that is used to support the durability approach is limited to comparative life cycle assessments of longer and shorter life products (see e.g. WRAP, 2012). Such studies build on a view of consumption that assumes but does not test the idea that durable goods delay replacement purchases and implicitly consider production decisions by companies as a process driven exclusively by demand, therefore taking the associated savings in the manufacture of new products for granted (Maldini et al., forthcoming). But wardrobe studies (Laitala and Klepp, 2022) and waste audits of textiles (Fashion for Good, 2022; Refashion, 2023) show that garments and accessories are massively discarded while still in good material condition. Moreover, only a minority of the clothes acquired are motivated by product replacement (Maldini, 2019). The drivers of production volumes decisions by clothing companies have not been thoroughly investigated, but a few case studies point to a variety of reasons behind such decisions including companies’ market expansion plans and the strengthening of their partnership with suppliers (see e.g. Paton, 2018). In short, the assumed effect of product durability on production volumes reductions is problematic.
This contribution builds on a case study of the 2022 EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles (European Commission, 2022) to show how, despite the lack of evidence mentioned above, product durability is promoted as a sustainable approach during the policy making process, while a direct focus on production volumes reductions was avoided through several mechanisms.
The study analyses how product durability and production volumes are regarded during the policy making process, on the basis of four aspects; 1) the strategy context, and its relation to other policy instruments and efforts, 2) the actors involved in the development of the strategy and their roles, 3) the discourse around product durability and production volumes, and how they are addressed during the policy making process, and 4) the knowledge base of the strategy; the sources of information that were considered to identify problems and applicable solutions. The material used to conduct the study includes policy and other publicly available documents, complemented by interviews with five key participants in the development of the strategy: one key employee of the European Commission, two members of external organizations that accompanied the development of the strategy from the early phase until it was released, and two key participants (and invited speakers) of the public consultation workshops. The interviews were conducted between February and April 2023.
Two main factors hindering the inclusion of product volumes reduction measures are identified: a) the framing of the strategy in terms of competitiveness, with a focus on companies as main stakeholders, and the associated fear of economic decline in a market where fewer products are sold and b) a policy-making process prioritizing input from anecdotal knowledge (through participation of interested and available stakeholders), rather than scientific findings or lack thereof.
The strategy aims at implementing the commitments of the European Green Deal (European Commission, 2019) and the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) (European Commission, 2020a), as well as the Industrial Strategy (European Commission, 2020b) and post-COVID Recovery Plan (European Commission, 2020c). The EU’s CEAP has a two-side agenda focusing on the transformation of industrial processes, increasing resource efficiency, reducing environmental impact and the use of raw materials and hence bringing economic benefits and business opportunities to companies (European Commission, 2020a). Furthermore, the environmental targets of the Green Deal were matched with the Industrial Strategy, and the economic concerns about recovery of the EU from the COVID-19 crisis. Within the European Commission, DG Environment and DG Grow shared responsibility over the development of the strategy, reinforcing its two-sided nature. In this context, the narrative of value retention associated to the circular economy was a good fit, as it was product durability. Yet targeting production volumes reductions was out of the scope.
Corporations, and business associations were central actors in the policy making process. They were invited to provide informal input in the preparatory phases of the strategy, setting the stage for a consultation process that also emphasized business actors as main stakeholders. The online survey was accessible to anyone, but companies had the capacity to provide extensive input, while the representation of other stakeholders was limited. Although the report of the public consultation mentions that several NGOs and government representatives called for direct measures in consumption reductions (PlanMiljø, 2022), only durability makes it to the concrete solutions listed in the strategy, with overconsumption and overproduction expected to decline as a result of product lifetime extension and reuse (European Commission, 2022).
A critical analysis of the state of the art in scientific knowledge would have confronted the approach outlined above, but the knowledge management in the policy making process did not prioritize reliability and completeness of information. Members of the scientific community stressing the centrality of production volumes were discredited, and the focus was placed on ensuring adherence from businesses. In using secondary, tertiary, and non-peer reviewed sources as a knowledge base, the information was simplified and generalized to an extent where it met the anecdotal knowledge shared by involved stakeholders.
In sum, the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles provides an example of how the growth logic continues to shape environmental policy, leading to measures and regulation with questionable environmental improvements, and hindering the development of more effective measures to reduce the impact of European consumption.
References
European Commission, 2022. EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles.
European Commission, 2020a. A new Circular Economy Action Plan. For a cleaner and more competitive Europe.
