Goodbye Fast Fashion: How sustainably and ethically made is what you wear?

Living out of carry-on travel packs year-round, we have researched (almost) all our gear. Whatever we purchase meets our needs as location-independent, minimalist travellers and will stand the test of time. Quality over quantity is not just a snappy phrase but a necessity. But with sustainability among our core values, we want our gear not only to be technically the best gear for our lifestyle but also to be made in a way that does not harm our environment or the people and communities involved in its manufacturing.

This article might be for you if you’re in the same boat. We’ll talk about how to learn more about the brands you wear, and we’ll share what brands we use and how they stack up when it comes to doing the right thing for people and the planet.

Where to learn more about your clothes and how they’re made?

If you, too, want to ensure that what you buy wasn’t manufactured by poisoning rivers in India or forcing seamstresses in Bangladesh to work in an unsafe building, start asking where your clothes came from (and I don’t mean the department store three blocks away).

Unfortunately, manufacturers are not always forthcoming with that sort of information, and there is no single global, independent body that monitors the manufacturing industry and assures us that they are doing (and we are buying) the right thing. So, how do you know?

Independent bodies

Firstly, there are a bunch of institutions out there that have made it their mission to find out. While their methodologies cover different aspects and thus don’t always come to the same conclusion, their databases and reports are a good starting point:

• B Lab
• Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
• CSRHub
• Ethical Consumer
• Fair Labor Association
• Good on You
• Know the Chain
• Shop Ethical!
• Tear Fund.

The databases also allow us (consumers) to compare brands with each other (using the same assessment criteria).

Manufacturers directly

The other port of call is the manufacturers themselves. Many publish Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Statements (and other information). But if you spend some time reading them, you can tell which ones are just marketing gimmicks/greenwashing tactics and which ones genuinely address the sustainability and ethics of their supply chain:

• Signs they genuinely care: Full transparency of the supply chain, standards of conduct and sustainability policies, regular (unannounced) visits of manufacturing plants, use of recycled materials and eco-friendly manufacturing methods, regular reporting
• Greenwashing indicators: Empty marketing statements without a (meaningful) proof (or with evidence relating to a small portion of products only), no transparency, no (regular) reporting, token charity projects to distract from shortcomings

Other public domain information

Another data point is search engines. Simply searching for “{brand} worker payment/safety/{whatever else you want to know}” may return something (and if there is nothing, it’s usually a good sign). I just did that for Nike, a brand sadly still in the news for its worker mistreatment and environmental pollution.

Search engines serve as effective testing grounds for assessing whether a company engages in greenwashing or if a previously criticised brand is making genuine efforts to improve.

How sustainably and ethically made is what WE own?

We were curious to establish a baseline a few years ago and started researching the companies that manufacture our gear. Some of our initial findings were mere confirmation of what we already knew, while others were eye-opening (and not in a good way)—incentive enough for us to look for alternatives once these items reached their end of life.

We review and update our assessment (at least) annually as we add and remove items from our packing lists (Female packing list | Male packing list).

So, how does our gear stack up? The below table lists all the brands we currently own. We include links to the companies’ sustainability statements/policies for brands without independent assessment.

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