In this episode, I speak with Maxine Bédat, a former fashion startup CEO and founder of the nonprofit New Standards Institute. We talk about the source of the fashion industry's emissions, what can be done to reduce them, the need for regulation, and the right way to think about fast fashion.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
As anyone who knows me or has ever even seen a picture of me knows very well, fashion is not at the top of my priority list. I wear basically the same thing every day and attempt to think about clothing as little as humanly possible.
However! The fashion industry has a larger carbon footprint than you probably think, and it is growing rapidly with the spread of so-called “fast fashion.” What's more, there has been little scrutiny of the industry, it is quite opaque about its impacts, and there have been relatively few efforts to change that state of affairs.
So, like an anthropologist venturing into a mysterious foreign land, I am wandering into fashion to try to understand it better. My guide in this journey is Maxine Bédat, a former fashion startup CEO who has pivoted to activism, founding a nonprofit called the New Standards Institute and backing legislation (the Fashion Act) in New York and other states.
I am talking with Bédat about the source of the fashion industry's emissions, what can be done to reduce them, the need for regulation, and the right way to think about fast fashion.
All right then, with no further ado, Maxine Bédat. Welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Maxine Bédat
Thank you so much for having me.
David Roberts
I am excited to get into this because it is something about which I know literally nothing, as anyone who's ever laid eyes on me can testify. Fashion is not my bag. And you make the point, I think frequently that I am not alone in not paying attention to this category in the climate world. So maybe let's just start with the biggest big picture then. Let's just start
by talking about what is fashion's overall carbon footprint, overall carbon impact. And we're just talking about apparel here, right? I wanted to ask, is apparel and leather goods, are we lumping these together?
Are they separate? Do you analyze them separately? How do we think about those two?
Maxine Bédat
That's a good question. Some research is lumping in apparel, leather goods, and footwear. Some is separating out apparel. Depends on the research that you're citing.
David Roberts
Got it. We're mostly focusing on apparel, though. So what's the big picture? Carbon impact here?
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. So I wish there was one statistic that I can throw out there. In the spirit of "this is an industry that needs more light shed on it", the credible research, I would say, ranges from 2% to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It seems to be that the researchers that I trust most are settling in on somewhere between 2% and 4%.
David Roberts
2% and 4%.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. I would say that McKinsey also has come up recently with a stat, that if no additional work is done in this space, that it could increase an additional 30% further by 2030.
David Roberts
So 2% to 4% and growing.
Maxine Bédat
Yep.
David Roberts
And that's 2% to 4% is not small. And I guess, I mean, some of that has to do, I suppose, with companies and industries not disclosing what they're doing. But I imagine some of it just has to do with, like, what are the edges of this category? You know what I mean? Like, what all are we including when we look at this? I imagine there are some disagreements just about kind of how to draw the boundary around it.
Maxine Bédat
There is some, although I think the more emphasis is just the opacity of this industry in general.
David Roberts
Interesting.
Maxine Bédat
That's leading to a lot of this. There's pretty comprehensive frameworks about what is and is not included. I mean, there's some disagreement on leather, but besides that, there isn't that much debate.
David Roberts
Interesting. Well, for those of us, like me, who are approaching this in total ignorance, maybe the place to start is just with kind of a dumb question, which is, can you just describe for us quickly the stages of, like, how a seed becomes a shirt? You know, like, what are the stages of industrial process that we're even talking about here? Because that whole thing is a mystery to me.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. So the correct question, if we're talking about the average garment is not a seed, but how is the oil coming — from an oil rig comes a shirt.
David Roberts
Oh, no, that's worse.
Maxine Bédat
Because now the most dominant fiber type by far in the era of fast fashion is polyester, which is a fossil fuel derived fiber.
David Roberts
So polyester is like, back. Cause it was huge in the seventies. Right. And then I kind of thought it got unfashionable. Is it sort of like, back now?
Maxine Bédat
Oh, no. I wish I could insert a chart to show its dramatic rise, but it is definitely back in a major way, and it coincides exactly — there's a chart I have in my mind, oh, I actually have looking at it right now: Polyester took over cotton just about the year 2001, when H&M first kind of opened up stateside. So there is a very direct correlation there between fast fashion and the rise of polyester, which is now 60% of clothing, by far and away the main fiber type in clothing today.
David Roberts
Okay, well, how does a barrel of oil become a shirt, then?
