Rebecca Morter: The Rise of Sustainable Consumerism
When you look at your jeans, it’s hard to imagine that it took roughly 1,800 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to make them. That seems like a shocking amount for something that can fit in a shoebox. If you’re like me, and you have an overflowing wardrobe, then you’re probably looking at an average-sized swimming pool worth of water.
Major clothing brands don’t exactly show the environmental impacts of their manufacturing processes. And, why would they? It’s their job to sell, and to encourage us to keep coming back. However, that lack of transparency is where it starts to fall down. Brands are now being asked to be more transparent in their production processes. But until then, it’s up to us to find out the environmental impacts of our shopping habits.
One woman encouraging the conversation around sustainable consumerism is Rebecca Morter, a Kiwi-born fashion designer and CEO of the Lone Design Club. After graduating from the London College of Fashion, Rebecca set up LDC with other London Fashion Week exhibitors as a way to support smaller brands where the industry’s business model was going against them.
One thing Rebecca is incredibly passionate about is making the fashion industry more sustainable. “All the brands we work with in different ways are transparent, traceable, sustainable and ethical. We have brands that are made by either the designer themselves or are using factories in London or the UK; places that they are visiting and know are paying fair wages.”
Part of the Lone Design Club’s business strategy is setting up pop-up shops. Every month they take emerging labels to popular areas around London for them to sell directly to consumers. November’s pop-up store, on Charing Cross Road, was named Anti-black Friday: “It’s extremely difficult to build a sustainable business when you have to pay wholesale margins. We can’t compete with 70% off, and we don’t want too.” Rebecca explains.
“The sales teach a customer to devalue a good that is really worth much more. By doing that, you’re exploiting and hurting the different parts of the supply chain. The people making it are taking that hit. So, for us, it’s really about re-educating and helping customers understand that they get what they pay for.”
The industry's environmental impact is regularly talked about in the media. Recent reports have shown that the fashion industry is one of the top polluting industries in the world. In Stacey Dooley’s BBC documentary, Fashion’s Dirty Secrets, she travelled to a village in Kazakhstan to meet a farmer who’d been affected by the disappearing Aral Sea. In the space of 40 years, the sea had shrunk to a tenth of what it once was. One of the contributing factors to the shrinking sea is a cotton farm upstream which naturally absorbs high volumes of water.
In Rebecca’s view, “It’s at a point where the best worst-case scenario is that we cause serious long-term damage.” Back in November, Labour MP Mary Creagh asked Primark how they justified selling a £2 t-shirt and still be able to make a profit. Similarly, Stella McCartney recently announced her work with the UN’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action. An agreement with a series of targets with the aim for the fashion industry to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030 and completely by 2050.
Rebecca does not consider that the ‘Conscious’ collections by some retailers are truly sustainable. At least not yet, anyway. She argues that with larger brands their ability to be sustainable is faltered by the fact there are too many elements in their supply chain. “It’s kind of like Chinese whispers; the person at the top is like I want to create this and do it at least environmentally impactful as possible; but when that filters down through every single one of those little cogs in that really long supply chain, when it gets to the bottom, it’s so diluted by that point.”
“They’ve damaged themselves so much by having sales and customers expecting certain prices that they’re now experiencing the knock-on effect." In Rebecca’s opinion, this price trap is another important factor in preventing major brands to be more environmentally conscious.
Rebecca believes that a change in the consumer mindset is the way forward. “Buy less and choose well. Ultimately, sometimes spending a little bit more on one item that you’ll have forever is much more powerful. Don’t buy into the sales nonsense because somebody is getting hurt and someone is paying for that.”
