Does "sustainable fashion" harm the environment

The idea of the "circular economy" - reduce, reuse, recycle - has long been positioned as a way to combat the environmental crisis. In the fashion industry, this means not only reusing things and repairing clothes, but also introducing high-tech solutions: renting clothes, recycling fibre to fibre, using AI to sort fabrics and reduce waste.

However, as it turns out, these innovations may do more harm than good. As The Conversation reports, a new study has found that green technologies in the textile industry can cause what is known as a rebound effect - when increased production and consumption of clothing cancels out the environmental benefits of innovation.

This effect occurs when efficiency improvements reduce production costs and create the illusion of 'greenness', which encourages consumers to buy more. A similar phenomenon was described back in 1865 by economist William Jevons: back then, efficiency improvements in the use of coal led not to savings but to an increase in overall consumption.

The study was the first to calculate a global backward-looking coefficient for the fashion industry: it totalled 1.6. This means that for every 1 per cent increase in efficiency from green technologies, there is a 0.6 per cent increase in the production of new fabrics. In other words, the more innovation - the more clothes, and therefore more pollution and waste.

For reference, the textile industry is considered the second most polluting sector after energy. It consumes about 20% of all fresh water on the planet, emits 1.7 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year and produces 92 million tonnes of waste, of which less than 1% is recycled.

So why does "sustainable" fashion work the other way round? It's simple: lower prices, an ethical image and new technologies make clothes more affordable and therefore stimulate demand. Brands expand, consumers buy more - and the environmental benefits go to zero.

The researchers suggest not abandoning the circular economy, but supplementing it with control measures. One option is a production tax to compensate for the reverse effect. According to calculations, with a 10% increase in efficiency, a minimum tax of 1.25% could curb production growth. A 2.5% tax could reduce the effect to a safe level.

Other measures are also important: restrictions on the production of new items, encouragement of long-term use of clothes and real consumer education.

Examples already exist: France has a fund that reimburses part of the cost of clothing repairs, and the UK and Australia have public-private programmes to reduce waste in fashion.