Ethical Clothing Australia: Insights on what an ethical industry looks like / October 18, 2024 by Nina Gbor

"Our purpose is to give the faceless a face and the voiceless a voice" -- That was the remarkable opening message that Rachel Reilly, Ethical Clothing Australia National Manager, gave before the start of the panel for the Ethical Clothing Australia Week in Sydney, in partnership with The University of Sydney's Modern Slavery Unit and the Business School's MBA Dimensions Program.

Ethical Clothing Australia (ECA) is an accreditation body that collaborates with local textile, clothing, and footwear (TCF) businesses to protect and uphold the rights of Australian garment workers. Their accreditation program maps a business' supply chain from design to dispatch, including initial design, pattern making, cut, make, trim, and all value-adding services.

Each year, ECA hosts a series of events, both virtual and in-person, to commemorate Ethical Clothing Australia Week. Now in its fourth year, it was an opportunity to celebrate the skilled workers in Australia who create and distribute the garments we wear and love. The week also recognised the businesses that have taken action to prove their ethical credentials by becoming Ethical Clothing Australia accredited and raising awareness about the issues regarding unfair worker treatment and different forms of exploitation.

James Cockayne, Nina Gbor, Ethical Clothing Australia Modern slavery 1 — From left to right: Ava Kalinauskas, Ella Spencer, Nina Gbor, Dr James Cockayne. Image credit: Lucie Davies, Ethical Clothing Australia.

This year's program ran from October 7-13, with events hosted in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland. In New South Wales' capital city, Sydney, the was called Ethical Clothing Australia Week 2024 x The University of Sydney's Modern Slavery Unit and the Business School's MBA Dimensions Program. The commemoration brought together several ECA member brands, such as The Social Outfit and Citizen Wolf. The NSW Anti-slavery Commissioner, Dr James Cockayne, was also present for the event which had an insightful panel discussion, and many more industry professionals in attendance.

Ethical Clothing Week Sydney Rachel Reilly 1 — From left to right: John Fields, Heather Chai, Andrew Quinn, Jenny Kruschel, Martijn Boeresma, Sarah Kaine, Carolyn Kitto, Rachel Reilly. Image credit: Lucie Davies, Ethical Clothing Australia.

Moderated by Heather Chai, Director Modern Slavery Unit at The University of Sydney, the panel featured:

The Hon. Dr Sarah Kaine MLC
Jenny Kruschel | TCF National Secretary | CFMEU, Manufacturing Division
Associate Professor Martijn Boersma | The University of Sydney
Carolyn Kitto OAM | Co-Director | Be Slavery free
Andrew Quinn | Director | ABMT Apparel

The panellists shared personal anecdotes from their experiences in the industry, providing a unique perspective on the challenges that still exist and how they can be overcome.

Ethics in the fashion industry

A persistent issue in the fashion industry is the rise of numerous “sustainable” labels with different criteria and definitions. Sustainability is often limited to the effects of clothing on the environment. However, sustainability should not be assessed solely through an environmental lens. The discourse should always include the impact on people, especially industry workers. It defies logic to label anything as “sustainable” if it requires the use of modern slavery to achieve its production goals.

The ethical issues in the fashion industry are extensive: unfair working conditions, extensive hours, forced labour and low pay are just a few of them. To provide some context, Fashion Checker (2023) states that 93% of some of the largest international brands are not paying garment workers a living wage. Besides that, many garment factories do not have the appropriate infrastructure for their workers to be safe and comfortable. Incidents like the 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory building collapse in Bangladesh killed more than 1,000 people died and injured over 2500 people. This greatly impacted the industry, exposing the need for significant changes to guarantee workers’ fundamental human rights and safety.

The fashion industry is considered one of the leading industries responsible for the existence of modern slavery. As a matter of fact, a 2018 report conducted by the Walk Free Foundation revealed that the garment industry is the second largest contributor to modern slavery, with technology being the first. The term modern slavery refers to when an individual is exploited by others for personal or commercial gain either through trickery, coercion, forceful labour or loss of freedom of some nature. Long work hours and correspondingly low wages are common characteristics of modern slavery. Workers are sometimes forced to work extended periods just to buy basic supplies.

According to the International Organisation for Migration’s 2021 study, Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, led by Walk Free, the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration, 27.6 million workers were estimated to be in a situation of forced labour, across the world. These workers were in countries with high and low wealth, economic and developmental levels. According to Walk Free statistics, in 2021, 1.6 out of every 1000 people in Australia were living in modern slavery, meaning 41,000 individuals were living in modern slavery in the country.