Maxine Bédat
So, yes, whether we're starting off in the field or at the oil rig, let's take cotton. We're growing that cotton. We're ginning that cotton. We're going into the chemical plant. We're producing polyester fiber. Those fibers are then coming to a spinning facility to be spun into yarn. That yarn is then, depending on the company or the particular supply chain it ends up in, might be going to a different country to be woven or knit into fabric. This process is the carbon hotspot in terms of the life cycle of a garment.
David Roberts
Oh, yarn into fabric.
Maxine Bédat
Yarn into fabric. Because that's where the dyeing and the finishing is taking place, and that takes a lot of heat.
David Roberts
I get dyeing. What do we mean by finishing when we're talking about these things?
Maxine Bédat
Sure. Finishing is like any performance that you're adding. So, if it is something that is wrinkle resistant or the color fastness, so that the colors aren't fading, things like that.
David Roberts
So we go resource to fiber. Fiber to yarn.
Maxine Bédat
Yep. Yarn to textile.
David Roberts
And then yarn to textiles. Fabrics.
Maxine Bédat
Yep. And then, yeah, you've dyed and finished that fabric, and then you're gonna take that fabric, and it will likely be shipped somewhere else, and that will be cut and sewn into a t-shirt. Then that will be sent some way, either by ship or by plane, to either a distribution facility or directly to your home. And then you're wearing it, and then you're getting rid of it in some fashion.
David Roberts
Right. And then you throw it away.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. Or donate it.
David Roberts
Donate it, or it ends up —
Maxine Bédat
Somewhere else.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah. So this is a multistage process that can span multiple countries. And I guess later, I want to get to policy later, but just to sort of lay the groundwork there, it is vexing to think about what kind of policies can wrap around supply chains and practices that sprawl across multiple countries. This is part of the puzzle to solve. So you said briefly, but can you give us some sense of the relative emissions intensity of those steps? You say most, you say the biggest impact is dying and finishing.
In my mind, it sounds like I want to say that, like, transportation ought to be a big chunk of that. Just because you're shipping fiber to a different place, yarn to a different place, fabrics to a different place, et cetera, et cetera. Is that not so?
Maxine Bédat
Well, no, with a caveat. No, if you are shipping. The problem is, you know, if you are shipping, the relative carbon footprint in that process would be about 1%.
David Roberts
You mean shipping like on a ship?
Maxine Bédat
On a ship, yes.
David Roberts
Right.
Maxine Bédat
If you are air freighting on a plane, the impact of that is 40% greater than if you are shipping on a ship, and the problem is, the kind of new instant fashion companies like Shein are air freighting. So that kind of sways the equation in that regard. But if you are just shipping in, a ship.
David Roberts
Which is more traditional.
Maxine Bédat
Yes, common, the actual shipping is not as significant as what's happening in your spinning and weaving facilities.
David Roberts
So then I guess the obvious question then is just technologically speaking, how can one reduce emissions in that process? If most of the emissions are clustered in the dying and finishing process? What are people doing to decarbonize that process? And the other stages too? Like, I just, what is, what kind of things can we do along this chain to decarbonize things?
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, so just to kind of run through a few stats to ground us: your fiber production, so whether that's polyester or cotton, that's going to be about 15% of carbon emissions. Your yarn preparation, fabric production, dyeing and finishing is about 76%. Assembly is about 7% and distribution is about 1%. So that's just to ground us in the conversation.
David Roberts
What about waste? What about the back end, is that not included in these?
Maxine Bédat
Not included in that statistic. It's visually significant. It still has an impact. If it's burned and in an unregulated way, that increases the impact of course, from that process. But if it's just, if polyester is sitting in landfill, it's not doing much.
David Roberts
Right. Right. You could even theoretically say it's sequestering some carbon.
Maxine Bédat
Exactly.
David Roberts
Probably the least attractive form of carbon sequestration.
Maxine Bédat
Exactly. So in terms of what can be done to decarbonize this industry and really zeroing in on the textile mill, I think what is unique in this industry is the technology solutions are available. They're just not free. And so the industry hasn't been set up to adopt them. So things that can be done, are being done to a limited degree is anything that reduces the need for heat. So things like waterless dyeing, more effective colorfast dyeing, those things can be adopted and are being adopted to a limited degree. Going from coal-based boilers to electric steam boilers, that's all possible and exists. Industrial heat pumps and then electrification of wet processing combined with decarbonizing the electric grid.
David Roberts
Yeah, these are all our old favorites here on Volts. These are our greatest hits.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, that's why, I mean, it is the fashion industry, so it seems different, but it's an industrial process, you know, very much like every other industrial process. And it's the third-biggest manufacturing sector globally, so.