European Commission, 2020b. A New Industrial Strategy for Europe.
European Commission, 2020c. Europe’s moment: Repair and Prepare for the Next Generation.
European Commission, 2019. The European Green Deal.
Fashion for Good, 2022. Sorting for Circularity Europe.
Heidenstrøm, N., Strandbakken, P., Haugrønning, V., Laitala, K., 2021. Product lifetime in European and Norwegian policies. Oslo.
Laitala, K., Klepp, I.G., 2022. Review of clothing disposal reasons. Oslo.
Maldini, I., 2019. From speed to volume: reframing clothing production and consumption for an environmentally sound apparel sector, in: Nissen, N.F., Jaeger-Erben, M. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd PLATE Conference. TU Berlin, Berlin, pp. 519–524. https://doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-9253
Maldini, I., Klepp, I.G., Laitala, K., forthcoming. The environmental impact of product lifetime extension: a literature review and research agenda. Clean. Responsible Consum.
Manshoven, S., Vercalsteren, A., Christis, M., De Jong, A., Schmidt, I., Grossi, F., Mortensen, L., 2023. Consumption and the environment in Europe’s circular economy.
Niinimäki, K., Peters, G., Dahlbo, H., Perry, P., Rissanen, T., Gwilt, A., 2020. The environmental price of fast fashion. Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. 1, 189–200. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-0039-9
Paton, E., 2018. H&M, a Fashion Giant, Has a Problem: $4.3 Billion in Unsold Clothes. New York Times.
PlanMiljø, 2022. Synopsis report on the consultation on the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles. Veksø.
Refashion, 2023. Characterisation study of the incoming and outgoing streams from sorting facilities.
WRAP, 2012. Valuing our Clothes: the Evidence Base. Technical Report.
Tanja Gotthardsen, a Danish anti-greenwashing specialist, Continual, and member of the advisory board for textiles at the Danish Consumer Council, Forbrugerrådet Tænk, has together with Professor Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Tone S. Tobiasson, penned a letter to the EU Council ahead of their vote on Green Claims Directive.
If the EU’s Green Claims directive is truly to become a silver bullet against greenwashing, it must, first and foremost, avoid contributing to greenwashing, which it stands in danger of doing, as the recent integration of references to the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) for apparel and footwear (A&F) in the text, makes it possible to use this faulty tool for making green claims.
For us, it’s not a question of fibers or materials, but a question of consumers being misled by a tool of the EU’s own making. And the inclusion of PEF is truly premature, as it does not account for how apparel is actually, functionally worn and used – and use is, by far, the most important indicator for a garments environmental impact.
We therefore wrote in our capacity as researchers, concerned consumers, farmers, textile companies throughout the value chain, and NGOs regarding this potential damaging inclusion of PEF.
In the letter, which you can read here, we address specifically the numerous shortcomings of PEFCRs for A&F, which have been pointed to by many and certainly in the latest open public consultation. As it is far from clear how PEFCRs for A&F will be operationalized and this will be clear at the earliest in Q4 of 2024, we challenge the validity of including PEF as a potential system or tool for making green claims. That it is not mandatory, but still remains an option, is not acceptable as long as its final design is an unknown.
The letter builds on decades of wardrobe research conducted and policy recommendations provided by SIFO and Continual, as well as many other excellent people. A big thank you goes out to all the wonderful co-signatories from research, civil society and industry, that managed to get back to us so swiftly – this was truly a race against the clock.
June 3rd, 2024, Ana Neto graduated as a Doctor in Design at the Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon with her research on “Usership in Fashion: A Grounded Theory on Wearer-Clothing Relationships”, which she carried out under the supervision of João Batalheiro Ferreira (IADE) and Gabriela Forman (ULisbon)
SIFO researchers Kate Fletcher and Irene Maldini were part of the scientific committee in the defense, therefore it was not just an important day for Ana, but also for SIFO. In 2022, Irene was part of Ana Neto’s intermediate evaluation committee and they worked together at the REDES office in ULisbon, where Irene was a visiting researcher. Later the same year, Ana Neto participated in a series of discussion sessions for international PhD candidates on fashion and sustainability organized by Irene at Lusófona University. In 2023, Ana Neto met the other SIFO clothing researchers during the PLATE conference in Helsinki. She has been an active member of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion and has worked closely with Tone Tobiasson in the Social Change and Policy working group of UCRF.