The speakers acknowledged how some of these conditions have improved over the years. For example, the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) implemented in Australia in 2019 requires larger companies and other entities to report how they prevent and address modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains. This notion is supported by 54% of Australians who say they exclusively support brands that are transparent about their supply chains based on a study commissioned by QIC Real Estate.

In addition, more companies have begun to allow maternity leave for their workers, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) adopted a code of practice on safety and health in textiles, clothing, leather, and footwear industries in 2021 to provide guidelines on risk management. Despite this progress, there is still a lot of work to be done, and transparency in the supply chain is one of the most significant barriers to change, significantly since the needs of fashion industry workers have evolved. With over 70% of victims of modern slavery, including forced marriage situations, nearly 30 million are estimated to be women and girls, with a majority of these women working in garment factories that create fast fashion. This equates to 1 in every 130 females (girls and women) around the world falling victim to modern slavery.

The Fashion Transparency Index (2023) indicates that 99% of major brands and retailers do not publish the number of workers in their supply chains who are paid liveable wages. Many of them still choose not to disclose how they operate. Transparency is the only way for workers to have a voice, not only nationally but also internationally. Harriette Richards in her 2022 paper, Risk, Reporting and Responsibility: Modern Slavery, Colonial Power and Fashion’s Transparency Industry, analysed through the lens of the Modern Slavery Act to discover which fashion brands in Australia had modern slavery in their supply chain with annual revenue from A$0-99 million to A$1 billion and over. She discovered nine brands on the list which had labels such as The Cotton On Group, Country Road Group, Zara, Uniqlo, and THE ICONIC.

Addressing the issues

The panel speakers unanimously underscored the pressing need for more stringent regulations and the enforcement of existing policies. They stressed that local governments should mandate companies to report on every manufacturing activity, monitor the whereabouts of their workers in the production chains, and document their tasks. Additionally, they should focus on minimising existing risks in the workspace and effectively implementing risk management plans.

Governments can also play an essential role in helping sustainable and ethical businesses scale. As Kitto highlighted, the issue with ethical businesses is that they tend to operate at a smaller scale due to more limited resources and high competence from other fast fashion brands. That sometimes prevents them from being able to take on larger projects or clients. Governments can provide the resources to help ethical businesses reach the scale they need to produce at a higher demand. They can also protect local industries from international concurrence on regional markets. Indeed, one of the principal issues for small ethical brands is that they cannot compete with giant international fast fashion companies that have mastered their cost/benefit ratio by using underpaid labour across the globe to achieve their mass production and artificially low product prices.

Krushel emphasised unions' critical role in providing a collective for workers to defend their rights. They are crucial to re-balance the status inequalities. Without them, workers are isolated and prone to exploitation, especially groups that are already at a high vulnerability status, such as women and refugees.

As consumers and citizens, we hold significant power in promoting responsible consumption by choosing ethical brands. However, despite the general public's concern for these issues, it can be difficult to discern which brands truly adhere to ethical standards. Opting for brands accredited by Ethical Clothing Australia is a reliable way to ensure the brand meets the necessary ethical criteria. Other reputable certifications include B Corp and Bluesign.

Furthermore, one of the most potent actions for the citizens to force the fashion industry to change is boycotting unethical brands such as Zara, H&M, Shein, Temu, Gap, etc. If enough citizens and consumers demand transparency and these brands see their profit margins decrease, there will likely be some form of change. There is a shared responsibility between the citizens and governments to take action for an ethical fashion industry. Individuals can start by making informed personal choices, advocating for change, educating others and demanding ethical clothing regulations from local and federal policymakers.

*Article by Martina Novajas and Maëlys Dunand.

Martina Novajas is passionate about social psychology and marketing, and their role in delivering creative and effective environmental communication strategies.

Maëlys Dunand is interested in combining law and politics for a broader approach to sustainability, as a viable pathway to making the world better for nature, humans and other living things.

How to reduce your fashion waste and environmental impact / August 27, 2024 by Nina Gbor

Eco Styles Talisa Sharma Circular Fashion 1 — Photo by Tamara Bellis

Over recent years the fashion industry has changed drastically; fast-fashion is now leading the growth in clothing consumption with clothing production doubling between 2000 and 2015 whilst the lifetime of the garments is decreasing. Mass produced clothing focusing on fast inventory turnarounds to capture everchanging trends. Let’s talk about figuring out the carbon footprint of your clothing consumption and a few tips for lowering it.