David Roberts
Wow.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah.
David Roberts
So I guess it's one thing to ask whether you can reduce emissions. It's another thing to ask, is there yet on the horizon or in reality such a thing as decarbonized fashion, like, can I buy a net zero shirt anywhere? Or is that just still an idea?
Maxine Bédat
That, unless you're buying offsets, is still an idea. There are major suppliers that are, and one can count them on one hand, that are making efforts
in this space and investing hundreds of millions of dollars to do this. The problem is, and this goes to regulation, is that they are not being paid a dime more for those efforts. And so it's just the system right now is not set up to do this work. There are, we're kind of, the industry is stuck in pilot project mode where companies will invest in an offshore wind thing that they will put in their ESG report, but it's not being adopted across their lines.
David Roberts
Right. And is there anything like, I mean, one thing, just even in the absence of regulation, one thing that you could imagine would help is if there were some sort of certification or badge or, you know what I mean? So that at least consumers who were looking for lower carbon clothing could distinguish. Is there anything like that in the works?
Maxine Bédat
So it's interesting, I go back to this textile mill, this denim textile mill that is doing a lot of this investment.
David Roberts
Where is that? Let's give them a shout out.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. Artistic Milliners. They are based in Pakistan, and they've invested, I think, over $100 million in decarbonizing. And they're doing it in the hopes that laws pass so that they're investing in —
David Roberts
That's quite a gamble.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, but they have said, in speaking to them, this is a long way of answering your question, but they have done all this decarbonizing work. They're not paid. They get no price premium for it. And they were talking about how they're doing this organics program. And I was like, why? Why? And they said, well, because we get a price premium for it. And I was like, "oh," so the consumer thinks that organic is the decarbonized thing, and so that's why they —
David Roberts
And it's not. Can we — it's not, right?
Maxine Bédat
It's not. Yeah. So first of all, I mean, I'm sure your listeners, you know, know in terms of agriculture, whether organic truly does have a lower carbon footprint. So we don't even need to go into that. But then —
David Roberts
Lots of questions.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, lots of questions. And then, when there is an organic label on a garment, that's only in reference to the fiber
David Roberts
Right. So it goes through all the same carbon-intensive steps that all the other fibers go through.
Maxine Bédat
Correct.
David Roberts
Right. So there is no low carbon label. And theoretically, if there were, it would sit awkwardly alongside the organic label and perhaps confuse consumers.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, I mean, I think it's the same issue we're probably facing in ag and consumers' understanding of organic versus regenerative. And the data behind all of that. The consumer is being thrown a lot of different terminology that hasn't amounted to that much.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah. Well, what about, again, before getting to government or regulation, what about, just like, if individual consumers don't have a lot of information to go by, don't have a lot of power here, surely there are sort of big buyers, like distributors, who could join together with one another and use a little bit of their buying power to try to influence things. I mean, you see that happening in other industries, sort of like good-willed buyers pooling their resources. Is there anything like that going on?
Maxine Bédat
They could. They're not. It could happen, but, you know, fashion is supposed to be a signal of the future, but it's a pretty not future-looking industry. Let me, let me be clear. There are really great smaller players that are trying to lead the way, that are trying to make these investments, that are trying to do this work. Some of the big players have made some investments. H&M has made some investments. But the big talk of the town in this niche world of fashion sustainability is that Renewcell, which is a textile fiber recycling company that was sold as the second coming, is going through bankruptcy right now. And it was —
David Roberts
D'oh!
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, had an investment from H&M. And why is it going through bankruptcy? Because nobody's buying its recycled fibers.
David Roberts
Oh.
Maxine Bédat
So, not nobody, but not to the scale that they need. So there isn't; there are these pilots, and that's where we are right now.
David Roberts
Right. So absent government, absent some sort of regulation, some sort of rules, there's not an appreciable sort of, like, voluntary movement happening in the right direction, certainly not at scale.
Maxine Bédat
And the industry pressures are moving the opposite direction. The industry pressure is moving towards Shein.
David Roberts
Yeah. Yeah. That's my next question. That's a good segue. Like, even as
a few isolated efforts are pushing in this direction, the vast bulk of the money and industry influence is moving in the other direction. So, let's talk a little bit about — for people like me, literally, the first time I heard of Shein was like, I think it might literally have been after I agreed to do this interview, I started reading around about, I literally have no idea what it is, but apparently everyone else knows what it is. So Shein and Teemu, talk a little bit about what they are and what changes they have wrought.
