2 figures to start this post: according to research by Common Objective, Google searches for “sustainable fashion” have grown 46% and “ethical fashion” 25% in the past six years.
This blog post will tackle the ethical fashion subject, an other one for sustainability will come later :)
What is ethical fashion?
Ethical fashion is about designing and manufacturing clothes in a way that reduced the impacts, the effects for people and communities as well as on the environment.
Thus, a brand would consider human rights, animal welfare, materials used and the environmental impact at every stage of the design process and supply chain, from seed to the customer.
Why is ethical fashion important for the environment?
Let's make it clear: Producing any clothing like bikinis will always have an impact on the environment. But the goal is to reduce it as much as we can. If a brand tells you that she has 0 impact on her environment, you'd better check twice...
According to the True Cost, the world's population is consuming 400% more clothing than at the beginning of 2000. Indeed, the world's population increased in the same time, but not on the same proportion.
4 times more clothing bought mean a huge impact on our immediate environment. In these days of constant change and instantaneity, climate change and use of our natural ressources such as water are a global matter.
Fast fashion, by designing a new trend every 2 weeks highly contributes to deplete world's water sources but also poisin them by rejecting colorants for dying or by other means. At the moment, according to many sources, the clothing industry is the world's second largest clean water polluter.
By only producing a limited quantity of clothing, but with a timeless and high quality in the time, ethical fashion will reduce the impact of our whole environment for a better future for everybody
Why is ethical fashion important for the garment workers?
Around 97% of fash fashion clothing are made overseas, with a huge emphasis for poor Asian Countries such as Bangladesh / Vietnam / India and China but alsi in Eastern Europe.
To go a bit in depth, if a bikini set is sold 10€ in a retail shop ( online or not), the wholesale price is around 5€ and the total cost of production is 2€.
2€ for the whole production process and paying the workers... I let you imagine the wage received by these garment workers... maybe 10 to 20% of these 2€.
Moreover, 80% of these workers producing clothes are women and victim of repetitive abuses in all impunity.
On the other hand, Ethical fashion put human in the center of the game. It assures that the workers are fairly paid for the know-how and the quality they bring to the production. As the production is much limited in term of numbers, they can concentrate so the piece of garment will last longer in time. A fair pay means that they can feed their families and also have possibilities of self-development.
About our independant brand Sunbe Design, we consider ourselves an ethical brand and are totally opened about our bikini production. There is of course always ways to improve but keeping a guideline is always important. Most of our swimwears are multi-ways, so it also positively impacts the number of clothes you need to buy. Why buy 1 when you can have 4??
Feel free to reach out by commenting or sending us email here about our ethically handmade swimwears.
Looking for timeless quality new bikinis? Don't forget to check out our styles.