The circular economy model stems from the idea of keeping resources in a loop to optimise their use and value. The clothing industry is globally one of the most dominant industries and highest value industries due to its product value, employment and market size, and it has doubled in production size in the last two decades. Each year, 150 billion fashion items are produced globally, making the textile sector a considerable polluter with a detrimentally significant carbon footprint that many consumers are unaware of. The carbon footprint of the clothing industry is something that must not be ignored and with the increase in fashion overproduction and overconsumption, it’s necessary to stay informed on ways to curate a sustainable wardrobe that can also be very stylish. Something as simple as "extending the life of clothes by an extra nine months of active use would reduce carbon, water, and waste footprints by around 20-30% each".

What makes up the clothing carbon footprint?

Eco Styles Talisa Sharma fashion carbon footprint 1 — Photo by George Evans

Extraction and manufacturing

The most significant contributor to the clothing carbon footprint is from the production of clothing fibres, their production requires a substantial amount of water, energy, fertilisers, and land use. As well as this, there is the manufacturing process; consisting of the weaving, dyeing, cutting, and sewing which all use large amounts of energy, chemicals, and also the disposal of the fabric offcuts. With many companies having a global presence and reach, another significant contributor is transportation - the raw materials and the final clothing products often travel extensive distances all around the world. Packaging of the products also contributes to the industry's carbon emissions.

Consumption impacts

Once the consumer has received their items there is then the energy usage of washing, drying and ironing the clothes. Lastly, when people eventually dispose of the clothing that they no longer want, around 87% globally, goes into landfills despite the clothing still having 70% of its useful life left. Clothing made from synthetics such as Polyester “accumulate in landfills because conventional PET is non biodegradable” which can release harmful additives and microfibres which pollute the land, water and air.

Calculating your carbon footprint

This might seem daunting but there are many ways you can mitigate your impact and reduce your clothing footprint. To make a start there are many online resources that you can use to calculate your clothing carbon footprint, I would recommend Thredup. It asks you various questions about your clothing consumption and habits and then provides you with tailored suggestions on ways you can reduce your fashion footprint.

What else can you do?

Upcycle your clothes - this includes repurposing clothes such as transforming unwanted clothes into something else and clothes customisation.
Support circular fashion - utilise brands that offer schemes where they accept old clothes back and buy second hand items to keep existing clothes in circulation. Ensure that brands with take back schemes are reusing or recycling the clothing in the right ways and not burning them or sending the clothes to landfill.
Donate or sell your unwanted clothes - donating and selling your clothes gives them a second life and reduces the demand for brand new items.
Buy less clothes - when you are wanting to buy a new item question how much you need this or how often you will wear it.
Trade clothes - swap clothes with friends and family and host and attend clothes swaps. Clothes Swap & Style have free monthly clothes swap events in Sydney, Australia. You can get free tips from them on how to host your own clothes swap.
Repair your clothes - rather than replacing damaged clothes with minor problems, you can repair them, this extends the life of your garments.
Rent or borrow clothes - instead of buying new clothes for one off special events you can rent them, it is a fraction of the cost and helps optimise the usage of an item of clothing.
Educate yourself and others - share your knowledge with friends and family and stay connected with developments in circular fashion. Support sustainable brands - when you need new clothing, support the companies that prioritise sustainability and are making clothes designed for long term wear. You can know if a brand is not greenwashing when they are not transparent about how many garments they manufacture each year and refuse to disclose their information about their supply chain.
Avoid fast fashion - Instead you could try shopping for preloved clothing. Fast fashion produces clothing at artificially low costs using unsustainable factors such as modern slavery, planned obsolescence and poor-quality materials. Their low quality encourages short-term wear. These clothing items have also been proven to have toxic chemicals such as pesticides and flame retardants in the manufacturing process which can seriously impact your health as prolonged contact with the skin can absorb the chemicals into your body.
Restyle your clothes - this is using your creativity to wear one item of clothing in a variety of different ways through layering and accessorising, for different types of occasions which is demonstrated in this article.

Eco Styles Restyling Circular fashion Talisa Sharma 1 — Photo by Tamara Bellis

Article by Talisa Sharma. Talisa has a passion for business and enjoys educating and promoting sustainability and carbon friendly initiatives.

Are ecocide laws an antidote for offset and carbon markets? / August 4, 2024 by Nina Gbor

We need to talk about the travesty that is the carbon credit and offset market. Perhaps ecocide laws might be an antidote to this fallacy.