In her thesis, Ana Neto draws a parallel between interpersonal love and wearer’s relationships with clothes, stressing the importance of overcoming conflict as an inevitable element in any relationship, and using wardrobe studies among other methods. She highlights the role of design in assisting processes of use to promote longer lasting clothing relationships with wearers. Such issues are explored under guidance of the following questions:
How do wearers develop long-lasting relationships with their clothes? What is the role of design in supporting wearer-clothing relationships?
Ana Neto’s engaging writing style helps readers to stay connected to the conceptual depth of her research. Her curiosity, hard work, and proactive attitude to connect with relevant scholars in the field have been outstanding, and she will surely continue contributing to the field in the years to come. See her contribution to SIFO’s Wardrobe library here.
In the photo: Dr. Ana Neto and the scientific committee during her PhD defense at ULisbon. From right to left: João Batalheiro Ferreira (supervisor), Ana Neto (candidate), Vitor Manuel dos Santos, Kate Fletcher, Graziela Sousa, Maria João Pereira Neto, Irene Maldini
The output of Ana Neto’s PhD trajectory includes the following publications, which are compiled in her thesis:
Neto, A. and Ferreira, J. (2020) ‘From Wearing Off to Wearing On: The Meanders of Wearer–Clothing Relationships’, Sustainability, 12(18), p. 7264. Available here.
Neto, A. and Ferreira, J. (2021) ‘Through Thick and Thin: Committing to a Long-Lasting Wearer-Clothing Relationship’, 4th Product Lifetimes and the Environment Conference (PLATE 2021), Limerick, Ireland (online), 26–28 May 2021. Available here.
Neto, A. and Ferreira, J. (2021) ‘‘I Still Love Them and Wear Them’— Conflict Occurrence and Management in Wearer-Clothing Relationships’, Sustainability, 13(23), p. 13054. Available here.
Neto, A. and Ferreira, J. (2023) ‘Lasting Bonds: Understanding Wearer-Clothing Relationships through Interpersonal Love-Theory’, Fashion Theory, 27(5), pp. 677–707. Available here.
Neto, A. (2023) ‘Wearer-Clothing Relationships as a System (and where to intervene)’, in K. Niinimäki and K. Cura (eds) Product Lifetimes and the Environment Conference, Proceedings 5th PLATE Conference, Espoo (Finland), 31 May–02 June 2023. Espoo, Finland: Aalto University publication series, pp. 711-716. Available here.
Neto, A. and Forman, G. (forthcoming) ‘Mediating wearer-clothing
relationships: a case study in Fashion Design Education’, in K. Scott, B. Curtis and C. Pajaczkowska (eds) The Future of Fashion Education: Speculation, Experiences and Collaboration, Routledge.
Neto, A. (forthcoming) ‘One Dress, 100 Days: Addressing Pervasive Conflict in Wearer-Clothing Relationships’, Clothing Cultures, 9(1).
Maria Kupen With’s Master thesis is entitled A new narrative of Neglected Socks. An exploration of new value creation and narratives for materials through creative fashion practice. She recently delivered her Masters at the Department of Art, Design and Drama – Fashion and Society – at OsloMet.
Inspired by the preliminary results from Anna Schytte Sigaard’s PhD in Wasted Textiles, Maria Kupen With decided to work with socks – the item discarded in the largest quantities and the worst condition. Socks are so intimate and used socks are not sold in second-hand shops, maybe not even shared for fear of contamination. If these could be upcycled, then what could not be?
Her practice-led approach included collecting socks from friends and family and a local charity, analyses of the socks’ condition, their disposal reasons etc., and creative exploration of the material and its potential. She created prototypes and a pre-exhibition to confront viewers with the transformed material – in the form of a jacket-tent, sweaters and textured pieces – and registered their potential to elicit emotional responses and challenge current attitudes and perceptions of discarded and worn-out materials.
The thesis touches upon our relationship with nature through cleanliness, bacteria, bodily fluids, as well as pilling and other signs of wear, and how this can change when engaging with the objects, as Maria herself experienced in the practice of making from worn socks, going from thinking they are “icky” to deciding to wear her own pieces. The visitor of her pre-exhibition also reflected on their relationships with second-hand clothing usage more broadly. The thesis hence uses design to create both value and discussions around value, a much needed perspective in a throw-away consumer culture.
Maria Kupen With was supervised by Lisbeth Løvbak Berg at SIFO and also Siv So Hee Steinaa. In the photo we see the three of them at the Master’s exhibition, enveloped in Maria Kupen With’s work.
