While New York City’s fashion industry provides 204,000 jobs and generates $90 billion in wages, as noted by the city’s official website, there’s an environmental consequence of this booming industry that’s causing concern.
A study by the United Nations Environment Programme shows that 10% of the annual global carbon emissions come from fashion manufacturing. Additionally, 87% of the total materials used for clothing ends up incinerated or disposed of in a landfill.
In response to the fashion industry’s role in climate change, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a round of $10,000 grants to support sustainable fashion manufacturing. Funded by the New York State Fashion Innovation Center, the grants will be available for startups, small businesses, farmers, and researchers, to encourage the use of renewable animal, plant and bio-manufactured fibers. The program is slated to run for five years, with up to 12 grants awarded annually. But even though the grants can help with sustainable efforts, the cost of environmentally-friendly fashion is expensive and industry experts acknowledge that $10,000 is just a start in creating lasting change.
Karen Pearson, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, said that pilot programs, like the $10,000 grants, are key to identifying innovative solutions to large scale problems and challenges. “Following the initial pilot, those projects that show promise will need access to additional funding to demonstrate viability,” she said.
“The trends tell us that consumers today, specifically young consumers, are very concerned with the sustainability of the garments that they are wearing,” said Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, who sponsored the New York Textile Act in 2022. The bill rewards the production and manufacturing of textiles from New York plant or animal-based fibers, in the form of tax credits and marketing support.
Despite the evidence of fast fashion’s negative climate impact, consumers are generally hesitant to embrace ethically made fashion due to its higher cost. A white t-shirt from environmentally-conscious brand PANGAIA is $90 versus one for $6.49 at H&M.
Isobella Wolfe, an editor for Good on You, a blog that helps consumers make more ethical purchasing decisions, said sustainable fabrics are much more expensive to produce, and there are strict federal guidelines for materials to be certified as organic. “It may seem counter-intuitive, but all the chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers actually help to keep the cost down for farmers of conventionally produced fabrics,” said Wolfe in an email. “With less toxic shortcuts comes more time and effort that goes into the planting, growing, harvesting, spinning, dyeing, and cutting of eco-friendly materials.”
Many designers wish to steer the conversation away from keeping up with trends and towards quality. Kaitlyn Gillums, a recent fashion graduate of Parsons School of Design, said that while ethically made clothing is often more expensive, it is worth paying for a garment that will last much longer than a cheap alternative. But Gillums said figuring out how to bring costs down was also one of the factors that drew her to work with sustainable materials, which include upcycled bed sheets and ceramic breastplates made from food waste.
“Coming from a low-income background, it’s been my second nature to try and find a cheaper way of doing things,” she said. “When I would see people spending hundreds of dollars on these really harmful materials, it was just not something I resonated with.”
The Fashion Innovation Center’s grants are not the first municipal push for sustainable fashion reform in recent months. In June, the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act was revised, which requires fashion sellers who exceed an annual revenue of $100 million to uphold environmental standards.
Also, a $1 million grant was given to the Garment District’s Custom Collaborative, a non-profit that trains immigrants and low-income women in sustainable fashion. With the additional funding, the collaborative was able to expand into a 10,000-square-foot office in the heart of the Garment District, a neighborhood that’s historically been a site of labor exploitation and harmful production practices, said Joymala Hajra, the group’s communications manager.
“I think sustainability in general has an issue of not letting people’s voices through, and it being an elite, small section of society,” Hajra said. “It’s not about reinventing the wheel, it’s about amplifying people at the forefront of sustainability who have already been practicing these [methods] for centuries.”