Maxine Bédat
Sure. So the pronunciation is SHEE-In because it.
David Roberts
SHEE-In?
Maxine Bédat
SHEE-In. Yeah. So it's. That is not how one would read it normally, but Shein used to be like, "She in clothing."
David Roberts
Oh, yeah.
Maxine Bédat
Like "She in," like women in — yeah. You don't know about it because you're not a teenage girl on TikTok. So that's why.
David Roberts
Extremely true.
Maxine Bédat
Although there does seem to be some research coming out that their average consumer is a bit older than that. But the marketing has all been on TikTok. They don't have a physical presence, but they have —
David Roberts
They don't have stores, they don't have physical stores?
Maxine Bédat
No, they don't have physical stores. What they are doing is they are air freighting. So they are drop shipping their products directly from Chinese factories directly to consumers. They get to bypass hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes every year that companies like Gap pay. Because the US has a rule called the de minimis rule, where you don't have to pay duties for products entering that have lower than $800 in value. And Shein is so cheap that even if you're buying a crap ton of it, you're not getting to over $800.
David Roberts
Oh. So because the sort of individual shipments —
Maxine Bédat
Yep.
David Roberts
are small, they don't get taxed, but then there are like thousands and thousands and thousands of these individual shipments.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. So I think there was like, between Shein and Teemu are shipping in like 600,000 units a day.
David Roberts
Good God.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. And Gap, I think, pays like hundreds of millions in those import taxes that a company like Shein isn't doing. And as I mentioned before, they're air freighting, which is 40x the carbon footprint than shipping into it. So they're bad news.
David Roberts
So the way the tax system works now, they're basically being encouraged to do what they're doing.
Maxine Bédat
Yes.
David Roberts
This model is —
Maxine Bédat
Incentivized.
David Roberts
Incentivized. That seems bad.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, to use a technical term.
David Roberts
To use a technical term, that seems real bad. So Shein then must have, relative to other fashion brands, much higher transportation emissions. Like all those planes have got to be like, producing enormous emissions.
Maxine Bédat
It's enormous emissions. Shein is basically on track to have carbon emissions the equivalent of British Airways in a couple of years. So, yeah, it's not good.
David Roberts
We kind of skipped over, though, what the model is like. What is Shein? If I went to Shein.com, what am I, what am I doing?
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, so they are primarily clothing, although they're trying to be like
an Amazon as well now. So expanding beyond and kind of taking like playing Amazon at its own game. But they're "better" in quotes at it because they are, you know, directly coming from these factories to give you perspective. Like, it's very, very, very cheap product. And they're introducing, they're making fast fashion, which is like your H&M, your Zara's look very, very slow. So they are introducing, in terms of number of styles, the number of styles that Zara introduces in a year. They are introducing in two weeks.
David Roberts
So just like new designs and new looks.
Maxine Bédat
Yep. So they are, it's instant fashion. It's, you know, wear this once, it's so cheap; you don't need to wear it ever again.
David Roberts
Huh. And are they like, I don't know, are they taking those designs from fancy design houses or are they actually, like, creating looks that become desirable? You know what I mean? Like, in my head, it's all the expensive fancy houses that —
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, they are very much the copiers, the dupers of any, there's tons of stories of how they're ripping off every designer known to mankind. So, yeah. They're not generating new ideas in the marketplace of design.
David Roberts
I see. So they are mass producing knockoffs of high fashion, basically.
Maxine Bédat
Or any type of garment, high fashion and otherwise.
David Roberts
Yeah. And so I imagine the idea here is just in line with Internet shopping generally, is just, it's so cheap that it makes your decision easy. Right.
Maxine Bédat
It's so cheap that it makes the decision easy. And they're flooding Meta and TikTok with advertising that's actually increasing, is driving Meta's revenue growth, and likewise is dictating shipping prices, air freight prices.
David Roberts
Oh, no kidding.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. It's single-handedly raising those prices. So they are flooding markets in all sorts of ways.
David Roberts
Yeah. I mean, they must be. Are they straining the sort of limits of air freight? Like, it's such a —
Maxine Bédat
They're increasing air freight costs single-handedly.
David Roberts
That's wild. And, yeah, and you sent me a chart that says Shein is the third most valuable startup in the world now worth $5 billion or something crazy like that.
Maxine Bédat
$66 billion. Yeah.
David Roberts
Oh, well, I was off a little bit. Good grief. So clearly, if you set aside the horrific environmental implications of all of this, it's a very successful business model. Like, it's working. This seems to be what people want, I guess.