The irreversible damage done to ecosystems, pollution and biodiversity loss should not be commercialised and traded in a capitalistic way on a market.

It's been reported that the earth is facing its 6th mass extinction driven by human activity, primarily (though not limited to) the unsustainable use of land, water and energy use, and climate change.

In the pursuit of extreme extraction of virgin materials for manufacturing and extreme capitalism that doesn't care about the impact that it has on the earth, whether directly or indirectly, the notion of taking another action that cancels the damage the company has done should not even exist.

Meanwhile, because of the harm done in the name of overproduction and growth, there are animal and plant species that we will never get back. Ever. And their habitats are in too many cases polluted, poisoned or destroyed. Same goes for the human lives, communities, their land and environments that have been destroyed and will continue to be ravaged unless we end deceptive concepts like carbon credit markets.

The EU has voted to introduce crimes that can be 'comparable to ecocide' in its revised Environmental Crime Directive. Ecocide as a standalone crime would mean the most senior board members or policy makers would be held legally accountable for decisions that lead to mass environmental harm, regardless of how that harm is caused!

Jojo Mehta, Co-founder and CEO of Stop Ecocide International, said:

“The historic vote from the EU to include ecocide-level crimes in its revised crime directive shows leadership and compassion, and will strongly reinforce existing environmental laws across the region. It will establish a clear moral as well as legal “red line”, creating an essential steer for European industry leaders and policy-makers going forward.”

Take action by signing a petition here.

We need this type of reform in countries across the globe.

The fashion TRENDmill explained / January 11, 2024 by Nina Gbor

Nina Gbor wearing a secondhand ensemble with items from an op shop and consignment store acquired in 2017 and 2019. Image credit: Pepper Street Photography

I've been into sustainable fashion since I was 15 years old - wearing, promoting, styling and living the preloved lifestyle. This was long before sustainable fashion was a global movement and long before the term ‘sustainable fashion’ was a buzz word for nearly every brand and flocks of influencers. I abhorred fashion trends from a young age. I couldn’t understand why so many people clung tenaciously to a made-up reality where everyone is expected to wear the same trending styles of clothing until the dictators of fashion decided it was time to decree the next short-lived trend. This is fashion’s Jedi mind trick.

The fashion industry

In 2019, the size of the global apparel and footwear market was $1.9 trillion USD. It’s been projected to reach $3.3 trillion dollars by 2030. Several reasons exist as to why this industry is so lucrative. There’s the craftmanship, art, design, creativity, skills, beauty, artisanry and of course practicality that leads to the production of items that we love and find useful. In many instances, most or perhaps even all of these talents deserve to garner significant profits. But then there’s the dark side of the industry that has been inducing tremendous profits through atrocious practices. This side has been thriving on extreme capitalism with no concern for humans, animals nor the planet. The sole purpose is to amass huge profits at all costs. This is why we currently have 100 – 150 billion garments being manufactured each year, with only an estimated 8 billion humans to use them. It’s unsurprising that about 87% of items manufactured each year end up in landfill or incinerated.

Where fashion trends went wrong

This unchecked, environmentally degrading side of fashion has been able to grow and thrive so expeditiously in part due to the use of fashion trends. For probably about a century, following fashion trends was a significant part of social culture and clothing. It was portrayed in different forms. Fashion collections produced by brands have traditionally been designed and manufactured based on the four western weather seasons of Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. The trends generally adhered to this as well. Fast fashion hijacked and exacerbated the idea of trends and took it from about 4 trend cycle collections a year, to about 110 trend and microtrend collections a year. Naturally the time from one trend to the next decreased in the process. This is one of the factors that lead to over 100 billion garments being manufactured each year. Not to mention the tsunami of environmental and social justice issues from this overproduction and overconsumption.

Fashion’s environmental and social injustice issues

For too many decades, the grody side of the fashion industry has been using clever big-budget advertising, marketing, influencers and celebrities, to successfully manipulate people into feeling that they’re not enough unless they’re wearing the latest fashion trends. They’ve been able to control this aspect of social culture and use it to catapult their profits by somehow coercing many people to consistently buy apparel they don’t need. This is all in the name of aspiring to fit into this warped system that requires allegiance to whatever is trending in the moment.

With more trends being put out each year, planned obsolescence by clothing brands has become rampant. This means clothes are being designed for limited use with shorter life spans so that consumers are forced or encouraged to repeat purchases because the initially purchased items are not durable. The garments made by many fashion brands are increasingly being made from cheaper, poorer quality materials such as polyester. When something is damaged, it’s often less costly to buy a new one than to repair it. Products made in this manner very often end up in landfill in relatively short periods of time. In other words, these clothes are made to be disposable. This is the take-make-waste system that exists in fashion and several other industries.

