You Are What You’re Wearing : An Analysis of Strategies Promoting for an Environmentally Sustainable Fashion Industry

Sammanfattning: The fashion industry's progress towards sustainability is often a complex journey and changes within the industry, both ongoing changes and those required to achieve sustainability, cannot be singled out as something only of material considerations or bound to a specific stage within a lifecycle. This paper examines how a selection of environmentally inclined sustainability strategies within the fashion industry, contributes to or counteracts the industry's progress towards environmental sustainability. Including the overall work towards a sustainable development. The aim is also to understand how to lead the fashion industry toward an environmentally sustainable development and understand how sufficient they are in their current work. Strategies that aim to improve the environmental sustainability within the fashion industry are plenty, which can cover large and significant parts of the industry. Many depart from innovative approaches and aim to bring significant change and contribution to the fashion industry's work toward sustainable development. As concluded within this study, one strategy is not enough to solve the entire sustainability conundrum, since each strategy has proven to contribute with significant environmental impact reduction potentials, however the resulting environmental impacts' counteractions are equally significant. Thus, the most considerable potential for environmental sustainability can be gained when combining various strategies and implementing them during certain stages - because where one strategy is lacking, another can contribute, complement and/or reinforce.