The statistics about fashion’s global influence are wrong – here’s why.

The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world after oil. It is also responsible for 20 percent of water pollution. On that note, did you know that it takes 20,000 liters of water to produce one t-shirt? All these statistics have one thing in common – they are false. The fashion industry has been reading outdated statistics, wild generalizations and such baseless claims for years. Whatever you call it – misinformation, fake news or Zombie data – The reality is that they are undermining the sustainable development of fashion.

“Bad information has real-world problems,” said George Harding-Rolls, campaign manager at the Changing Markets Foundation, a group that exposes irresponsible corporate practices when it comes to sustainability. “If there’s no reference, it’s lost in translation, it’s been deleted from the Internet, or if no one can find the mechanism behind it, you can say that a statistic is false,” he explains.

Fashion is unique because it interacts with many other industries, including agriculture (for leather, cotton, viscose, wool and others) and big oil (including polyester, PVC, polyurethane). That’s not to mention chemicals, transportation, retail, returns, textile recycling, and the second-hand clothing market, all of which can take clothes around the world and be returned again in their lifetime.

“Unlike any other industry, fashion is integrated into the global economy,” Harding-Rolls said. “So it’s hard to try to get the right information on any of these things.” Given the scarcity Clarity Even with the most basic data, it’s impossible to encapsulate fashion’s impact into pure statistics.

A lack of research is partly to blame. “It’s not an industry with a strong scientific community interested in studying it,” says Alden Wicker, a sustainable fashion journalist and founder of Ecocult. It’s broken A No of Stupid facts Throughout her career. “There should be more grants for people who want to study this and more university programs that allow people to study textile chemistry in a way that doesn’t prevent them from working for brands.”

Undeniably, fashion media also plays a role in perpetuating false realities. “Do I wish fashion journalists had a more in-depth education on some of these topics? Yes, I do. But I think anyone who wants to write about fashion probably doesn’t have an organic chemistry degree – Wicker. “Fashion journalism is run on the smoke of young people who are not paid enough for the time it takes to do this kind of legal work. Fact-checkers, she says, are rarely able to stop misinformation at its source.

When research is done, it is often published or funded by brands, making the findings inherently biased. “If this is where all the funding is coming from, you have to ask for it,” said Nusa Urbancic, campaign director of the Changing Markets Foundation. “It would make sense to have more independent funding for academies that could help the fashion industry influence.”

But if these hard-hitting (albeit inaccurate) statistics highlight the extent of fashion’s influence and inspire change, then surely that’s a good thing, right? There has been much discussion of how Wicker, the “second most polluting industry” can encourage action. Maybe it’s okay, but it’s not,” Wicker says. “It encouraged promises and greenwashing. It was an image that was extremely vague, unquantifiable, and allowed the industry to make equally vague and unmeasurable climate promises that no one would be held accountable for.”

Brands can use out-of-date or inaccurate data (or the lack of it) to make positioning decisions, which means they may be actually increasing their influence, capturing information that fits their agenda, or delaying their sustainability promises altogether. “Everybody is treading water by saying we need better data, meanwhile, the broader conversation about fossil fuel dependence and overproduction will be pretty much avoided for a while,” says Harding-Rolls. “We shouldn’t wait for the right information because the environmental crisis is so urgent,” agrees Urbancic.

So what is the solution? “A law would really change the situation,” Urbancic said. “It’s hard to dig up basic information, but that will change once we have a binding law.” New York’s Fashion Law is one potentially game-changing law. “It can do a lot of good because it’s using the government to force brands to report what’s in their own supply chain,” Wicker says. “Watchdogs can use this to generate information that journalists can use to hold brands accountable to the public.”

In the media, Wicker would like to see more science, climate and health journalists take an interest in fashion. “It’s such a fun thing to write, I don’t think science nerds realize how juicy a topic it is,” she says. “There’s a lot to take in, and that’s why I love it.”