Does sustainable fashion need a reboot? From green products to fewer, fairer clothes

People & power · Published 2026-10-24

Loose red, blue and white threads crossing a dark folded fabric on a workbench in a tailoring workshop — Loose threads: the work of rethinking fashion is far from finished. Photo: Igor Ovsyannykov (Unsplash), via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

Sustainable fashion has never been more visible. Recycled-fibre collections, "conscious" labels, take-back bins and carbon pledges are everywhere. Yet by most measures the industry's footprint has kept growing. If the movement's goal was to make fashion fit within the limits of the planet and fair to the people who make it, it is reasonable to ask whether the approach needs rethinking.

What has not worked

Greener products without fewer products

Much of the past decade's effort went into making individual products slightly better: a percentage of recycled polyester here, organic cotton there. These are real improvements per item. But the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that clothing production roughly doubled in the fifteen years to 2015 while garments were worn far less, and a 2020 review in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment estimated that the industry produces more than 92 million tonnes of textile waste a year. When volumes rise faster than efficiency improves, total impacts still grow.

Recycling as an alibi

Collection bins in shops suggest a closed loop. In reality, less than 1% of the material used to make clothing is recycled into new clothing, according to the same Ellen MacArthur Foundation analysis. Most collected clothing is resold, often abroad, or downcycled. Recycling technology is improving, but it cannot absorb today's volumes, and presenting it as the solution can encourage more buying.

Claims without proof

Words like "eco", "green" and "conscious" were for years applied with little evidence. Regulators have started to treat this as misleading. In the European Union, Directive (EU) 2024/825, applicable from 27 September 2026, prohibits generic environmental claims that cannot be substantiated with recognised excellent environmental performance, and sustainability labels that are not based on certification schemes or set by public authorities.

Leaving it to the shopper

Telling individuals to "vote with their wallet" places responsibility on the people with the least information and the least power over supply chains. Many people cannot afford expensive "sustainable" clothes; many of the most sustainable habits, such as mending, re-wearing and buying second-hand, were already ordinary for them.

What a reboot would look like

1. Make "less" the goal

The most effective lever is the simplest: fewer new garments, worn for longer. UN News, reporting in March 2025, cited expert estimates that doubling the lifespan of clothing could reduce the industry's greenhouse-gas emissions by 44%. A reboot would measure brands not only by the share of better materials they use, but by whether their total volumes are falling.

2. Make producers pay for waste

Extended producer responsibility shifts the cost of collection, sorting and recycling from taxpayers to the companies that put clothes on the market. The EU's revised Waste Framework Directive, in force since 16 October 2025, makes such schemes mandatory for textiles and footwear in every member state, with fees that can be modulated to reward more durable, repairable products and, potentially, to account for fast-fashion practices.

3. Stop destroying what is not sold

Since 19 July 2026, large companies in the EU have been banned from destroying unsold apparel and footwear, under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. That rule targets overproduction at its most wasteful point. Ecodesign requirements for durability and recyclability, and digital product passports, are meant to follow.

4. Put people at the centre

A sustainable industry is also one that pays living wages and respects safety and union rights. Enforceable agreements like the International Accord on health and safety, and laws that make brands liable for wage theft in their supply chains, such as California's Garment Worker Protection Act, have achieved more for workers than voluntary codes. See our history of the fight for garment workers' rights.

5. Normalise repair, reuse and rental

Repair, resale, rental and swapping are where most circular value lies. A reboot would make them as convenient as buying new: repair services in shops, spare parts, resale built into brands' own websites, and local infrastructure such as repair cafés. Our city guide shows what already exists.

6. Change the culture of newness

Fashion media and fashion weeks set the pace of desire. Showing the same piece styled many ways, celebrating re-wearing, and paying attention to craft and longevity rather than to novelty would change what people want. Some fashion weeks have started to set minimum sustainability standards for brands on their schedules; see what to watch at fashion weeks.

What stays the same

A reboot does not mean giving up on fashion as pleasure, identity and creativity. Clothes will keep mattering to people, and they should. The change is from a model in which sustainability is a product feature to one in which it is a limit: fewer things, made fairly, kept longer.

In short

Less production, enforced rules on claims and waste, fair pay along the supply chain, and repair and reuse made easy. None of it is new; what is new is that some of it is now law.

Sustainable fashion does not need a new product. It needs a smaller, fairer industry.

Sources

Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2017), A New Textiles Economy, summary of findings.
Niinimäki, K. et al. (2020), The environmental price of fast fashion, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 1, 189–200.
UN News (27 March 2025), Fast fashion fuelling global waste crisis, UN chief warns.
Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition.
European Commission, Revised Waste Framework Directive enters into force, and EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles.
California Department of Industrial Relations, Garment Worker Protection Act FAQ.