From Food to Fashion: Applying Sustainability Lessons Across Industries

Take Vanessa Barboni Hallik, creator of apparel brand Another Tomorrow, for example. Hallik wanted to create traceability in her business model, and she found the food industry contained some of the best models for traceable supply chains. Another Tomorrow prominently lists the materials the label uses in their creations: organic cotton, organic linen, and ethical wool. Each one links to a page that describes that material and its ramifications for sustainability. The label is also clear about the materials they do not use, particularly polyester.  Hallik explained that one of her inspirations was the farm-to-table movement. In her words: “It’s a way to satisfy that craving for the connection that was lost when supply chains spread all over the world.” What Hallik has picked up on is that the food industry has already had its reckoning with consumer demands for sustainability. Wasteful and ecologically harmful practices of conventional agriculture certainly persist, but they have drawn sufficient backlash from environmental groups to promote the creation of new standards of organic, ecologically- and socially-conscious agricultural standards.  Now the fashion industry, long notorious for pollution and environmental and social harms, is coming under the same intense pressure. Sustainability-oriented labels are responding by looking to the food industry and seeing what they can learn.  Caroline Brown, the managing director of investment firm Closed Loop Partners, says that fashion needs to increase transparency and sustainability to enhance the contemporary retail experience. In her words: “It’s not far from what we have seen in organic food today that has already made the steps to regularly share process, ingredients and origin, even down to the specific farm.”  Of course, the connections between agriculture and fashion run deep. To a considerable degree, sustainability in fashion depends on sustainability in agriculture – at least where biologically-based agricultural product-derived fabrics are concerned.  Sustainability in agriculture is desirable, but farming practices are also not easy to change. Here, however, fashion can learn from the example of other actors that rely on agricultural products.  Take the cereal company Kashi, for example. Driven by a desire to increase the sustainability of its supply chain, in 2016 Kashi launched a partnership with the organic certification company Quality Assurance International to help the farmers it relied on, make the transition to organic agriculture in their years.  The fashion industry could learn from Kashi’s example, partnering with suppliers of cotton, linen, wool, and other materials and helping them to achieve organic certification and adopt other sustainability-related practices.  To give a related example, some sustainable fabric suppliers are already transforming food waste into fashion. These designers use agricultural wastes, including those from crops of bananas, pineapples, flax, hemp, and sugarcane, and turn them into natural fibers.  The future of fashion and the future of food are intertwined, not least because both depend to a considerable degree on agriculture. Eco-conscious fashion designers would do well to continue to learn from the food industry.