Browsing by Subject "muotiteollisuus"

Despite public campaigns demonstrating the global fashion industry’s sustainability efforts to address climate change, the industry is still largely behind the needed systemic change to remain on the 1.5-degree pathway. Its sizeable contribution to climate change, such as the estimated 10% share of the global total of greenhouse-gas emissions in 2017, is only anticipated to increase, due to growing population and consumption patterns. The concept of decoupling economic growth from material resource use as a path towards sustainability becomes especially contradictory when faced with the fashion industry’s linear business and fast fashion models. This thesis examines how the systemic change of the fashion industry is perceived, and how the industry’s linear business model and its contradictions with the concept of decoupling can be addressed through regulatory measures, especially in the case of European Union (EU) policies on fashion. The thesis analyses the framework for systemic change in the fashion industry through the case of the EU and its preparation for the EU Strategy for Textiles (2021) and the Sustainable Products Initiative (2021), including their preparatory policy materials, such as roadmaps and discussion papers by the European Union and its respective agencies. The document data is triangulated with semi-structured expert interviews, and the data is analysed using qualitative content analysis. Based on the analysis, EU policy perceives systemic change of the fashion industry primarily as a transition to a circular economy model, where it is presented as a win-win situation for both environment and economy. Despite these ambitious aims, there is still reliance that there are no limits to growth. The study finds that this promise of ever-increasing economic growth within planetary boundaries is materially contradictory. In fact, the study suggests that the system of capital accumulation and its adherence to the material growth of economies is the main impediment for systemic change. The evidence indicates that this contradiction is deeply embedded, highly complex, and global in scope, with numerous obstacles, if it is to be overcome. Yet, some elements in the EU process show a desire to attempt to address these problems and radically alter the structure and operations of the fashion industry. The study finds that by reflecting the true costs of environmental and climate harms, as well as human rights, by increasing the criteria and obligations for the fashion industry actors, the problem of overproduction and overconsumption may be addressed.