The fashion industry is primarily responsible for massive damage to our planet. One major party in the industry that’s guilty is fast fashion. With changing trends, many consumers are becoming more aware of the adverse effects of most fashion brands on the environment and are seeking more sustainable options. However, the consumers are not the only ones making a shift. Several fashion brands also follow this trend and launch sustainable fashion advertising campaigns. They’re also pushing for more sustainable clothing and production processes.
Whether these brands are simply greenwashing their image or want to save the planet, you can decide. However, we’ll be covering the most successful sustainable fashion advertising campaigns and strategies in the article. We’ll also explore sustainable fashion and why it’s so important.
What is Sustainable Fashion?
To understand the importance of these sustainable fashion advertising campaigns, it’s essential to know what sustainable fashion is and why it’s so important. Most people don’t understand what it entails. Therefore, a guide on the topic is crucial. Sustainable fashion brands create fashion to consider the environment and humanity in general. It reduces the environmental impact of its products wherever possible. The goal is to use a system that won’t leave a negative footprint.
Sustainable fashion is about producing products that are carbon neutral. Sustainable fashion is directed towards creating a fashion industry built on animal welfare, equality, ecological integrity, and social justice. It is a movement fostering changes to the fashion system.
The fashion industry’s carbon footprint makes up 10% of the global greenhouse gas emission. Therefore, it’s pretty clear that the fashion industry is destroying the environment with most of its practices. Due to this, a change is necessary, and there’s a need to create more awareness towards sustainable fashion practices. This is in line with taking active roles towards making a change. Fortunately, many positive changes are happening in the fashion industry today. Many ethical brands and customers are demanding sustainable clothing brands. In addition, there’s now an ethical clothing search engine you can utilize.
Change doesn’t come easily in the fashion industry. Most changes that are different from the industry’s economic projection usually meet a brick wall or are postponed. The only option for sustainable fashion is a slow shift from fast to sustainable fashion. One way most brands are achieving this is with sustainable fashion advertising campaigns.
Why Sustainable Fashion is Important
Most people are constantly asking why the world needs sustainable fashion. Below are six of the top reasons we should embrace sustainable fashion and why these advertising campaigns are crucial.
It Creates Less Waste
A 2015 study showed that 97% of materials used for making clothes are new resources, with only 3% coming from recycled materials. Every second, a garbage truck of textile waste is dumped or burned. This enormous amount of waste comes from fast fashion companies that launch weekly fashion trends. They fulfill these trends with poor quality and cheap-priced products. In comparison, sustainable fashion focuses on quality products made from long-lasting materials. They don’t follow fast fashion trends.
Sustainable brands use recycled fiber, which reduces pressure on virgin resources and tackles the growing issue of waste management.
It Ensures Ideal Working Conditions and Fair Wages
Cheap fast fashion apparels are usually possible through harsh working conditions for garment workers. Most fast fashion brands produce these clothing in developing countries where most workers get paid below the minimum wage. The poor safety and health conditions, in addition to the constant pressure to produce, usually create an environment of worker exploitation. Most fast fashion brands are accused of child labor. Sustainable fashion is quite different and prioritizes safe working conditions and fair wages for all employees. Most sustainable fashion advertising campaigns advocate for humane working conditions and fair wages above average for workers.
Sustainable Fashion Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emission
Fast fashion has a huge carbon footprint that results from manufacturing, material creation, transportation, and textile waste decomposing. An example is that most fast fashion brands use petroleum-based materials for their clothes. This includes nylon, acrylic, and polyester and, therefore, requires lots of energy for production and disposal. It usually requires different synthetic chemicals for dyeing, bleaching, and the wet process. These chemicals can cause diseases and death for farmers and their children. However, sustainable fashion takes an entirely different route. It uses biodegradable materials obtained from natural and recycled fabrics. These materials don’t use chemical treatments nor require fertilizers and pesticides to grow. They also use less energy and water for production.
It Teaches Us to Love Our Clothes Again
There’s a need to be aware of the downsides of this fashion industry. It’s easy to simply look at a gorgeous piece of clothing and not think about the life cycle and story behind it. We are detached from the story behind our brand because the industry encourages us to be so. Awareness helps us make more conscious decisions and be friendly to our planet, people, and animals. Sustainable fashion makes us recognize the impact of our buying decision. It is not an inconsequential part of our lifestyle, and it doesn’t change with every season. It is a human and environmental responsibility that can affect the future of our planet.
Sustainable Fashion Saves Water
The fashion industry is amongst the largest water consumers in the world today. The water consumed isn’t only for washing garments but also helps with manufacturing, dyeing, and the finishing processes. It usually takes about 2,620 liters of water to make a single cotton shirt and 7000 liters to create one pair of jeans. Apart from consuming water, the production process impacts the environment by polluting freshwater with toxic chemicals that find their way into waterways. Most sustainable fashion brands have a ‘budget water’ policy that limits water usage during its production process. Additionally, sustainable fashion prioritizes organic textiles from hemp, linen, and organic cotton that requires little to no water during production.
