clothing consumption Archives - Clothing research

Potential impacts of EPR in Norway: New study published

tobiasson on 7. March 2025

A recent report by SINTEF for the Wasted Textiles project looks into the value chains of consumer textiles in Norway and calculates the impacts of different scenarios of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in the Norwegian economy, based on recommendations for a Norwegian EPR scheme.

The main question asked was: what are the impacts of an EPR scheme for Norway based on different fees? The authors further ask: What could be the reduction in the consumption of textile products by households when they become more expensive? And with reduced consumption of textile products, what would be the impacts to the economy, jobs, and carbon emissions?

The authors of the report use SUMS-Norway, a trajectory macroeconomic model, to quantify how the changes in household demand will affect the Norwegian economy. SUMS-Norway is based on the Norwegian ‘supply and use’ table, and represents the interlinkages between industries in the economy, the use of products from all other industries, and how the changes in demand for different products will generate spillovers in the rest of the economy.

Different scenarios with different results

In the report, the authors compare different scenarios that are based on suggestions for the implementation of a Norwegian EPR scheme, with the suggestion of an eco-modulation based on principles suggested by the Wasted Textiles project for a Targeted Producer Responsibility (TPR) scheme. They show that eco-fees that use number of items instead of weight, lead to a higher decrease of synthetic textile products compared to those made of predominantly natural fibres. Scenarios that increase the eco-fee based on predominantly synthetic fibres also lead to significantly higher reduction in the consumption of synthetic textile products and can have important effects on other impacts, such as microplastic pollution and plastic waste in landfills in developing countries.

Some of the most important results highlighted in the report:

Textile consumption would decrease. Eco-fees would be typically integrated in product prices, indirectly transferring waste management costs to consumers and increasing the prices of textile products. Higher fees would potentially lead to higher decrease of textile purchase by households.
Money saved by households from a lower textile consumption would be spent elsewhere.
There will be shifts in the economy due to change in household spendings. This will lead to job losses in the textile industry, but gains in other industries as consumers spend money on other goods and services.
By shifting consumption from textiles to other goods and services, carbon emissions in Norway would increase. This is because of higher economic activity in other industries, while the carbon emissions decrease linked to textile demand, would occur in other countries.
Most of the impacts associated with Norwegian purchase of textile products are felt elsewhere: 88% of the economic value added, 98% of the employment, and 97% of the carbon emissions in the value chain of textiles consumed in Norway happens in other countries, mostly in Asia.

Distribution of impacts on value added creation, employment, and carbon emissions of Norwegian consumption of textile products across global value chains

The authors further show that the impacts on the Norwegian economy are heavily dependent on three factors:

Firstly, the size of the fee. In a situation where the fees are similar to those practiced in France or in the Netherlands, two countries with established EPR schemes, the fees would average 0.61 NOK per item. This would result in a reduction of consumption of 0.6% to 1% in the number of items purchased per year, mostly felt for products made up of mainly synthetic fibres. By 2035, this would lead to households spending 3.6% less in textile products than in a baseline scenario with no eco-fees, corresponding to 1.6 billion NOK, or 0.1% of total household expenditure. This would lead to a loss of 750 million NOK of value added and over 700 jobs disappearing in the Norwegian textile value chain. Most of the economic and job losses would be in the retail industry.
The second factor is where the eco-fees are invested. In 2035, eco-fees collected would amount to 192 million NOK. The investment of 75% of these eco-fees in textile waste management would lead to an increase of 74 million NOK in value added and 61 new jobs in the waste management industry.
The third and most important factor is where households would spend the money they saved by purchasing less textile products. If households spend more money on products and services according to the same distribution as they used in 2022, this would result in additional 2 billion NOK in gross domestic products (GDP) across the entire Norwegian economy in 2035, and over 1,500 additional jobs, including the losses from the textile value chain. If households spend the money on services only, job gains could increase to over 2,000. This is because most of textile products are imported, and changes in their demand mostly affect the textile retail industry, while services have a highly integrated value chain, generating spillover effects across multiple Norwegian industries.

Download the report here.

Feedback delivered on ESPR 2nd milestone

Kinga Zablocka on 3. March 2025

Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) and NICE Fashion have delivered feedback on the Preparatory study on textiles for product policy instruments: Ecodesign, EU Green Public, Procurement EU Ecolabel 2nd milestone. All in all 19 comments were prepared and submitted, after attending a two-day webinar in December 2024, where the 2nd milestone document was introduced.

The submission focuses on issues related to ‘durability’ and ‘repairability’, as these are key concepts from EU’s Joint Research Center, and according to them the main drivers for consumers to keep their apparel for longer. We do not agree with this, and have argued why in the feedback. The idea that Duration of Service can be predicted at the start of a product’s lifetime, is one of the things we argue against, and our recommendation is, as we have repeated often, to immediately start dating products, and use waste audits, or even better, SIFO’s new method to capture relationship between properties and use (more information on the method here clothingresearch.oslomet.no).