The cost of the trends

The environmental damage from this excessive oversupply occurs at scale through deforestation, ocean and freshwater pollution, destruction of ecosystems and animal habitats, desertification, toxic chemical loading in soil and water bodies, etc. UN Climate Change states that annually, 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases are emitted from textiles production. By some calculations, sector emissions are projected to increase by more than 60% by 2030. In addition to that, there’s the devastating problem of modern slavery where garment workers are exploited, abused and drastically underpaid so that brands can make extreme profits. According to the 2022 Ethical Fashion Report conducted by The World Baptist Aid, 60 million people work in the global fashion industry. To give context to the general nature of social injustice and inequality in the industry, only 10% of companies surveyed in the report could show evidence of paying liveable wages to garment workers.

The personal style con

In the last few years, mainstream fashion began to drop the habit and promotion of following fashion trends. Embracing one’s own personal style became the thing to do. At the outset this shift appeared very positive for the environment and consumers alike. However, it didn't take long for fast fashion to find a way to also capitalise on the personal style wave by getting people to 'find or express their personal style' through constantly buying lots of fast fashion.

The shocking and sad truth is that following fashion trends never stopped. It simply changed form. OVERCONSUMPTION HAS BECOME THE LONGSTANDING TREND. In fact, overconsumption is our modern cultural trend. We’re consuming 400% more clothing than we did 20 years ago, while the length of time we use the garments has fallen by almost 40%. It’s no longer only about buying trends and microtrends to fit in with everyone else and the culture. Now the normal thing is to just buy stuff period because it’s easy, cheap or convenient to do so, then throw it away when you’re bored with it. And then buy other brand new stuff again and repeat the cycle. Fast fashion has made clothes more affordable than ever before.

The fashion TRENDmill explained

The fashion TRENDmill (or fashion treadmill) is a phrase I came up with in 2016 to describe this modern culture of mindless overproduction and overconsumption of clothing that has become too common and normalised in our world. With these factors being the trend, this conveyor belt system is fuelled by the continuous take-make-waste linear cycle on steroids.

We take (extract raw materials or virgin resources from the environment at enormous rates far beyond what we need). Then make (manufacture far more garments than is necessary or will be used). Followed by waste (majority of clothes end up in landfill relatively quickly). Disposability of clothes is embedded and expected in this cycle either through the culture of it or through planned obsolescence. There’s little or no consideration for reusing or prolonging the life of the textiles or the damage the TRENDmill system inflicts on the planet and its inhabitants.

The TRENDmill and general overconsumption

There’s a very strong throughline of the fashion trendmill concept with other waste streams such as food, furniture, electronics, automobiles, the built environment and hospitality.

We’re consuming more products than we ever have in human history. Nearly A$66 trillion worth of stuff is being purchased every year globally which is the equivalent of an estimated A$2 million per second. These purchases include the gamut of material stuff and possibly services. The world’s use of material resources has increased ten-fold since 1900 and is projected to double again by 2030. It’s been projected that the consumer class will reach 5 billion people by the year 2030, meaning 1.4 billion more people will have discretionary spending power which explains why consumption rates are expected to double unless we get off the TRENDmill.

We’re consuming our way into our own extinction

With these enormous levels of manufacturing and consumption, environmental degradation is at an all time high. This comes with things like toxic chemical loading on soil and water and extreme plastics pollution. These and other factors have been known to have fatal impacts on human health. As production keeps increasing, it looks as if we’re consuming our way into our own extinction.

A drastic reduction of natural resource use is critical. We need cultures and systems based on environmental sustainability and circular economy principles. There are colossal opportunities for us to stop the rapid flow of materials to landfill and reuse or repurpose these materials instead. And in the process, only take what we need from the earth. It will make our lives healthier, save the lives of animal species, reduce biodiversity loss, give us cleaner water, a healthier planet amongst other benefits.

How to get off the fashion trendmill

We currently have enough clothing on the planet to cater for the next 6 generations of humans. From the start of my sustainable fashion career, I've always talked about ignoring trends in favour of finding and expressing your personal style for the long term through secondhand garments (and not fast fashion). Secondhand clothing includes contemporary styles and clothes from nearly every fashion era dating back almost a century. One of the coolest ways to curate a sustainable wardrobe is to mix and match styles from one or multiple fashion eras to create your own individual style. It’s likely that this one-of-a-kind wardrobe tailored to your preferences will have any or all of these outcomes:

1. keeping your clothes for longer periods of time because you always look great even with very little effort

2. saving financial resources because you’re buying less brand new stuff

3. evolving to the best or desired version of yourself using secondhand clothes.