It Saves Animal Lives
Animals are crucial in our ecosystem, and they play a vital role in ensuring habitable earth. Threats to wildlife and animals’ safety should be a concern for everyone. Leather bags and shoes, fur coats, and other goods from animal feathers, wool, and leather affect the animal population. It also affects the survival of humanity. Sustainable fashion brands use sustainable fashion advertising campaigns to take a stand against the exploitation of animals in the industry. They utilize fur and leather alternatives in their products to help preserve the balance of the ecosystem.
Top Sustainable Fashion Advertising Campaigns
You can find some of the top sustainable fashion campaigns in this section. We explore brands that continually showcase their stand and how their actions aim to protect the environment.
Sustainable Fashion Advertising Campaign – Levi’s: Buy Better Wear Longer
This sustainable fashion advertising campaign focuses on creating quality clothing that lasts not for months or years but generations. Levi’s achieves this using sustainable production practices. They also invest in materials and technologies that won’t harm the environment. In this campaign, the brand used six activists and celebrities from all over the world. There was a debate on how controversial this campaign was. People blamed the company for continually selling clothes that damaged the environment while blaming consumers.
Sustainable Fashion Advertising Campaign – Jigsaw: For Life, Not Landfill
In 2015, Jigsaw, a British luxury women’s fashion label, ran a campaign to make people think about the cost of low-quality, mass-produced clothing. This sustainable fashion advertising campaign criticized fast fashion and had a huge marketing success. The ad brought new customers to the store and made the brand even more visible.
Sustainable Fashion Advertising Campaign – Everlane: Warming Jackets
Everlane is an outdoor fashion brand that creates puffer jackets using recycled plastic water bottles. A single jacket comes from 16 discarded bottles. Additionally, the ad message highlighted this fact and was powerful enough to put the brand in the spotlight.
Sustainable Fashion Advertising Campaign – Levi’s: Water<Less
Levi’s chose a distinct approach rather than pretend they’re a part of an environmental challenge. In conjunction with water.org, Levi’s created a campaign that used the hashtag #doingyourpart. They asked people worldwide to make a few changes to their everyday lives to help fight the Global Water Crisis. Levi’s advised people to skip the shower one day a week to save 121 liters of water. You should also wash your jean once every two weeks rather than weekly to save 19 liters of water. People are also encouraged to cut back on the liters of water and learn to reuse a water bottle or, rather, use glass instead. This challenge was quite successful as over 1300 cities worldwide joined Levi’s Water challenge.
Sustainable Fashion Advertising Campaign – Who Made My Clothes
The mission was to foster change in the fashion industry and raise awareness for the industry’s prevalent issues. This was more a movement than a sustainable fashion advertising campaign. It began in 2013 when the Rana building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing over 1000 cloth makers and injuring over 2,500.
Sustainable Fashion Advertising Campaign – Lacoste: Save Our Species
This sustainable fashion advertising campaign aimed to draw attention to species threatened with extinction. They produced a few polo shirts and swapped their logo to images of different endangered species. To illustrate that only a few species were left, Lacoste sold only 3,500 shirts, and the fashion brand shared its profit with a non-profit organization. The campaign was quite successful. It was featured in several online newspapers and blogs.
Aldofo Dominguez: Old Clothes
Another sustainable fashion advertising campaign that made the rounds in 2020 is the ‘Old Clothes’ campaign by Aldofo Dominguez. This Spanish fashion brand’s campaign featured old items and encouraged people to opt for timeless and durable outfits rather than fast fashion. This campaign was unique because it asked its customers to return clothes 20-40 years old. The brand refurbished and remodeled these clothes and then showcased them in the campaign. The clothes were always accompanied with details about how old they were and the campaign’s tagline, ‘Buy clothes that last longer than trends.’
Final Thoughts
Advertising campaigns are the best way to convey a sustainable message that will draw attention and cause customers to reflect on their habits. Additionally, it is an effective communication tool that influences those that watch them or cause them to reflect on the topic. That’s why many fashion brands are releasing sustainable fashion advertising campaigns that combine aesthetics with morality and inspiration with practicality. These sustainable fashion advertising campaigns tell a story and leave a strong mark. We hope it inspired you to be the change you’re looking for.
If you’re looking for an opportunity to deepen your understanding and knowledge of the practices of sustainable fashion, don’t hesitate to take a look at our course “The Sustainable Fashion Industry“. Our short and to-the-point, online class covers a wide range of topics spanning from sustainable business models to strategies to lower your carbon footprint. Here’s a link to the course, if you use the discount code BLOG20 at checkout you can access a 20% discount. Enjoy!
