Winter wardrobe essential: fair fashion policies

The Burning Case

The fashion industry has a really large and often negative impact on the environment and on people.
Between the Rana Plaza disaster, in 2013, that killed over a 1000 textile workers to regular scandals about wages and working conditions and the environmental impact that range from extreme freshwater pollution to being responsible for 8% of the world's green house gas emissions, let's just say "it's not nothing".
And the world is starting to realise. But the growing awareness seems to be focused mainly on the responsibility of fashion brands and consumers: "changing our consumption habits" to asking brands for more transparency and accountability.
Not much is said though about the role of policies! It sometimes feel like this globalised industry who has many big players based in Europe is flying completely under the radar of policy makers, including here, in Europe.
So why is that the case? What can decision makers really do to address the impacts of fashion? And how would these choices impact the sector? So many questions, very little answers.
That's why we asked Sarah Ditty, head of policy at Fashion Revolution, the founders of Sorry it's Vintage and Lara Wolters, socialist MEP in the European Parliament to share their insights with us. It's a long one but it's a good one as they say!