Maxine Bédat
I mean, it's also hooked into a lot of advertising. Like I always say, we are like fancy animals, right? Like, we have brains that are open to persuasion. And when we are on our phones and hooked onto an algorithm that is flooded with advertising for this, like, yes, it works.
David Roberts
As you say this now, I'm thinking about my jacket rack. The one apparel item I care about at all is jackets. And now, basically, when I scroll Instagram, it's just like wall-to-wall jackets. And I have like 400 jackets now, even though I only wear one or two of them. Yeah, advertising works, I guess, is why people do it. So they are just as bad in the dying and finishing area. And then also, in addition, much worse in the transportation area,
I guess. Worse in the dying and finishing. Just because they're doing so much more of it.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, just they're doing so much more of it. And then also, on a relative basis, even that I think it was 12% or 15% of fiber. 15% is fiber production. On a relative basis. Your synthetics have a higher carbon footprint and they way overindex on synthetics. I don't want to quote, but it's something like 95% of their material is synthetic.
David Roberts
I mean, I'm guessing maybe this is a dumb question, but just like, if they were held to carbon limits, for whatever reason, you just couldn't do this business model, would it conceivably be possible to have this business model be done in a sustainable way?
Maxine Bédat
Not with the current technology that we have. Like, I would not want to be the chief sustainability officer tasked with that.
David Roberts
Yeah, I just wondering if you just have to go after the corporate procedures and corporate whatever, or if you are really in the end, gonna have to go after the business model itself, which seems like a bigger foe, I guess, in some ways.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. I mean, I think what makes this industry different from others is that it's a consumable, right. Or it is perceived as a consumable. And so, like, you're working on two different axes: You have both the supply chain and the business model. And the business model can change. Like, we don't have to have a system that is just based on single use clothing that does not need to be the way in which we get dressed every day.
David Roberts
Well, I want to talk a little bit about culture and behavior later, but you,
I think, spent a long time in your career mucking around with culture and behavior and have concluded from the experience that we need government, that we need regulation here. So tell me a bit about the group you started and the Fashion Act that you are backing.
Maxine Bédat
Sure. The organization that I run is called the New Standards Institute. We call ourselves a "think and do tank." The think is getting the research that is available out there, highlighting the gaps that are still needed to be filled, and trying to communicate whether that's to citizens or companies or media kind of what is the situation.
David Roberts
Just on that note, when you say a lot of it is opaque, I guess that just means if you're a factory, if you're a textile dying factory in whatever, I don't know, Indonesia, you just don't have to report your emissions. Right. I mean, you just don't have to tell anybody. Like, is that why we know so little, because these are in other countries that don't have good reporting standards? Or is there some sort of, like, malign effort to, you know what I mean, to hide things?
Maxine Bédat
I think it's both. It was very, you know, I think a telling statistic. In the 1960s, 95% of the clothing that Americans wore was made in America. Today, that's less than 2%. So, like, the industry has done this. Like, it's not, you know, it didn't happen to the industry. It chased cheaper prices and kind of got itself into this race to the bottom because particularly this industry, because it's not particularly capital intensive to set up. Certainly cut and sew factories are just lines of sewing machines, not terribly sophisticated. So, yeah, the industry has gone from kind of pitting countries against each other to have the lowest environmental and labor protections.
So they're not like, innocent players in this opaque system.
David Roberts
Pretty classic race to the bottom. I mean, it's a very familiar story, right?
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, fashion is a good case study for that.
David Roberts
So, okay, you started this group. You're publicizing what research there is.
Maxine Bédat
And then, you know, we initially, and even through the work that I had done before, which was trying to work as a fashion brand, you know, we're trying to engage with consumer behavior. I think that works to a degree to —
David Roberts
Oh, wait, just tell us what you meant, you worked with the brand. You were in fashion, right?
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, I'm a lawyer by background, but I co-founded a fashion startup that was, like, trying to be the Whole Foods of fashion before Whole Foods was owned by Amazon.
David Roberts
Even Whole Foods isn't Whole Foods.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, exactly. So back when Whole Foods was, you know, about, well, at least pretended to be about, like, telling the story behind how the food got to the plate. That was what we had pitched. That's what we wanted to do, was, like, tell the story behind clothing and use that, you know, to get people to feel more connected, that they would wear the garments more, to just understand just how much goes into producing the things and appreciate it.
David Roberts
So your business model was based on behavioral, basically, like, based on people wanting this.
Maxine Bédat
Yes.