Getting off the fashion trendmill helps reduce clothing waste because in a sustainably curated wardrobe, the outfits suit your body, lifestyle and personality. With these aspects fulfilled, hopefully the temptation to consistently buy new clothes or fast fashion all the time can begin to fade or get eliminated altogether.

Getting off the trendmill on a systemic level

Ultimately, we need to implement circular economy principles into textiles and other industries. Things will shift when we change our relationship with clothing and the culture surrounding consumption of other material things. Here's how:

Reuse - restyle, repair, resell, repurpose, buy secondhand, redesign, swap, hire, rent, borrow, upcycle

Buy new from ethical & sustainable brands - (Not brands that greenwash). Patronise brands that are transparent about how many garments they manufacture, their entire supply chain and their manufacturing processes. Also buy from small, local and emerging designers

Advocate for system change - simply by living an authentic sustainable lifestyle when and where you’re able even if you don't proclaim it publicly. You can also gently and kindly nudge your immediate circles and communities into sustainable habits or run community events like clothes or other item swaps that inspire people to action. You can even push for policy and legislation change through your local and federal political representatives.

*Perhaps the most imperative option is for us to shift our focus away from filling our lives with material stuff and ascribing such extreme value to material things. Placing higher value on experiences and more positive developments could be the new and hopefully permanent wave.

Halloween waste is frightening! How to have a sustainable Halloween / October 16, 2023 by Nina Gbor

Halloween waste Nina Gbor Eco Styles pumpkin waste 1 — Photo by Gene Gallin on Unsplash

Halloween makes the month of October the perfect face card of what intense food, clothing and plastic overconsumption and waste can look like.

Halloween is a holiday themed around the supernatural and occurs every year on October 31st. It’s celebrated with pumpkins being carved and hollowed to make jack-o-lanterns that sit on people’s porches, decorate their homes and Halloween parties. Halloween cannot be the holiday that it is without costumes. People dress up for the holiday as any character, person or thing. Then there’s the trick-or-treat rituals where children dressed in costumes knock on people’s doors in neighbourhoods on Halloween night to collect candy / sweets.

halloween waste halloween 2023 trick or treat Eco Styles — Photo by Conner Baker on Unsplash

With food and fashion being the stuff on Instagram legend, these Halloween rituals are classic social media fodder including TikTok. They help increase the holiday reach and spread across the world. As much as the holiday is immensely fun for its patrons, it’s incredibly scary how much waste is generated during Halloween season particularly with costumes, plastics and food. It appears a circular economy system to eliminate waste should creep into Halloween rituals while keeping the fun parts alive.

Even though it’s rooted in Irish history over 2,000 years ago, Halloween has been a long-standing tradition in the U.S. circa 1840s. The holiday has grown in popularity around the world in the last couple of decades and so too have its waste-ridden customs. Many countries have been gradually making the holiday part of their social culture across the globe with Australia being one of them.

In Australia, one in four (5 million) Australians now celebrate Halloween according to the Australian Retail Association (ARA). They found that Halloween retail spending was set to hit A$430 million or an average of $86 per person in 2022. A joint research report by Roy Morgan and ARA posits that in 2023 this figure will rise to A$490 million spent on Halloween. With over 5.3 million Australians celebrating Halloween this year, there’s a 14% increase of $A60 million.

And each year in the month of October and the lead up to the 31st, retail, e-commerce sites and grocery stores cast spells over customers to make them buy mass-produced Halloween food, candy, costumes, decorations and other paraphernalia. Most of this stuff ends up in landfill shortly after the holiday is over. This annual consumerist ritual is incredibly fun for some people, but it has an economic and environmental cost to the planet.

In an article I wrote in 2021 called Christmas is the greatest annual environmental disaster, I shared that,

“Black Friday marks the annual initiation into the season’s global overconsumption ritual. It usually starts with Black Friday, goes into Christmas, gets hotter on Boxing Day then New Year’s and all throughout January. Our modern culture has set up this period as the festival of superfluous overconsumption. So it’s primed for voracious use of material things far beyond any other time of the year.”

With Halloween on the rise around the globe, in my opinion it has now joined the ranks of Black Friday and Christmas as the commencement into the season of cultural hyper waste that’s exacerbated during Christmas.

