Inspired by food labels, university students in Argentina prototyped Eco-conscious Tags to highlight the environmental impact of fast fashion.
Fast fashion is a business model that produces clothing quickly, cheaply, and in large volumes to keep up with trends. This rapid scheme requires vast resources, pollutes substantially, and fuels a throwaway consumer culture. Not to mention, fast fashion’s affordability often comes at the cost of inhumane labour.
Given the industry’s scale, a variety of approaches are needed to promote more sustainable choices. One potential avenue is to make the ecological impact of their clothing choices more visible, thereby appealing to consumers‘ environmental consciences.
The Argentinian government mandates that prominent labels like “Excess Sodium” or “Contains Sweeteners” mark qualifying food packaging. This led four Sustainable Design students to ask, “if food requires such labels, why not fashion?” – a question in their final project, the Eco-conscious Tag, aimed to address.
Surveying Argentinian consumers about clothing purchasing habits, the team discovered that mandatory tags highlighting environmental impacts could deter fast fashion consumption, just like food labels. They designed paper tags to accompany garment price tags – featuring warnings like “Contaminates Water” or “Excess Carbon Emissions,” with more details on the other side of the tag.
The result: Placing these tags next to prices was strategic, since “affordable price” was the top priority of those surveyed. With 30% of participants willing to pay more for sustainable fashion and 50% potentially willing, the tags aimed to influence purchasing decisions at a crucial moment, and therefore promote more sustainable choices.
Although this project was confined to the university, it offers valuable inspiration for fashion industry regulators worldwide. Food for thought: perhaps garments qualified for Eco-conscious Tags, ought to be based on life cycle assessments of their respective environmental impacts of their composite textile(s) and become an industry standard.
Are you aware of any other nudges that promote sustainable fashion? Feel free to comment or get in touch: hello@green-nudges.com
From four Sustainable Design students at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Polly Graham, Rosario Seré, Beatriz Amaro, and Manuela Cadena spent a semester exploring design thinking to address UN Sustainable Development Goals. For their final project, they analysed fast fashion’s industrial key players and life cycle, to prototype an intervention aimed at reducing its environmental impact.
From Tauranga to Auckland, New Zealand schools are enthusiastically embracing the fun of sustainable commuting one Wednesday at a time.