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So, scientists have been warning us
that we're wreaking havoc on our planet.

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We're told about how our soil
is getting deteriorated

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and our fresh water supply,
as we just heard, is getting polluted.

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We're told about all of these problems,

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and we're told how
it's going to impact us.

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It's not just our polar ice caps
that are going to be melting,

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but it's going to impact
our coastal cities.

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We're told about all of this,

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but then we're not really
given many options

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on what we might be able to do about it.

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We're told to recycle,
use fuel-efficient cars,

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maybe turn the lights off
when we're leaving the room.

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We feel powerless against this issue.

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And it also seems

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as if it's the responsibility
of government to take care of.

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And yet we know
that government is in gridlock.

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So now, what are we left to do?

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Well, what if I told you
that we actually do hold the power?

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And that power is what we wear every day.

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It's our clothing.

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Because what people haven't told you

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is under the radar,

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the apparel industry has actually become

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the second most polluting
industry in the world.

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So, I'd like to talk today
about how we got to this place

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and how we can take back control
and use our power

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to both answer the question,
"What am I going to wear today?"

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and the world's more pressing problems.

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So, it's the leadership of Ikea
that recently said

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that we have reached peak stuff.

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And that is certainly true
when it comes to our clothing.

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You see here, in the 1960s,

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the average American invested
in 25 new pieces of clothing every year.

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A generation later, today, and we purchase

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three times as much clothing
as we did in the 60s.

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So how did this come about?

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Did we just decide one day,

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"Oh yes, I want to purchase
a lot more clothes of less quality.

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Sign me up for that"?

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It didn't happen that way.

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It started as trade barriers
actually came down,

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which created financial incentives

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for brands to move
their production overseas.

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And this generally created a trend
for cheaper and cheaper clothing

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using cheaper materials and cheap labor.

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Meanwhile, these fast-fashion companies -

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and that's what this industry is called -

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these fast-fashion companies
had huge marketing budgets

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to try to convince all of us

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that their cheap clothing
was somehow covetable.

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So we bought more and more.

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But more isn't always more.

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You see, in the 1960s,

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when we were investing
in 25 pieces of clothing -

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and they really were investments
because at that time,

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we spent over 10% of our salary
on clothing every year -

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95% of American clothing, what we wore,
was American-made.

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Today, it is less than 2%.

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And that drop actually
represents an 80% drop

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in apparel-manufacturing
jobs in this country.

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So, I'm sure we all have
our own experiences

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of dealing with fast fashion
and experiencing fast fashion.

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I have my own.

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Having come from Minnesota, I remember
going to New York when H&M first opened.

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And I was so excited, I have to admit.

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I loved the size of the store
and the lights,

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and the smell was kind of crazy,

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and there was this blasting music,

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and I just ate it up.

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And I bought clothes by the bagful.

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And I didn't really think that I -
maybe knew what I wanted,

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but it didn't really seem to matter,
because the prices were just so cheap.

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I mean, a jumpsuit for less than $20!

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But what I ultimately found out
is that all of that cheap clothing

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has huge consequences

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both for the environment
and for the people making our clothing.

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So let's take a look at why that is.

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So, it turns out
that the fast-fashion industry

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is fuelled by a new type
of fiber: polyester.

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You can see there, there is a line:

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H&M opens in New York in 2001 -
that's when I was visiting -

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and you can see, at that stage,
that was when cotton was no longer king.

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And just take a look
at the rise of polyester

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as fast fashion has come onto the scene.

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Polyester, for those that don't know,

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is a polluting plastic
made from fossil fuels.

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And it's now in over half of our clothing.

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Let's talk about why
that might be an issue.

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There are four primary things
that we need to think about

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when we think about
this rise in polyester.

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First of all, it's non-biodegradable.

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Consider this: every piece of polyester
that has ever been produced

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is still on the planet today.

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So, when you think about the fact

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that there are 150 billion
new pieces of clothing

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being added onto the planet every year,

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that's a lot of plastic
that's not going away.

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Second: these polyester fabrics,
when you wash them,

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thousands of these
microplastics are shedding,

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and they're entering our water systems
and ultimately our oceans.

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And what's happening is that the fish
are consuming these microplastics

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and we are consuming the fish.

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There was a recent study in California,

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and they went to the fish
markets in California.

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And they found out that actually

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one in four of the fish
that are sold at the markets

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contain these microplastics.

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And researchers are saying
that while the big plastics you can see,

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the greatest pollution
is actually these microfibers.

