Welcome back to another blog post! This month, we are exploring an aspect of sustainability that interests me— sustainable fashion. I’ve chosen this topic because April 22 is Earth Day. Since 1970, Earth Day has been a day to take action for the climate, learning about sustainability initiatives and coming together as a community. Here in Canada, Earth Day Canada provides programming and organization each year. Their mission is to “inspire, support, and facilitate innovative actions for individuals and organizations to reduce their environmental impact.”
Learning about the fashion industry is one way to reduce your own environmental impact. The fashion industry is relevant to all of us— even if you don’t find fashion design interesting, we all wear clothing. It’s part of our everyday lives. And since it’s so common, you might never have thought about where it comes from.
Historically, people made their own clothing. Women learned to sew and community members trained as tailors to dress their neighbours. Today, Most of our clothing is manufactured in countries like Bangladesh, India, and China, then transported to Canada to be sold in stores. Manufacturers are producing more and more clothing each year to meet increasing consumer demand. This phenomenon— producing lots of clothing very quickly— is called fast fashion.
Fast fashion has significant impacts on our environment. The production of so much clothing creates immense carbon emissions: a 2024 report by the Statista Research Department estimates that “in 2022, the apparel industry emitted approximately 879 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents into the atmosphere.” The World Wildlife Fund estimates that 2,700 liters of water are needed to make one cotton t-shirt. And it’s not just creating the clothes— because clothing is manufactured and sold around the globe, the transportation process generates even more carbon emissions.
So what can we do? Learning about slow and sustainable fashion practices can help reduce the environmental impacts of our clothing consumption. Here are some things you can do to build a more sustainable relationship with your closet.
1. Use clothing longer before replacing it. The most important thing you can do is simply reduce how often you buy new clothing. If you feel bored with your closet, try conducting an audit of everything you have, and identify new ways to mix and match pieces. You might find an old shirt you forgot you had and discover that you love to wear it.
2. Learn to repair and mend clothing. This step will help you to extend the life of your clothing. When a garment becomes torn, sewing skills can empower you to patch the hole and continue wearing the item. If you don’t know how to sew, you can find beginner tutorials on sites like YouTube, or try attending a repair café in Vancouver. Repair cafés are community events where skilled repairers can help you mend broken items, teaching you new skills along the way.
3. Thrift second-hand clothing. If you’re looking for new clothing items, aim to purchase from thrift stores, consignment stores, or other second-hand sources. Doing so will allow you to give a garment a second life and prevent it from being taken to a landfill. Not sure where to find second-hand clothing? Check out Get Thrifty UBC, a thrift store located right here on UBC campus in the Student Life building. All of their thrifted items are priced under $20. You also don’t have to leave your home to find second-hand clothing. Online retailers like Depop and ThredUp allow you to thrift clothing from your phone or laptop. Local Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and Buy Nothing groups are also a fantastic resource.
4. Organize or participate in a clothing swap. A clothing swap is a community event where people bring gently used clothing and swap items amongst each other. If you have clothing you want to say goodbye to, a swap is a great way to allow someone else to take the item for themselves and extend its life. And, if you need new clothing, you can typically find garments at clothing swaps for no cost. You can organize a clothing swap in your neighbourhood, at your workplace, at your place of worship, or with friends. SustainYourStyle recommends finding a location to host the swap, setting it up with clothing racks or tables, and making it a friendly event by starting conversations with the people who attend.
By taking any of these steps, you are helping to acknowledge and honour the human labour involved in clothing production. Instead of being easily thrown away and replaced, clothing should be recognized as the product of a person’s work— and one that is often very resource-intensive to create. You are also helping to decrease demand for newly produced fast fashion garments. If we shift our relationship with clothing to one that values sustainability, we can help address the growing concerns about fast fashion’s impact on the environment.
I hope you have enjoyed this blog post! A quick note: I am graduating from the MLIS program at UBC this May, and will be leaving my position as EDI Student Librarian as a result. That means this is my last blog post. It has been a wonderful year producing these posts and learning about what’s happening in the UBC community as I go along. Thank you to everyone who has read and engaged with the posts, and I hope you will welcome our incoming EDI Student Librarian this summer.
Further Reading at UBC Library:
Anguelov, N., & Taylor & Francis eBooks EBA. (2021). The sustainable fashion quest: Innovations in business and policy (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003153344
Edwards, Z. (2021). Mend it, wear it, love it: Stitch your way to a sustainable wardrobe (First American ed.). DK Publishing. [Available at UBC Library].
Klepp I. G., Tobiasson T. S.(Eds.), Local, slow and sustainable fashion: Wool as a fabric for change (1st 2022.;1; ed.). Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88300-3
Thomas, D. (2019). Fashionopolis: The price of fast fashion–and the future of clothes. Penguin Press. [Available at UBC Library].
Sources Referenced:
Get Thrifty UBC. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2025, from https://getthrifty.ca/info
Handle with Care. (2014, Spring). World Wildlife Fund. https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/spring-2014/articles/handle-with-care
How to organize a clothes swap. (2021, May 18). SustainYourStyle. https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/en/blog/2020/6/25/how-to-organize-a-clothes-swap
Matuszak-Flejszman, A., Preisner, A., & Banach, J. K. (2024). Transport-Related Emissions and Transition Strategies for Sustainability—A Case Study of the Fast Fashion Industry. Sustainability, 16(17), 7749. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177749
Mission, Vision and Values. (n.d.). Earth Day Canada. Retrieved March 25, 2025, from https://earthday.ca/organization/mission/
Statista Research Department. (2024, October 7). Apparel industry CO2e emissions projection 2019-2030. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1305696/apparel-industry-co2e-emissions/