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The UK government has been called on to provide more support to retailers
and address the alarmingly growth of unsuitable clothing consumption by an
academic at the University of Leeds. Elizabeth Morgan, from the School of
Earth and Environment, argues that although retailers such as Marks &
Spencer have encouraged more sustainable consumption of clothes with the
introduction of its , such successes will not be replicated on
a larger scale by other retailer without action from the goverment.
Morgan highlights the scale of issues caused by clothing consumption in the
UK is huge and only set to increase if left unaddressed. UK consumers spend
41 billion pounds on clothing alone in 2011, making it the second largest
consumer goods category after food and drink according to Mintel. “The
average UK household owns some 4,000 pounds worth of clothes, but almost a
third of clothing in the average wardrobe has not been worn for at least a
year,” points out Morgan, quoting figures gathered by the Waste and
Resources Action Programme (WRAP).
If consumer would actively wear clothes for just nine months longer, it
would extend the average garment’s life to close to three years and 5
billion pounds per year could be saved from the costs of materials and
resources used in clothing supply, laundry and disposal, in addition to
saving 5 percent of the country’s total annual carbon and water footprints
relating to clothing consumption, according to a 2012 report from WRAP.
Morgan, who is also a trustee director of the Energy Saving Trust, argues
the issue is being exacerbated because consumers continue to replace
clothing more frequently, thanks to cheaper garments and “faster” fashion
cycles with additional, shorter seasons being pushed and shorter apparel
development cycles.
It takes more than M&S’ Plan A to make ‘green’ clothing fashionable
In her new research paper,’Business Plan A: Analysing Business Model
Innovation for Sustainable Consumption in Mass-Market Clothes Retailing’,
Morgan studies Marks & Spencer’s Plan A, which was originally launched in
2007 as a five-year plan with 100 social and environmental commitments
before being updated and expanded in 2010. “The clothing sector has been
identified as having huge environmental impacts, but the big players are
under-explored in terms of innovation for sustainability,”
with academics failing to take note of M&S sustainability innovations.
After analysing seven years of the department store group’s reports linked
to Plan A, she found that initiatives such as , sustainable textiles, fairtrade
cotton and lower temperature washing have positive outcomes thanks to their
“learning by doing” nature.
“NGOs and activists expect big companies to get it right from the start,
but the M&S approach refreshingly shows they were prepared to learn by
doing and by experiment, and could be given credit for doing so
transparently. An established business can develop new business models in
the interest of achieving long-term sustainability goals.” However, Morgan
goes on the question how much an individual retailer, no matter how large
or small, could be expected to push innovation when it comes down to
sustainability.
“M&S’s competitive advantages make it less valuable for competitors to
imitate the initiatives, serving as barriers to those competitors
participating in system change. For wider system change, it would be
beneficial if these barriers could be overcome. Perhaps the role of
government is to recognise when businesses have created a new business
model for more sustainable consumption and to support continuing
development for such innovation by finding ways to make it attractive for
other businesses to adopt,” she adds. “There is only so much that even the
biggest clothes retailers can do on their own.”
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs previously identified
the clothing sector as one of ten priority areas for sustainable production
and consumption and brought together close to 300 businesses, charities and
non-governmental organisations in 2010 to develop the ‘Sustainable Clothing
Action Plan’ (SCAP), led by WRAP. As a result, 72 companies from the
clothing sector, including M&S, New Look, Next, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, have
pledged to reduce the carbon, water and waste footprints of clothing they
supply or receive in the UK by 15 percent between 2012 and 2020.