There are several other points we make, around issues such as PEFCRs, replacement, environmental impact, aggressive marketing, and volumes; and we hope this will be helpful in the work moving forward. We would wish that JRC took more of a consumer perspective, than an industry perspective in their future work on ESPR for textiles and apparel.

To read our feedback, you can download a pdf of our 19 comments here, each comment starts with where in the 2nd milestone the wording or issue we address is, as this was required in the feedback.

Comparing Male and Female Wardrobes: Gender Dynamics in the Practice of Dressing

Kinga Zablocka on 11. February 2025

Authors: Vilde Haugrønning, Ingrid Haugsrud

Abstract

This chapter explores the influence of gender on clothing consumption and the impact on differences in clothing volumes between men and women. Based on a qualitative and quantitative wardrobe study, we employ Schatzki’s (2002) social ontology of practice combined with Butler’s (1990) gender performance concept to examine the relationship between gender and clothing consumption in 15 households in Norway. The findings show that women had on average 497 items and the men had 258 items, and the main difference between male and female wardrobes was due to the number of items per occasion. These findings highlights the complexities and tensions faced by women in navigating clothing norms and maintaining a balance in the practice of dressing between appropriate dress, feminine expressions and having an ideal and more sustainable wardrobe. This chapter contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between occasions and gender dynamics that shape clothing consumption patterns. Moreover, it illustrates the potential of ‘occasion’ as an analytical concept and the implications of gender in clothing consumption, challenging the prevailing studies on clothing and fashion that often overlook the nuanced practices and actions that influence clothing volumes.

Click here for the full article (emerald.com ) or contact the authors for a copy.

When gender comes into play

tobiasson on 8. February 2025

Two portraits from the Local Wisdom project. Photo credits: Kerry Dean and Paige Green.

The second article from CHANGE with gender as a main focus has been published, authored by Kate Fletcher: Gender, Fashion, Sustainability in Clothing Cultures.

Text: Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Tone S. Tobiasson

Kate begins the article with a review of what is obvious to us who work in the field, most researchers, most informants are female. And her research question is How does gender affect clothing use practices in the Local Wisdom Project?

The way Kate places gender, clothing and sustainability together is an important point in the article, however it encompasses more: Kate has returned to her wealth of stories about clothes from the Local Wisdom project, which was carried out between 2009 and 2014, a total of 415 stories from a total of nine countries, of which 316 ‘practices of use’ ended up on the website and in the study, 20.6% of them are from men, 79% from women and also included one non-binary.

So, what are they saying? Kate does a simple analysis and finds the themes that women and men highlight. And believe it or not… men are interested in economics and technology, women in most other things. Researching gender and clothing is not easy, because much of what we can and will find are obvious truths. Thus it is important to remember that the claims of ‘truth’ also need to be documented, discussed and explained. We need systematic comparisons. We need to put into words the obvious and see the limitations in ourselves. We don’t need a sustainability discussion only for women. We need everyone to be involved and everyone to contribute. We cannot continue to leave out half of the population just because they, well… are men.

At the same time, there is another perspective: To the extent that men and women have very different approaches, this is also reflected in the policies that are developed. This is not discussed in Kate’s article, but her research gives us a clue as to why policy development today uses a ‘male language’ and a male approach with spreadsheets and data-sets as the basis; while women have a completely different language and approach. So ‘lost in translation’ is perhaps something that needs to be explored further, to make EU policy make sense for both genders.

Link to article, click here (intellectdiscover.com).

Link to the first article Comparing Male and Female Wardrobes: Gender Dynamics in the Practice of Dressing, authored by Vilde Haugrønning and Ingrid Haugsrud, can be found here.

Clothing Care

Kinga Zablocka on 12. January 2025

“And he don’t even care for clothes” sang Nina Simone in “My Baby Just Cares For Me” which is how the chapter “Clothing Care” opens in the new, impressive and comprehensive book “The Palgrave Handbook of Sustainability in Fashion”.

Clothing researchers in SIFO use the Nina Simone quote to discuss the connection between “care[ing] about clothes, people, and nature. There is a connection between care as something practical and mundane, such as washing and repairing clothes, and the more general feeling of wishing to preserve something. The chapter spans from presenting knowledge on techniques used to maintain (care for) clothing such as washing, repair and storage; to discussing the prerequisites for caring about this.”

Ingrid Haugsrud is the first author. The text is based on data from her MA thesis in Fashion and Society from OsloMet. In 2016, she performed a wardrobe study with six informants in their 20s, and 63 favorite garments that the informants valued especially were registered. These were the garments that their wearers cared for both in emotional and practical terms. The other authors, Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Kirsi Laitala, use these specific examples to paint a picture. Together, they have extensive experience with scientific publications about different care techniques such as washing, repair and clothing use, as well as repurposing of clothing in the wardrobe. As such the text summarizes a lot of knowledge in addition to relating it back to topical discussions today; what can lead to change and the relationship between technical lifespan and longer use time.

