Why we shouldnt be talking about sustainability
[Music]
okay
fast fashion eco fashion sustainable
fashion
conscious fashion there’s just too many
terms out there that we need to deal
with now
um and it’s strange to me how new things
keep getting thrown away
take the example of the food industry
first we were told sugar is bad then
fats were bad
then came vegan diet keto diet
paleo diet it’s just a whole bunch of
information that is so confusing we
don’t know what to do anymore
and at the end of the day the answer was
simple
just follow a balanced tire right
and it’s the same with sustainability
sustainability is so
innate in all of us that we don’t need
to be talking about it
it comes naturally to us it’s just
we’ve forgotten what it means
now india culturally has always been
sustainable
to think about the most basic definition
of what sustainability is
it’s the avoidance of the depletion of
natural resources
in order to maintain an ecological
balance
what that simply means is what you take
from nature you give back
and keep everything in balance and
everyone’s happy
india being like i was saying india has
always been culturally sustainable
uh we have the culture of
hoarding where you know we keep
everything
uh in in whatever we get we keep it in
our cupboards my mom would
uh for every gift boxes we would get she
would store the gifts uh the gift boxes
and use it for something else
or we’re very thrifty uh you know where
we reuse
and and hand give our old clothes to
someone else
um i would wear all my clothes from um
my cousins would pass it down to me or i
would give my old clothes to my other
cousins
or our old t-shirts would be turned into
kitchen rags
and we led a very simple life
like even the first proponent of
sustainable fashion
was mr gandhi and he used to make his
own fabric
he would spend it on the loom uh we are
one of the
the our water consumption is the least
compared to the other
developed countries um and we were very
happy
like as as indians we’ve been very happy
living a simple life
um being in sync with nature
even our texts uh like the ayurveda
yoga they all preach about
living a simple life and not wanting too
many materialistic possessions
so how did we lose our way what went
wrong
um with the advent of industrialization
there was a boom in the economy
more people were engaging with each
other there were there were
trade was picking up people were
consuming a lot more
uh many many brands were coming up
enticing people to buy more
and the great thing about some of the
best
advertisements you see is they’re very
simple
but they’ll influence you in a way where
you just have no control over yourself
you just you want that product you want
it now
and and and that’s it and it keeps
businesses happy
it keeps economies growing it makes uh
investors happy and and it’s it’s all
good
so this brings me to our main subject
today which is fashion
i come from fashion i love fashion i
grew up reading vogue
um i wanted to become a designer i did
end up doing footwear design
um and it’s a very exciting and a very
glamorous field
today you have many fast fashion brands
that i’m sure most of you go to and most
of you are wearing right now
we love these brands because they speak
to us and
it’s it’s something we
you know we like being a part of
something uh bigger than us
and it’s the stories they sell that
really
resonate with us
and then you have these brands use
fashion influencers fashion bloggers to
really
make it even more exciting and you see
someone you like or someone you look up
to wearing something from a brand and
you want it immediately
even so just like campaigns big
companies create
campaigns you walk across a store you go
to any mall
you see huge hoardings and and you want
them you want those pieces the way
they’ve been styled the way they’ve been
designed it’s
it’s it’s it’s something you can imagine
yourself wearing and it’s it’s
it’s it’s just it’s it’s you know it’s
appealing it’s attractive
sustainability on the other hand is seem
to be boring
um or that’s what it’s sort of uh
that’s the image people have of
sustainability that it’s all
vegan food it’s you know it’s people
hippies wearing
jude clothing and it’s it’s it’s it’s
boxy
it’s very simple too basic uh not that
exciting
well the two don’t have to be mutually
exclusive and that’s what i’m here to
tell you
it there are brands out there a case in
point being all birds it’s one of my
favorite brands
they make hundred percent sustainable
sneakers
out of merino wool out of sugarcane out
of
natural rubber it’s completely
biodegradable and it looks really good
like some of the biggest tech
giants in silicon valley are their
consumers
then the second example would be of
reformation this is my new favorite
brand that’s
also us-based uh reformation is known
for creating some really attractive
styles for women
they celebrate femininity and uh they
celebrate the environment as well so for
every piece of clothing that they make
that tell you how much water has been
used what kind of carbon emissions were
released
per item of clothing which we’ll come to
in a little bit
so the reason why we are even talking
about any of this why i’m speaking about
sustainability
in fashion why these two are so
important
is because every single piece of
clothing you buy today
has a story and and it’s not
that great it has a dark side to the
textile industry which
more and more consumers are now becoming
aware of because of all the information
that’s out there
um and
it’s it’s it’s something that we
we don’t even think about the t-shirt or
the pair of jeans we wear who’s behind
them who’s making them
how much water was used how many
resources were utilized
um and this idea really came
to me
when i watched a documentary uh about