Halloween has infiltered a portion of Australian mainstream culture and there’s evidence that it’s going to continue growing in popularity. Let’s look at how much waste is generated in the US and the UK during the holiday to get a glimpse of what’s in store for countries like Australia with regards to waste. And significantly, how we can have more sustainable Halloween celebrations from now on and into the future.

Photo by Erica Marsland Huynh on Unsplash

The OG: Halloween in the U.S.

Holiday spending peaked at $10.6 billion in 2022, according to the U.S. National Retail Federation.

Food Waste - Every year almost 2 billion pounds (907,000 tonnes) of pumpkins are grown in the US and over 1 billion pounds (590,000 tonnes) of pumpkins are wasted and end up in landfill. 40% of consumers in the US buy pumpkins to carve out jack-o-lanterns. 60% of this demographic throw out the pumpkin flesh and seeds afterwards. This contributes to about 30.3 million tonnes of food waste in the U.S every year. Pumpkins (and other food) decomposing in landfill produce methane, which is a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent than CO2 to the planet.

Candy waste – With sweets (candy) being a fundamental part of Halloween, Americans buy almost 600 million pounds (about 272,000 tonnes) the equivalent of 6 titanic ships of candy each year according to Forbes and the National Retail Federation. This equates to $3 billion in candy sales. Next Gen Personal Finance claims that Americans throw away about $400 million worth of uneaten Halloween candy. There’s also the issue with candy wrappers and plastic packaging that goes straight to landfill or worse - the ocean!

Plastics waste - Plastic candy packaging is a good segway into the topic of Halloween plastic waste. Most candy wrappers are made of plastic and are not recyclable because they are made of mixed materials such as aluminum, which means they’re considered to be contaminated. And therefore, more difficult to recycle.

Some of the major candy companies in the US have taken baby steps towards recycling candy wrappers with promises to have recyclable packaging by 2030 (Hershey) or 2050 (Cadbury). Terra Cycle has a Zero Waste Box for $96 where people can purchase and fill with candy wrappers then post back to the company with prepaid shipping. This is not cost -effective especially when it’s so much easier and more affordable for customers to throw wrappers in the trash.

Costumes – Nothing conjures up Halloween feels like a good costume. However, the problem is that 83% of Halloween costumes are made from petroleum-based plastic like polyester, PVC, acrylic, or spandex that cannot be easily recycled. And with about 35 million costumes being thrown away in the US each year, almost 2,000 tonnes of plastic waste goes to landfill. It takes hundreds of years for plastic to decompose.

Halloween in the UK

Halloween has become quite popular in the UK to the point where its been estimated that people in the UK spent over £600 million (about A$1.2 billion) on Halloween festivities in 2021.

Food waste – Hubbub, a British environmental organisation did a study on the country’s environmental waste. They posit that out of an estimated 39.9 million pumpkins purchased in the UK every Halloween, 22.2 million will go to waste. About 24% – 50% of perfectly edible pumpkins are discarded because of cosmetic standards which is higher than any other vegetable in the UK according to Sustainable Food Trust. Not only is this at a disadvantage to the environment but it adds to the £15 billion (A$29 billion) of food waste in UK homes every year. The financial loss of this pumpkin waste is a shocking £32.6 million (A$63 million).

Costumes - Considering Halloween costumes are often designed for single use, the planned obsolescence of Halloween costumes fuels the disposable, throwaway culture with clothing, synthetic textiles and other materials. The outcome is an estimated 2,000 tonnes of plastic waste (equivalent to 83m bottles) being generated from Halloween attire sold by major UK retailers. Hubbub reported that around 7 million costumes are thrown away every year in the UK. This year, 94% of families plan on buying costumes for Halloween according to Waste Managed, UK. A ghoulish fact about these costumes is that 4 out of 10 are usually only worn once!

How to have a zero waste Halloween

Halloween is haunted by waste that seems to get worse globally each year and we can’t ignore this fact any longer. We need to make Halloween sustainable by embedding circular economy principles into Halloween. This means keeping materials in use and out of landfill for as long as possible by composting, recycling, repurposing, eliminating planned obsolescence, reselling and designing products for reuse. We want to create a circular Halloween system(s) where everything is reused or regenerated in some shape or form from now on. Here’s a few ideas to get started, however, feel free to keep building upon them so that we have a shift in the waste culture with healthier systems that can thrive.

