“Degrowth” was a term that was always meant to incite and provoke, said Katia Dayan Vladimirova, chief research officer of the Post Growth Fashion Agency in Geneva and one of the first people to use the word in the context of clothing. It refers to the idea of decoupling economic growth from the exploitation of natural resources, keeping it within the planetary boundaries that maintain a safe “operating space” for humanity but are being repeatedly—and most of all, carelessly—transgressed.
Critics of degrowth say that installing speed bumps on production and consumption is unrealistic and undemocratic and will usher in job loss, increase inequities and reduce societal well-being, particularly in developing economies that need to expand to fulfill basic human needs. Pro-degrowthers say that the concept is primarily aimed at high-income nations and that the untrammeled pursuit of more, from production volumes to sales to financial returns, at the cost of everything else, will prevent the world from slashing its annual carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and swerving the worst effects of global warming. 2024 was already the hottest year on record, scientists say, and the first to pass the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold.
Related Stories
Growth isn’t bad per se, Vladimirova said. Nobody in her sphere of academia, for instance, has a problem with growing revenue or higher consumer spending. What they are questioning as researchers, she said, is the vast, ceaselessly thrumming engine responsible for the boundless churn of “stuff,” especially those pushing synthetic materials derived from fossil fuels. There are areas where growth can be good, such as social security coverage for workers, improvements in working hours or the use of renewable energy.
What needs to be de-grown, she said, is the size of “this giant cancer that overproduces and exploits people and the planet,” not to mention yokes poorer countries with mountains of textile waste that they don’t have the commensurate resources to manage. It’s estimated that somewhere between 80 and 200 billion items of apparel and footwear are pumped out every year, though it’s hard to say for sure because so few brands and retailers declare their volumes.
But the fact that “degrowth” is so contentious, not to mention ill-defined, is why Textile Exchange and sustainability strategist Rachel Arthur, in a December landscape analysis meant to establish a “shared reference point” on the topic, opted for phrases such as “reimagining growth,” “regenerative growth,” “green growth” and Vladimirova’s self-coined “post-growth.” These, they felt, were the closest expressions of what they wanted to convey while being less likely to get hackles up, shutting down what could end up being a productive dialogue.
“There’s no single term that companies and individuals within companies feel fully captures what we’re talking about here in a way that enables them to be clear when they’re communicating internally about this topic, particularly with internal executive leadership,” said Beth Jensen, the global multi-stakeholder organization’s senior director of climate and nature impact.
In a survey run by the multi-stakeholder organization in June, 65 percent of industry participants said they couldn’t use the word “degrowth” within their organizations because such a strategy would frustrate business interests and repel investors.
Growth can look different for natural versus synthetic textiles, too, Jensen said. Initial feedback that Textile Exchange gleaned from wool growers and cotton farmers was one of indignation because it sounded like brands were being told to stop sourcing from them. Should producers also cut back on the regenerative practices they’ve been laboring to increase?
“So we wanted to be careful to say that, yes, the overarching message is, we absolutely need to be reducing the amount of raw material and fiber that we’re extracting from the earth overall,” she said. “However, what that means for synthetics is, yes, full stop on fossil-based materials, but for natural materials, it’s a little more nuanced, where we want to say, ‘Let’s be more thoughtful about it’—yes, we need to reduce overall, but not full stop.”
Can less be more?
“Slow down fashion, reduce waste” is one of a dozen priority areas that Public Eye, a Swiss watchdog group, outlined in a report about the transformation of the “fashion system” late last year. This would include extending the lifespan of garments by doubling, on average, the number of days they’re in active use. Studies suggest that the average item of clothing is worn roughly 80 times before it’s discarded, not so much because of technical defects but because its erstwhile owner wants something new to keep pace with rapidly changing trends.
While David Hachfeld, Public Eye’s textiles lead, agrees that the conversation about the current speed of production is ratcheting up, seeing change result from this remains iffy. It is, as the World Resources Institute wryly put it in a 2017 working paper, the “elephant in the boardroom.”
“It’s something where you need to have your shareholders, your owners, to agree that you change or adjust the purpose of the enterprise,” he said. “And the question is, are they ready to do so?” He paused. “ We are not nearly there.”
That Public Eye resisted populating the report with the term “degrowth” was a purposeful move, Hachfeld said, because he agreed there’s often confusion about what it’s referring to. Virgin resources, land and energy are all areas where it’s “pretty clear” that reductions are needed. In terms of economic value, however, there is an “open question whether the consequence of reduced material throughput is automatically also a reduction of the economic value created, or whether there is a possibility to create more value with less,” he said.
Investing more in so-called “circular” solutions such as repair, resale and even rental is something organizations like Textile Exchange and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation champion. According to the latter, circular business models could present a $700 billion opportunity that slashes one-third of the climate emissions reductions necessary to align the industry with the 1.5-degree Celsius pathway. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Fashion ReModel initiative, which it announced at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen in May, will put that idea to the test with the help of Arc’teryx, H&M Group, Primark, Reformation and Zalando.
“This is actually the most interesting discussion at an industry level: whether growing in economic terms with less resources is possible or not,” Hachfeld said. “At the moment, it’s not easy to say. We see that some companies are investing in circular business but still think they must continue to also grow on the primary side. And there is a question of whether companies that have built their whole business model on fast fashion can adjust to fewer sales of higher quality goods.”
One challenge so overwhelming to be practically intractable is that shareholders and owners are, for the most part, unwilling to make any sustainable tradeoffs in favor of short-term financial growth, said Michael Schragger, founder and director of The Scandinavian Textiles Initiative for Climate Action, a platform that supports Nordic companies such as H&M Group, Lindex and Nudie Jeans in reducing their carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. But the progress of a “significant” number of signatories, a recent report noted, is still nowhere near speedy enough.
“We shouldn’t consider it to be odd,” he said. “That’s the way commercial companies are set up to be run, and so we know that a company could suddenly have a great year where they’re meeting 25 percent growth rates, and their new investors and their owners are extremely excited because that’s what they’ve invested in, but at the same time, that means that they’re not able to reduce their emissions at the pace and scale required, and if they can’t make money or save money on reducing emissions, that is not going to be a priority.”
Still, for the sake of the planet, stakeholders need to explore additional, if not different, indicators of success, ones that are based on concepts such as well-being and sufficiency, the report said. Schragger doesn’t think “degrowth” is a “dirty word,” but it’s not ne that businesses operating within the current milieu know how to deal with, at least, short of legislative sticks and financial carrots, which are either hard or slow to come by.
“You can’t expect a company that’s set up in the traditional way to start to reimagine their view on growth,” he said. “That’s because they already have vested economic interests in their current model. And they’re faced with this fundamental challenge, which is they have to grow in a hard economic climate and they have to choose priorities, and we know which one usually wins out. But as an industry or as a community, we definitely don’t think that. Maybe it’s better to say a ‘well-being industry’ or a ‘sufficiency economy.’”
For Jensen and Textile Exchange, redefining what value creation means, perhaps in terms of financial metrics that integrate environmental and social impacts, is a business imperative for companies—as well as policymakers—to be “thinking creatively about” so they can strike the “right balance” between what’s aspirational and realistic.
“We can’t expect to just keep extracting raw materials and fibers at the same unchecked rate overall that we have like,” she said. “We know more now about planetary boundaries and limits to the natural environment. And so, I think, if companies aren’t looking at this in terms of supply chain resiliency, just as one angle into this moving forward, I think they’re having their heads in the sand.”
“We know what to cut,” Vladimirova added. “It’s not a secret.”