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Third: have you noticed that recently,
you have been sweating more?

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This is not just a coincidence,

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because polyester, it turns out,
is non-breathable,

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unlike the natural fibers.

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So, what that means is that heat
is trapped into your body

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and you sweat more.

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Finally, polyester is extremely
energy-intensive to create.

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Just how energy-intensive?

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Take a look at this graph.

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This is showing the relative
energy-intensiveness

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to create each type of material.

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This linen sweater that I am wearing

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requires just [one eighth]
of the amount of energy

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it does to create polyester.

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So, now we have a tripling of the amount
of clothing that we buy,

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this clothing is no longer made
from natural materials

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but incredibly energy-intensive polyester,

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and now we have to think about
where this clothing is being made.

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Take a look at this graph.

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This graph shows the total apparel imports
into the US by volume.

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You will see here that China is actually
our biggest trading partner on this -

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a little more than 40% of our clothing
is coming from China.

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Remember this graph,

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and as I show you this one,

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take a look at this map.

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This is a map

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of the energy-intensiveness
of the power grids

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of where we're getting our clothing from.

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Consider this:

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in China, 3/4 of the energy supply
is coming from coal.

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So when we are churning away
all of that clothing,

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it's coming from
the dirtiest form of energy,

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which is coal.

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Even in the United States, which itself
is not the cleanest power grid,

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it's not 77% as in China,
it is about 33%.

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So, now we know
we're making too much clothing,

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it's being made of
a very high-intensity product

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in a place that is taking up
a lot of energy.

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And all of this is adding up
to the fact that the apparel industry

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is responsible for 10%
of the total carbon output

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for the entire world.

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To put that into some perspective,

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that is five times more carbon output

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than all airline travel combined.

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But that's just the environmental impact.

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Now we have to consider
who is making our clothes

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and what is happening to them.

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If you remember
where our clothing is coming from,

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now we're going to look
at the Department of Labor

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and where they are finding
forced labor and child labor.

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And you're going to see
that they match up almost exactly.

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It is believed that one in six people
around the world

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work in some part of the apparel industry.

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So, it employs a lot of people.

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About 80% of those people are women.

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And 98% of them
are not receiving a living wage.

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What that means is they are getting
locked into a channel of poverty.

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So, that's the bad stuff.

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But it seems, in all of this,

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that no one is really winning.

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Nobody in the supply chain,
no one in the value chain

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is really winning,

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except for maybe two CEOs
of fast-fashion companies.

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And perhaps nobody is winning -
even us, the citizen consumer.

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Because if you take
the interest in tidying up

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and the best-seller Marie Kondo's
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,

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you see this explosive growth in interest
in cleaning all of that up.

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And I share that personal interest.

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After living over a decade
with my fast-fashion habit,

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I was so tired of shopping all the time
and never having anything to wear,

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my closet in New York
bursting open with clothes,

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always trying to struggle
with what I'm going to wear every day.

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So, one day I decided I had had enough.

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And I wanted to understand:

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What exactly in my closet
did I enjoy wearing?

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And why did I enjoy wearing it?

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So, I was digging through things
and looking at tags

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and I started to google.

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Really aggressively.

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And what I found out is that I am
actually not alone in this pursuit.

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If you type in "is linen" in Google,
it actually autocompletes to

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"is linen cotton?"

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I asked that question myself.

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And now I know that linen is not cotton.

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Linen - the sweater
that I am wearing today -

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comes from flax -
that's the plant on the left -

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and cotton is that thing on the right.

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So, I'm googling away,

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and it really started for me
with a personal desire to buy better.

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So, I started to search for ethical
and sustainable clothing.

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But what I ended up finding,
after doing further research,

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is that those words
are really unregulated.

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So, companies can say they are ethical,

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and they can show
a picture of their factory,

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but the picture is hiding a lot of things.

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First of all, the picture doesn't say
anything about transparency.

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Transparency is when a brand
is willing to name

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the factories that they are working with,

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allowing third parties -
customers, the media -

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to actually research
whether what the brand is claiming

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is actually what is taking place.

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Second, the pictures do not show
wages or healthcare coverage.

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And when you think back
about how 98% of the apparel industry

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is not receiving a living wage,

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that's an incredibly important statistic
if you're wanting to shop ethically.

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A picture also doesn't show
shadow factories.