three years ago it’s called true cost
uh it focused on the working conditions
of garment makers in factories that were
making clothes for
fast fashion brands across the
developing countries like india
bangladesh
and it was very
it was a grim reality of how
how our clothes are made and how when
you see these exciting campaigns and you
see fashion bloggers
looking really cool you don’t see the
people who’ve made the clothes
you don’t see the garment workers who
are working
in who are overworked who are not being
paid fairly
um there was in fact like a huge
disaster that happened in bangladesh
where
1200 workers died because the entire
building
which was making clothes for all the top
past fashion brands collapsed
and the reason for that was the factory
owner did not care for the safety of his
workers he cared more about
providing the cheapest clothing to any
of these brands
because how brands work is they go to
the vendor who will
offer them the best price and then
brands add their margins to it
and the bigger the margin the more money
the brand makes and
you think you’re buying something so
cheap for 500 rupees the margin on that
is like almost 100 percent
so the garment worker is being paid five
like two rupees
for a t-shirt you’re wearing for 500
rupees which you’re going to throw in
three months or six months time
so the cost of the unseen cost of making
your garment is very high
and most of these clothes you discard
within a span of
uh six months or whatever
goes up in landfills goes into landfills
and
landfills are basically wide areas that
have been provided to people to
actually discard waste uh it was fine
up till a certain point where we were
there was not enough wastage being
generated
but now it’s reached a point where
people are throwing
way too much not using it for too long a
time
and and that’s causing like an
ecological imbalance
in fact the statistics are so bad and i
don’t mean to
like make the sound really uh
grim that is the reality the statistics
are so bad that in the uk alone about
235 million items were clothing
were discarded in one year
and 1.2 billion tons of carbon emissions
were released now carbon emissions are
an
important sort of uh term to know right
now because we’re talking about global
warming climate change
and i’ll come to that
so the reason why we should care at all
about any of this why i’m even here
standing having this conversation with
you uh
is because we’ve reached a point where
we’ve used up our resources to its
maximum capacity like
if we have to survive if earth has to
survive we cannot use any more than we
are using right now
because the global temperatures are
rising and we are not seeing
we’re not feeling the direct impact or
maybe we are but we are not aware of it
um if you’ve been noticing
the monsoons in bombay lasted until
november the ice the
glaciers are melting their flooding is
happening all across the world
and it’s not just i’m not saying it’s
only because of
the fashion industry it’s because of a
lot of other uh
industries that have a role to play but
yes the fashion industry is the second
largest polluter in the world um
we had a polluter of water be it air
pollution be it
um uh some of these two for now
and the emissions being released
are are at unprecedented levels
and people feeling the impact of those
emissions are the ones who have no role
to play in this
like they are the most vulnerable they
have
we don’t see them but they’re feeling
the direct impact
of climate change
as i was saying that all most of your
fast fashion clothes are made in
developing countries because that’s
where the labor cost is cheap
people um are willing to work
more for less because they don’t have a
choice
and the textile industry pollutes
like everything like all the dyes that
are used in your clothes go into the
rivers
um the cotton that is produced cotton
takes up a lot of water so like your one
t-shirt takes around 2 000 plus liters
of water just one cotton t-shirt
and that is because we’re using all the
available
water resources there’s not enough
drinking water being left
for people who need it the most
so 1.5 trillion liters of water is used
by the fashion industry every single
year uh
23 kgs of greenhouse gases are generated
for one kilo
of fabric produced now this is like all
statistics the statistics keep changing
but
what you need to understand is
emissions are okay let me just give you
a little science behind what
like very quickly what emissions are is
just it’s basically everything around
you including yourself we’re all made up
of carbon uh
and when and we’re all releasing carbon
uh
carbon dioxide mainly and then there are
and so in the in the ancient times when
we were taking anything from earth
because we do need earth for making
stuff right like
for food or for making fabrics or for
anything we
depend on earth for it so but whatever
we were taking
we were making stuff out of it wearing
it throwing it back into the earth
and then whatever emissions were being
released would be absorbed by
the available trees and and um the
surrounding ecosystem so everything was
in balance whatever was coming was going
back into earth again
we were living in harmony now what’s
happened is because of us
like not only fast fashion but because
of over consumerism over consumption
people want things instantly we want
more
uh more of everything uh what’s happened
is it’s created an imbalance so we are
throwing out much more
than earth can take so all these extra
carbon emissions that are being released
are being absorbed um
so like carbon dioxide absorbs heat
and that’s that creates a greenhouse
effect and that greenhouse effect is
what keeps earth warm and which is why
we can survive
but the over uh the excess of carbon
dioxide and greenhouse gases