1.Costumes

Extending the life of clothes by just nine extra months of active use reduces carbon, water and waste footprints by around 20-30% each. Reusing costumes instead of buying brand new costumes reduces the amount of virgin resources and materials extracted from the earth. This curtails the negative impact on the environment and lessens the use of petroleum-derived fabrics like polyester and scales down deforestation to grow cotton and other textile crops. The result of diminishing production activities like these is that it slows down biodiversity loss. Reusing costumes also lessens clothing waste by keeping them out of landfill for longer.

Thrift / Goodwill - We want to quit the throwaway, disposable culture of fast fashion costumes to landfill. So, reusing costumes is definitely where to begin. However, reusing the same costume as the same character every year will be boring and not ideal for most people. In that case, you can find costumes from thrift stores at different times of the year and not just in October.

Make your own costume - You put together or make your own costume by restyling or upcycling using repurposed materials. Find inspiration from Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram or TikTok.

Costume clothes swap - Host or attend a costume clothes swap or general clothes swap to donate and acquire costumes. Here’s an article with swap ideas and a page with resources on how to run a clothes swap. Also remember to donate costumes when you’re done with them.

Borrow, rent or hire your costume - There are shops online and in-person that offer costume hire services. Borrowing from friends can also be an option.

Cancel planned obsolescence culture - Making the Halloween costume culture sustainable for all future Halloween holidays is absolutely critical. Everyone can contribute to making this happen by contacting major retailers and companies that make or sell costumes intended for single use. Hit them up on social media and send emails insisting they end planned obsolescence and implement circular design, use natural textiles and better-quality materials in all aspects of their costumes. This means the costumes will be higher quality and can be reused or repurposed instead of going into landfill after Halloween.

2. What do about pumpkin and other food waste

Remember that food waste releases the greenhouse gas, methane which contributes to the climate crisis.

Use the pumpkin carvings for food - 18,000 tonnes of pumpkins in the UK are thrown away each year which is roughly 360 million pieces of pumpkin pie! If you’re carving pumpkins to make jack-0-lanterns, use the flesh and seeds for food instead of throwing it away. Search for pumpkin recipes like pumpkin pie, soups, wine, roasted pumpkin gratin, muffins, cakes, dips, breads, sauces, etc. It can also be fed to animals.

Freeze or preserve leftover pumpkin to use at a later date if that’s preferable. You can also freeze leftover foods in general, including Halloween candy.

Composting - When Halloween is over, your jack-o-lanterns can go into the compost bin instead of the trash. If you don’t have a place to compost, try the ShareWaste app in Australia to find a place to compost in your local community. The Pumpkin Smash by SCARCE is the U.S. equivalent for pumpkin composting. Otherwise consider creating a community compost for your neighbourhood if there’s available space and resources.

3. Halloween Decorations

If you’re putting up Halloween decorations, be aware that fake cobwebs are a death trap for animals like birds because they can get tangled up in them and die.

Like costumes, it’s best to acquire secondhand decorations, make your own decorations, reuse decorations from previous years. You can also swap decorations with friends and neighbours or buy sustainable ones that are made sustainably, and can easily be reused, repurposed or recycled. Make sure the standard is good enough that you can use again.

If you’re trick-or-treating, decorate household items like buckets, pillowcases and old bags to use for collecting candy instead of buying plastic trick-or-treat buckets you find in department and grocery stores.

4. Sweets and treats

If you’re having a Halloween party, consider making your own sweets and treats instead of buying plastic-wrapped ones. Or opt for candy with minimal or recyclable packaging.

Use your voice. Mars, Hershey, Mondelez (Cadbury), Nestle and TerraCycle have made efforts and in some cases, promises to have recyclable candy packaging by 2025 or 2030 but it’s not enough. Packaging that’s compostable or recyclable also needs to be easy and convenient for customers to recycle and compost. If you’d like to see an end to the candy packaging waste, contact major candy brands to insist on more circular design of packaging before products are made. Meaning these candy manufacturers or retailers will need to create a transparent plan for what will happen to every candy wrapper after it’s used so that it’s either repurposed, recycled at high quality or composted with ease.

5. Halloween parties

Quit using single use disposable plates, cups and cutlery for Halloween and other parties. Wooden single use disposables are still not okay to use because a lot of energy and raw materials go into making these products. And when we use them once and then dispose of them, it’s a tremendous waste of resources. For instance millions of trees are cut down to make wooden products. This deforestation destroys ecosystems and contributes to biodiversity loss where more animal and plant species become extinct. Opt for reusable metal utensils, aluminum, glass or ceramic plates and pans instead.

♥ Nina Gbor

@eco.styles