David Roberts
How did that go?
Maxine Bédat
So a couple of things. One is there was a really great audience, like a small audience of people who really wanted that. And that's great. That didn't stop H&M or Zara or Shein from being successful. So us versus the general trend, we were not winning. So that's on one hand. And then on the other side, it was very hard to compete when we don't regulate words like sustainable. So any company, you know, we created a line of clothing where we knew, literally the sheep that were entering our sweaters and telling the entire story of that, really working to reduce impact as much as possible.
And we were competing against companies who were just saying, like, you know —
David Roberts
"We're sustainable, too."
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. And that's it. Like, they didn't have to do anything.
David Roberts
Yeah. This gets back to the lack of any sort of consumer-facing, reliable consumer-facing sort of measurement or standard or certification or anything.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. And so from that, I mean, and then I looked at it at, you know, thinking about other industries and where we have seen change and haven't seen change, and I saw like, okay, we've had organic standards. How much has that actually shifted agricultural practices? I don't think it's —
David Roberts
Yeah, how much has it shifted agricultural practices versus how much has agriculture shifted what counts as organic?
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. So I was like, "That doesn't seem to be a good win, not evidence
of a great win." And then I saw, you know, where has consumer change actually happened? And you see the cigarette industry. And I looked at that, and I looked at the history of that, and I saw they first tried to guilt consumers, and they put that black lung on the cover and that just actually increased smoking rates because people felt doomsy about it and were like, "Whatever, I'll just smoke even more." And the thing that changed consumer behavior was regulation. And then regulation, like, it started, the regulation was what tipped off it being uncool. And that helped, like, lower cigarette smoking even more.
David Roberts
So they taxed the crap out of it, too.
Maxine Bédat
Right, exactly. So there were laws that diminished the space. And so a cigarette company, if they wanted to be in business, you know, needed to diversify outside of cigarettes.
David Roberts
Or just go sell cigarettes in China, which I think is what most people...
Maxine Bédat
Yes. That is also what they — can't provide the solutions everywhere.
David Roberts
All right, so you came around to thinking, "we need regulation here." And so you have put together, helped write this thing called the Fashion Act. What is it? What does it do?
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. So I think what is interesting about the fashion space is that
the industry has made a lot of voluntary commitments because it's consumer-facing. So they've said that they're going to do a lot. And the Fashion Act is just making putting the force of law behind these voluntary commitments. So it's a New York bill. They're also, it's being introduced in other states, like Washington. Yep. And Massachusetts and other states are considering as well. And it is trying to take a page out of the fuel efficiency standards out of California. But essentially, what I mean by that is any company, wherever they're headquartered, whether they have a physical store or not, if they are selling, any fashion company — I'll go back to our original part of our conversation,t hat means apparel, footwear, and leather goods — with global revenue, over $100 million that sells into the state of New York.
It requires that they do things like set and achieve science-based targets, that they address their chemicals effluence, again, using a standard developed by the industry, the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals Standard, and then builds off of legislation that is happening in the EU. The due diligence framework defines effective due diligence as the garment workers actually receiving their due wages. So it's like, it's hard for the
industry to oppose it because it's just requiring them to do the thing they said they're already going to do.
Calling their bluff. Calling their bluff a little bit. So it just says, if you want to sell in California, you have to prove that you are doing these things that you said you would do.
Yeah, I mean, and it's New York at the moment.
David Roberts
Oh, sorry, New York.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. And it is if they haven't, but, you know, your major companies, many of them have set these targets, but, you know, Shein has not. Like, it would require all of them to set and achieve these targets.
David Roberts
Interesting. And so I guess the question is, is New York a big enough market to influence the behavior of a global company like Shein?
Maxine Bédat
Yes, because New York is the 10th largest economy in the world. Also, from a regulatory perspective, once you pass legislation in one state, it makes it easier to pass in another state.
David Roberts
Oh, that's what you mean by the California auto standards thing. You just think a bunch of other, if you get this passed, a bunch of other states will just be like, "Yeah, that sounds good."
Maxine Bédat
That, and essentially the auto industry was like, "We're not going to create a whole separate supply chain just for California, so we'll change our standards across the board."
David Roberts
Right. So this is an attempt to create a big enough market with standards that will shift the whole industry. And you think if, like New York and California do this, like, that's going to do it. So like, Shein couldn't just say, like, "Fine, we're not shipping clothes to New York." You don't think they would do that?
Maxine Bédat
They could. I wouldn't, just like, I wouldn't want to be the chief sustainability officer implementing these changes. I wouldn't want to be their PR person saying, "We just don't care."
