With a majority of fibers in use today being plastic-derived, the call for change is echoing through Climate Week thanks to fashion activists.
Together, Ugandan climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate, Eco-Age founder Livia Firth and Harjeet Singh, global engagement director to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, joined climate and human rights leaders to launch the “Fossil Fuel Fashion” campaign Tuesday night. The call to action centers the need for binding legislation to help fashion break free from fossil fuel derivatives.
The news accompanied a panel discussion with the campaigners at New York City’s Morgan Library. It was hosted by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund. George Harding-Rolls, Eco-Age’s policy director; Rachel Kitchin, Stand.earth’s corporate climate campaigner, and Cameren Bullins, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s program associate, were also on the roster.
After more than three years of investigations by partnering nonprofits, like Stand.earth and Plastic Soup Foundation and research from the Geneva Centre for Business and Human Rights, the Fossil Fuel Fashion campaign airs the linkages between fashion and Big Oil and hopes for sounder pathways to a fossil fuel-free future.
“More than any other industry, fashion drives and thrives off the inequality between the Global North and the Global South,” Nakate, who is also a UNICEF Goodwill ambassador, said in a statement. “While fashion companies grow rich on a fast-fashion business model fed by fossil fuels, they dump their waste and pollution on countries in the Global South least equipped to deal with it. A fast, fair phase out of fossil fuels from fashion is critical for climate justice.”
Campaigners etched in a phase-out plan and certain requirements such as committing to science-based targets, which the industry has acclimated to over the past few years.
Both Firth and Harding-Rolls took a firm stance against overconsumption and overproduction as incumbent to evolving sustainable progress, with Firth highlighting past commitments such as Eco-Age’s microplastics lobbying which led to microplastics inclusion in some policy revisions.
Johan Rockström, an environmental scientist and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, echoed existing sentiments in a statement. “The fashion industry, with its global reach, is intrinsically connected to numerous environmental and socioeconomic issues, encompassing resource extraction, international trade, human rights, agriculture, consumer behavior, geopolitics and environmental pollution. Our research shows six of the nine planetary boundaries have now been crossed, and anthropogenic activities are a key driver of this. As a sector, fashion is closely linked to exceeding planetary boundaries in several ways, an influence which can no longer be overlooked or underestimated.”
As for what’s next, the campaign will mobilize in Brussels, COP28 and the World Economic Forum in Davos, with the intent to rally open support.