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Shadow factories is a situation
that is happening in the apparel industry

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as we have been really going
on this race to the bottom

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when a brand will meet with
what is called a "five-star factory"

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and they might be taking pictures
or doing audits of that factory,

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but it turns out actually
that to get the prices

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that the brand is requiring

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or the speed in which
they need that product,

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they're outsourcing that production
to another factory.

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It's called the "shadow factories,"

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which is where really
the production is taking place.

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And oftentimes, these shadow factories

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have much lower
labor and living standards.

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And finally, a picture is not showing
material sustainability.

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It's not showing
whether it's organic cotton,

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and that turns out to be
incredibly important

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because cotton is the fourth largest
pesticide-consuming crop.

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That's why we're having a hard time
with the nutrition of our soil.

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And it's not showing
whether the dye stuff

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is actually being handled appropriately.

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So, it turns out that
not only is the apparel industry

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responsible for 10% of carbon output,

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it's also the second greatest
polluter of fresh water globally.

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And that's because dye houses
in the developing world,

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90% of them dye their products

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and then release those effluents,
release that dye stuff

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directly into local freshwater supplies.

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So, as I was doing all of this research,

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my research entered a Google document

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and I just became really frustrated
by the whole thing.

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I became frustrated because I saw
while we had this interest in food

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and we now had organic food options

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and we had farm-to-table restaurants,

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there really wasn't a resource that was
putting all of this stuff together.

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And as I was putting
these pieces together,

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I just saw how huge the problem was.

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And so, it was really that frustration

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that became the impetus to create Zady.

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I wanted a place
that distilled that information

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and provided an alternative.

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So, along with a researcher,

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we translated that disparate
information on the Google doc

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to a plan on how we can actually create
sustainable clothing.

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Because there isn't an organic standard
in the apparel industry.

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There aren't the equivalent
of LEED-certified factories,

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so we really had to
do it all from scratch.

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And this is what we came up with.

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It's called the "new standard."

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First of all, we think about
user-centered design.

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A common theme in this fast fashion is
that it's all about what can be sold to us

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and the marketing that can be done to us,

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but unlike technology,

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it's really not designed for us at all.

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And so, that's the most important thing:

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that we're thinking about

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what is somebody doing in their day,
where are they going,

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and what is the cut and material
that is going to fit them best.

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And then we use natural materials
and we work directly with our suppliers

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from the farm all the way
through the supply chain.

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And that's important,
because 90% of brands

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actually don't know
where their material is coming from.

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Finally, we have an open-door policy
with our manufacturers,

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and we do all of our
production domestically.

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In that way, we can see
whether our production

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is actually taking place
in the place that we've contracted with.

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So, our idea with the "new standard"
and creating the Zady collection

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was to show an alternative,

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that we really can love our clothes again.

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And that brings me back to us.

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The citizen consumer.

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Because what I have
realized in all of this

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is that we hold the power.

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And if we see ourselves
as citizen consumers,

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and if we vote with our dollars,

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we can change the industry

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because they're just
following what we're doing.

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And so, as a citizen consumer,

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these are some of the things
that you can do.

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First, just check the tags;
that's where it started with me.

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Understand where
your clothing is coming from

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and what it is made out of.

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That already can advance things a lot.

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Second, check the seams of the clothing.

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In a lot of fast fashion,
if you turn it inside out,

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even in the dressing room
before you have even left the store,

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those seams are already coming apart.

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So you can really see

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whether this is something
that's going to last a long time.

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Third and most importantly,

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love what you buy.

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There's so much marketing dollars

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being used to convince us
that we like something

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00:16:55,779 --> 00:16:58,530
that we don't really get
to focus on what is our style,

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what do we really like,
what do we really enjoy.

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If we focus on loving what we buy,

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we're going to end up buying less
and enjoying it better.

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And finally, as a citizen consumer,

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you have the power to ask questions.

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You have the right to ask questions.

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Ask if the material is organic.

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Ask what the names of the factories are.

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Ask if the mills are certified -

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are they dealing with
their dye and water appropriately?

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And think of your purchases
in terms of cost per wear.

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Think of it like an accountant
would think of these things.

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In that way, you're not stuck
just on the price tag,

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but you can see your clothing
as an investment in the long term.

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Because this chaotic
and polluting and unjust system

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is really entirely
within our hands to control.

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And what we as consumer citizens
choose to purchase

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dictates what direction the industry goes.

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If we use our dollars
to support that effort,

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to support slow fashion,

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we might find that
we feel better in our clothes,

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and we'll be using our power
to clean up the planet.

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Thanks.

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(Applause)