The chapter is a product of the CHANGE-project. It uses wardrobe studies, empirical data and discusses a variety of topics such as how one environmental challenge, the volumes of clothing that are being produced, can be reduced. It points out that helping consumers to better take care of their clothes is not a vailable solution, as consumers would only take better care of their if they owned fewer pieces. For Ingrid, this work is not only important because it brings forth the important work she did on her MA thesis, but also because it is an early preview of what she will work on in her PhD, which is fittingly a part of the larger CARE-project. She hit the ground running by acquiring a publication in the field at the very start of her PhD journey.

We have not read the book in its entirety thus far, yet we have to prize its wide subject matter. It does not only include the environmental side of sustainability, but also the cultural and social aspects. We were able to find much more information in this book compared to most books on topics such as clothing consumption and production of clothing and shoes in and outside of Western Europe and USA.

Amazing international win!

tobiasson on 7. December 2024

Time to celebrate! Traditional costumes, the craftmanship and social practice from Norway, and summer farming (seter and fäbod) in both Norway and Sweden are now on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list!

This gives an unexpected boost to the Amazing Grazing project and puts some recent and older publications in a new light.

First and foremost a big congratulations to years and years of hard work from Norwegian and Swedish organizations to put these two intangible cultural heritage traditions on the radar of the global work with protecting the many disappearing or vulnerable cultural practices.

For summer farming at fäbod and seter: knowledge, traditions and practices related to the grazing of outlying lands and artisan food production, this is more related to cows and goats, and milking in Norway, however, the Cultural Ministry, when announcing the win on their web-page, chose a picture of (amazing) grazing sheep as their illustration! Traditionally, sheep in Norway were also integral in this practice. (As I can attest to, my father spent the summers of his youth at the family farm mountain seter, shepherding both sheep and cows.) It was the Swedish government, not the Norwegian, who fronted this application.

The Norwegian government, on the other hand, fronted the application of traditional costumes (bunad) in Norway, their craftsmanship and social practice.

The point is, for Clothing Research, that we need to understand ‘local’ dress better, and that the bunad is one of possibly many (or a few) dress practices where local is important, being very concrete and related to the material aspects (the textiles, the embroidery yarns, the sewing), but also the understanding of being ‘from a place’. This is part of a concrete use of clothing that enables being a part of a geographic community, a fibershed. This is described in this paper on Local clothing: What is that and how an environmental policy concept is understood.

On the other hand, the bunad has also had an important role in keeping the Norwegian textile industry alive.

The under-pinning idea that clothing is culture, is important here, and a big win, and exactly what is missing in the EU textile strategy.

We also notice the rise of other similar inscribes into the UNESCO list:

The women’s ceremonial costume in the Eastern region of Algeria: knowledge and skills associated with the making and adornment of the ‘Gandoura’ and the ‘Melehfa’
Custom of Korean costume: traditional knowledge, skills and social practices in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Craftsmanship of traditional woven textile Kente

The result of these two inscriptions will be a renewed interest in the cultural heritage, is assumed, but the organizations behind the applications have big plans for recruiting the younger generations and leveraging more interest both nationally and globally. 150 years ago, there were 100 000 summer seter or fäbo locations in Norway and Sweden, today there are 750 in active use in Norway, and somewhere between 200 or 250 in Sweden.

On the bunad side, the situation is brighter: there are 450 different traditional costumes in Norway, and an estimated 80% of Norwegian women own a traditional costume, and 20% of all men, this number is however, on the rise.

So what happens in the years to come, will be very interesting to follow!

Post growth (?) fashion webinars

tobiasson on 29. November 2024

Dec. 13^th 2024 15-16 CET (3-4 pm)
and
Jan. 16^th 2025 15-16 CET (3-4 pm)

Two consecutive talks by Consumption Research Norway SIFO at OsloMet
First one with Prof. Ingun Klepp and Tone Tobiasson and in January Kate Fletcher.

December 13^th: Prof. Ingun Klepp, Professor at the National Institute for Consumer Research, and Tone Tobiasson, Author and journalist, from Oslo, Norway. One of the most passionate and influential tandems in the textile research / policy space, with a long track record of pioneering research projects that changed our understanding of the use phase of garments, post consumer textile flows and plastification of fashion.

There is a cap for 100 people to attend each webinar. To attend, RSVP through the associated link to get a calendar invite.

January 16^th. Kate Fletcher is one of the most renown sustainable fashion researchers. Her work, including that on systems change, post-growth fashion, fashion localism, decentering durability, Earth Logic and nature relations both defines and challenges the field of fashion, textiles and sustainability. She has written and/or edited 13 books available in eight languages, and in 2022 she was identified by author Margaret Atwood as a visionary. Kate is a co-founder of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion. Her most recent work is about design, clothing and nature.

There is a cap for 100 people to attend each webinar. To attend, RSVP through the associated link to get the calendar invite.

Thematic session at PLATE 2025

tobiasson on 28. October 2024

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 Good Wool Collective’s first webinar

tobiasson on 7. October 2024

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.

TPR brought forward in What Fuels Fashion? Report

tobiasson on 5. August 2024

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.