David Roberts
Yeah. Are they, are, do they, have they invested at all in pretending like, do they have a, are they greenwashing? Do they care enough even to greenwash?
Maxine Bédat
Yes, because they're trying to IPO. They have, so they've done some interesting moves. They have like given money to different, like NGOs in the space who have then used that money in good ways, but they want people to not understand the site, the data behind these things. Because they argue, "Oh, actually, that we introduce up to 10,000 styles a day is good because we're more lean. We don't have as much waste. So we test styles and then if they don't work, we don't have a lot of waste. So we are somehow naturally..."
David Roberts
That's a stretch.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. Because they're air freighting it like, it cancels it all out. And also because they're still setting up production lines. So it's hard to believe that they're not actually producing these garments. Maybe they're not putting it on their books, but... Yeah. The reason why there's this volume created is the efficiency of setting up these production lines.
David Roberts
Right. So they care then. They care about being —
Maxine Bédat
They care about their public image.
David Roberts
viewed as green. You think there's enough public sentiment out there that they sort of have to pretend.
Maxine Bédat
Yes.
David Roberts
And this is, this is a little side note, but I find it delightful. This is legal according to our own quasi-fascist Supreme Court, is it not? Just talk about the...
Maxine Bédat
Yes. The Fashion Act. Yes.
David Roberts
Yes, yes, yes, the Fashion Act.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. So states' rights finally come to help us out. The Supreme Court, who has done all sorts of terrible things on behalf of states' rights, finally had a case. It was a pork case. It was a case protesting a California piece of legislation that put requirements on how the pork that is sold into the state of California, how they had to be treated. And the Supreme Court sided with the state of California that California had the authority to pass a legislation like this. Even though most of the pork was raised outside of the state.
David Roberts
Ah, right. So this, the lawsuit was like "you're trying to exercise jurisdiction over us even though we're outside your state and you have no jurisdiction." And the Supreme Court said you can in fact do that.
Maxine Bédat
Yep. So states' rights, we're coming to get some benefit out of it.
David Roberts
So I have to ask then. I mean, on the one hand, you want these targets and reports and verified progress toward these targets, but on the other hand, you're saying, like, a lot of the data isn't available. A lot of things is obscure. How do you set and enforce these targets if we don't have the data? Like, would this in part be a forcing mechanism to force companies to start producing and showing this data?
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. So, the reporting requirements are kind of part and parcel baked into the bill itself. And then the reporting also has to be independently verified because, as you've seen across industries, not just in fashion, lack of verified data on this turns to sketchy results. So it requires that as well.
David Roberts
You think they have this data, like, they know this stuff already and they're just not telling? Or do you think they just are not looking or not measuring?
Maxine Bédat
It's not a monolith. There is a range. And it's not also just dependent on how that company is perceived. Some companies which are perceived very poorly in the public eye are actually pulling this data. You know, H&M pulls this data and reports on it. There, you know, are fashion companies reporting into CDP. So there are those, and there are those companies that are just trying to put their head in the sand as well.
David Roberts
But there's a model for how they could do it if they decided to do it. Do you worry at all about political backlash to this? Because if you pass this law in a couple of big markets, you are, I mean, you're basically destroying Shein's business model, are you not? And people seem quite enthusiastic, for better or worse, to love the accessibility of a million different fashions for cheap. Are you worried at all that if you pass a law and squash this growing business model that people are going to be angry about it?
Maxine Bédat
So I don't see the Gilets Jaunes or the farmers in Europe like the equivalent of that taking to the streets. This is not something anybody needs.
David Roberts
We demand our cheap blouses: "Cheap blouses or death."
Maxine Bédat
And I think there's an interesting parallel. You know, Jonathan Haidt has come out, is coming out with that book on social media and how even though everybody is addicted to social media, the research says that people want it to go away. So I don't know, when you speak to shoppers, they're not like, this is anecdotal, but I was doing some speaking thing and the person that was walking me from the green room to the media location had heard me talking about Shein, and she was a college student.
And she said, "You know what, Maxine? This is exactly happening to me. In the past year, Shein has become so popular and there's so much pressure from us to like, buy these things and just wear them once and not be seen — like, it's really stressful." So I don't see it. It's not the same as gas. It's just not the same. And also it's not because sustainable, like, has been used as a marketing tool in this environment. It's priced at a luxury price point. When you actually speak to practitioners and the folks that are actually doing the decarbonization work, it doesn't mean going from a $2 t-shirt to a $200 t-shirt.