is sucking more heat and it’s trapping
more heat
and that’s creating global warming
so small like you can connect the dots
later it’s fashion industry more wastage
more
stuff coming out into the atmosphere we
are cutting down trees also to make way
for
infrastructure to build roads to build
metros or whatever
and that’s not leaving enough room for
the planet to survive
in the way it was meant to survive
so what’s the solution uh we cannot stop
buying
that’s a fact we will not stop uh
you know wearing clothes or buying
things and
so there is no one solution to it
sustainability can mean different things
to different people
uh for me right now it’s more about
buying say clothes that are made more
mindfully where people are well paid
that are made out of natural materials
for some it could be
carrying your own bags or carrying your
own bottle not using plastic
and there’s a new term i’d like to
familiarize you guys with
and you should look into this later it’s
a way it’s something that’s been
uh gaining momentum in the in the last
few years
it’s called a circular economy so up
until now we’ve been living in a linear
economy which is
you take something you make something
out of it and you throw it
and that system is not really working
imagine the amount of products each and
every single one of us buys
from your cosmetics like one person has
an average of like 15 cosmetic products
from your healthcare from your clothing
shoes home appliances laundry
everything and there are seven billion
people on this earth so every single
person is buying that many products
throwing it it’s just sitting there in
the landfills not being re
like some of it gets recycled when most
of it can get recycled because there’s
no sort of way to do it um
and it’s just like it’s not a very
viable sustainable option in fact the
economy is losing billions of dollars
every year by wasting so much
whereas the circular economy what it
proposes is
you take something from nature you make
something out of it
you use it till the end of its life
cycle till you can’t use it anymore
you throw it and then you use it again
for example if you buy say you buy a
l’oreal product and you buy like
two three shampoos conditioners
deep conditioner serums whatever and you
take everything from them
and you give it back to l’oreal and
l’oreal
breaks down all the plastic the bottles
that
every single customer is sending their
way
and they make another packaging out of
it
and then you use it they sell it back to
the customer and you keep using that
instead of making new bottles every
single time
so that’s a way like that’s a you save
time you save money you save
the planet you save a lot of things it’s
a win-win
wow sorry
okay so a lot of big companies are
already moving towards this
uh there’s nike the h m is also having
uh
the hosting circular innovation
challenge where they’re inviting people
to come up with solutions to
in this case like break down their shoes
and make a new shoe out of it
there is um a company called aggro
agroloop biofiber that is using
that is making fiber out of wasted crops
so beard banana peels uh beard
hemp seed oil the leftover fiber that’s
uh
left in the hemp fields there’s sugar
cane
and and now since we’re in we’re in a
digital we live in a digital economy
we’re moving towards
uh a lot of brands innovating with ai
based platforms to find clothes that
really fit
a person so there’s little room left for
any kind of wastage when it comes to
um you know making a pattern or
uh you have to understand that when you
make a pair of clothing there’s a lot of
lot of wastage that goes into sim into
making the fabric into making the
garment
because there’s trials and errors in the
pattern you don’t like something you
throw it you cut it out you
there’s wastage of paper there’s wastage
of materials
um and this like platforms like this
where
you just like 3d scanner body and you
make a garment exactly to the to the
right fit of
that very consumer uh it leaves little
room for any of those things so it’s a
long
it’s still in a trial stage but
how part it’ll go and how much it can
scale is yet to be seen
okay so how do we become sustainable
in this day and age it’s a
it’s a challenge but it’s not something
that’s impossible
uh we
every single thing you do in your daily
life be it
how much you like but if you take a
rickshaw
to you know to a place that’s like a
kilometer away instead of that if you
just walk
you’ll burn more calories you’ll you’ll
burn less carbon emissions
then um carrying your own bag simply
carrying your own bag and doing away
with plastic all together is a great way
to contribute
uh buying less of anything
like do you really need like three
shades of lipstick
or like 10 shades of nail paint
just being mindful about how things work
and how much you’re putting out there
and also educating yourself every single
day about what
sustainability is is what’s going to
empower you like my standing here and
telling you any of this
may or may not have an impact uh but
you willingly educating yourself and
understanding the reality and accepting
that this is
we are all part of the same ecosystem we
all live on the same planet
there is no other planet to go to and we
all have to survive here
so should we we should we do it
together or should we like not care at
all like that’s that’s for you to decide
and every little action of yours has a
consequence
um i already explained that with the
with the images of
the polar bear and the kid and we i can
show you a lot more but
every little action of yours even today
this very instance when you’re sitting
here you’re thinking
or like tomorrow if you go by you walk
into a store and you make a purchase
that’s going to have a consequence so
make sure it’s a good one
thank you