Though there are still plenty of consumers who prefer a bargain to ethically or sustainably produced goods, there is a growing number of consumers who care a great deal about how brands treat the environment and their employees. Today’s increasingly educated and environmentally conscious consumers want to see sustainability measures at every point in the production chain, and sometimes even beyond this. Irresponsible shipping, packaging, and inventory management practices have all come under fire in recent years. Those who ignore the growing calls for sustainability might be able to preserve their bottom line for now, but the markets in which they can operate without consequences are rapidly drying up. In the most lucrative markets, sustainability is not just a buzzword. It is the cost of doing business. Sustainability is not something brands can sleep on. This isn’t a phase consumers are going through. We must accept the push for sustainability as the new normal. It’s not going to get better for operators who operate in the margins—it’s only going to get worse. Brands need to take serious steps to make their supply chains more sustainable. Brands that have strong reputations for sustainability have been attempting to do something about their waste, pollution, and labour practices for decades. Consumers expect immediate action. Attempt to jump on the bandwagon too late and consumers will see your efforts as insincere. Here are a few areas that both new and established brands can explore.

Ethical Labour Standards

While it’s widely accepted that jeans are assembled in low-cost labour markets, consumers expect brands to pay their employees substantially more than starvation wages. Though authorities might allow brands to get away with paying employees less than a dollar a day in Bangladesh or Tanzania, this kind of labour exploitation will, when exposed, make your brand toxic. If low-cost labour is absolutely essential to your business model, you need to do much more than meet the acceptable standards in the countries in which you operate. You can’t just point to the fact that you provide employment. You need to lift the employment standards, paying wages that allow employees to support their families and lift themselves out of poverty rather than merely keeping them off the streets. Brands with ethically sourced labour are able to bring their products to market with a clear conscience. Outland Denim, for example, provides living wages for women rescued from human smuggling rings in Cambodia, and brands have started to commit to increased supply chain transparency. Those who are the most serious about this transparency (Calik Denim being one of these) undergo third-party audits regularly to ensure that the cotton they purchase is produced under fair conditions.

Treat Every Drop Like it Counts

The global denim industry is hard on local water supplies. Cotton is one of the world’s thirstiest crops. According to recent estimates, each kilogram of cotton needs some 20,000 litres of water. Add this to the dying and the fading processes and the water usage goes through the roof. All told, each pair of jeans the denim industry produces uses around 7,600 litres of water. And the wastewater might be an even larger problem. Some 70% of Asia’s lakes and rivers have been contaminated thanks to textile industry polluters. Laser detailing has, for many environmentally conscious denim brands, helped dramatically reduce the use of toxic chemicals. Laser detailing has taken the place of bleach, and potassium permanganate and helped reduce the use of pumice stone in the fading process, which helps create healthier workplaces for those who manually fade denim. With their D-Clear technologies, Calik Denim have managed to reduce water usage by 40% during the indigo/sulphur dyeing process and by 83% during the finishing process, and they’ve managed to reduce chemical usage by 94% during the finishing process. Similarly, their DYEPRO product family manage to capture and re-use 100% of the water used in the process without producing any chemical waste during the dyeing process. Measures like this are helping reduce the industry’s impact on our rivers, lakes, oceans, and water tables.

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

According to Greenpeace, a stunning three quarters of garments that are produced worldwide never end up being sold to customers. That’s more than 60 billion garments—the vast majority of which are either incinerated or sent to rot in landfills. Considering how expensive it is to produce, much of the unused denim ends up languishing in warehouses. Clever and waste-conscious brands around the world are starting to make use of this deadstock, using it as though it were raw material and making entirely new pairs with a miniscule footprint. There’s been explosive growth in the use of recycled denim. Calik Denim has recently introduced its RE/J concept, which produces 100% recycled fibre denims made from a mix of pre- and post-consumer recycled denims. Whether stretch or rigid, these denims look and perform just as well as those made from scratch. With a growing interest in washes reminiscent of the ‘70s, these recycled denims might actually be a better fit for customers than conventionally produced denims. Savvy brands are inviting customers to play a part in this process through denim buy-back programs. This is helping keep denim out of landfills and, at the same time, it dramatically reduces the brand’s use of new cotton, which in turn considerably reduces the brand’s per-pair water consumption. Of course, certain levels of waste are to be expected. Small batch production or zero-inventory production can help reduce waste dramatically—a good cost-saving and environmentally friendly measure—but this isn’t possible for everybody. We can, however, take steps to make this waste more environmentally friendly.

Sustainable Shipping

Even if a brand takes big steps to reduce its footprint, they’ve still got a raw product that needs to get to the factory and a finished product that needs to get to the customer. Vertical integration can help reduce the impact at the supply end of this chain, but the jeans still have a long way to go before they reach the consumer. UPS recently introduced carbon-neutral shipping options. For an added fee, UPS will offset the carbon footprint of your shipment through investment in reforestation, wastewater treatment, landfill gas destruction, and methane destruction. There is also an increasing push for sustainable packaging. Unnecessary plastic sleeves, packing peanuts, and bubble wrap are giving way to paper or other biodegradable packaging. Customers are growing increasingly impatient with brands that overpackage their goods. Do all that you need to ensure that your products arrive at your customer’s door intact—and no more than this.

A Wear-More-Wash-Less Philosophy

Our clothing buying habits have exploded in recent decades. According to a recent study, in the ‘90s, consumers purchased an average of around 35 clothing items per year. This number has more than doubled since then, and some brands are doing what they can to change the fashion philosophy that’s driving these behaviours. Denim brands are at the forefront of this. Denim brands are taking steps to remind their customers that denim is not meant to be discarded at the end of the season. The fabric takes on entirely new character as it ages, becoming more beautiful as it breaks down. To get the most out of our denim, we need to wear it more and wash it less. Calik Denim’s Washpro Technology, with its antibacterial and self-cleaning fibres, is helping denimheads go longer (perhaps months) between washes. This not only helps us bring the denim garment’s true-blue beauty to the surface; it also helps dramatically reduce water usage and waste and reduces the amount of microfibres that get washed out of our jeans and into our oceans and other waterways. Brands that are encouraging their customers to buy less, wear more, and wash infrequently are helping turn consumers into sustainable allies. When brands combine forces with their customers in this way, they can help create a chain of sustainability that lasts from the beginning of the product’s lifecycle right through to the end of it.