In 2021, SAPIENS Network Ethics, Open Science and Equal Opportunity Champion Prof. Małgorzata Koszewska published the editorial “Clothing labels: Why are they important for sustainable consumer behaviour?” in the Journal of Consumer Protection and Food Safety, volume 6, issue 1. The Journal of Consumer Protection and Food Safety publishes “peer-reviewed research in the fields of food, feed and consumer products as well as crop protection products, veterinary drugs, genetic engineering and consumer health protection”.

Article introduction

“Like food products, textiles and clothing are included among the basic groups of consumer goods. Concomitantly, the sector is strongly affected by environmental and social problems, occurring with variable intensity at the different stages of the clothing life cycle. Textiles are the fourth highest pressure category for primary raw materials and water after food, housing, and transport, and the fifth highest for greenhouse gas emissions.Footnote1 The industry’s finishing processes (dyeing, printing, and washing) consume large amounts of chemical substances. The industry is also strongly affected by social problems related to working conditions, child labor, and fair-trade principles.

The environmental and social impact is often difficult to assess in practice. Apparel production involves multiple players starting with the chemical industry and agriculture, fiber, finishing, fabric, and accessories manufacturers through to retailers, service operators, and the recycling industry which is gaining in importance. The situation is further complicated by the variety of raw materials and production methods used by the industry. This makes clothing manufacturing processes less transparent and much more difficult to trace compared with, for instance, food production. Most consumers lack sufficient knowledge or awareness to assess clothing product sustainability. A reliable assessment of clothing sustainability requires an investigation of the whole product life-cycle, because a positive aspect at one point in the value chain may have a negative impact on its later stages. For example, a product made of the most environmentally friendly raw material will still not be sustainable if environmentally harmful dyes are used at the finishing stage. In this respect, a product made of a water- and energy-efficient raw material may prove to be highly ineffective during its employment phase (e.g. by using high washing temperatures for dirt removal). In addition, consumers may have a limited understanding of safe clothing and the potentially negative impact on their health and well-being. Given that a negative health impact is one of the most effective arguments for motivating buyers to make more rational choices, their unknowingness is another impediment for the development of sustainable consumption patterns in the clothing industry”.

ESR 14 is supervised by Professor Małgorzata Koszewska and studies SAP Tools for Circular Textiles.