You know, we're talking about dimes and nickels. So it's not the equivalent, I think concerns as we've seen with oil and we've seen the agriculture space.
David Roberts
Well, and I think you're just like, this is just kind of a truism about human behavior. Like you could say, like if you put a bunch of sugary snacks next to the counter at the store, people will buy them. And those same people might say, I wish they would get those stupid snacks away from the counter because if they're there, I'm going to buy them. So this is because this supply chain is sprawling across a bunch of different countries and US law has limited reach. It seems like using buying power in the way you're doing in the Fashion Act is kind of the only tool in the toolbox.
So I wonder if you were queen for a day in the US, are there other big things you would do, or is this kind of all you can really do to influence behavior in other countries? Do you have other policies on your wish list?
Maxine Bédat
This is a big one. And then I think there are complementary efforts
like extended producer responsibility, and this is obviously a stick piece of legislation, but I think there are complementary kind of Inflation Reduction Act type things that can provide incentives and financing incentives. So I think this is a really critical first step. And then I think there are really additional pieces of policy that would need to be complements to this.
David Roberts
Speaking of IRA, one of the things IRA is trying to do is move some supply chains, at least partially to the US for economic and political and security reasons. Is there an equivalent push in the fashion world? Like, is there a big push to sort of, like, reshore fashion? Does anybody care about that much?
Maxine Bédat
Not yet. There are some beginnings. Cut and sew is a low pay — you know, it's not high value. It's not going to like, if I were the central planner in an economy, that's —
David Roberts
Queen for a day. I just told you, you're queen for a day.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, right. I wouldn't zero in on the garment industry, maybe the textile industry, but it's still going to be cut and sewn, then somewhere else. So I think there is definitely room, and there is discussion about having more textile production here. We do lose out on a lot of the innovations and the machinery, which is either being made in Europe or Japan, it's a huge sector that is innovating, can innovate further. With laws like this, there will finally be the resources going towards those innovations that the state of New York and the United States stand to benefit from.
And we are not paying enough attention to that. It is a $2.5 trillion industry that we could — we're only the brand side, really, and we could be so much more than that. But there isn't. There hasn't been sufficient attention paid to that as yet.
David Roberts
We haven't talked much about the waste side or disposal side. Would the Fashion Act affect that side of things, too, somehow? I can't think of how it would.
Maxine Bédat
But so it would in a roundabout way, in that if you have to achieve carbon reductions, you can do as much as you can on your efficiencies. Eventually, you're going to get down to how many units you're actually producing. So it does in that sort of business model way. It isn't an EPR bill, so it's not, you know, directly addressing where the waste is going. I think those are important.
David Roberts
So it would affect the amount of waste, basically, just because it would affect the amount produced. But it doesn't directly regulate the apparel disposal. Is there anything to do on that side? Like, I just imagining all this, like, is the recycling industry. Like, I just have to think, having learned what I've learned about plastic recycling, like, I think when people imagine plastic recycling, they're just like, "Yeah, you just chuck all the plastic in a big machine and then, like, some AI robot, you know, like, separates it out or whatever." But no, it's really mechanical.
It's really, like, by hand. It's very manual, very gross, and very limited in its scale. And I imagine for fashion, since you have, like, a lot of these polyester blends or like part polyester, part cotton that just like recycling is difficult to impossible. Is there any substantial recycling going on?
Maxine Bédat
It is difficult. It is definitely difficult. It is not impossible. I'd mentioned Renewcell to you, which is a fiber recycling. They were at scale doing tons in volume. Yeah, it's possible. It's not being used because it's more expensive than polyester, and polyester is used because it's cheap. So if you set the system up to price in these externalities, then you start putting resources towards those innovations. The sort of technical challenges that are out there are, as you mentioned, a lot of the fabrics are blended material, and that's just very difficult. Once you've blended a material to unblend it and reconstitute it into new fiber.
And then the other portion in this is even when you get these recycled materials, you're still going through all the next steps of spinning, dyeing, finishing. So I feel like there's, you know, it's good to focus on recycled materials and we need to invest in that, but it is not, it shouldn't be — I feel like circularity has become an end in itself in this space when we need to understand that circularity doesn't mean, like zero carbon.
David Roberts
Yes. Interesting.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. And then the other, just major issue in this space is people are throwing out their clothing. They're giving it away. When they're giving it away, it is ending up in the global south and there's no away. It's just ending up the problem of those countries to deal with our waste.
David Roberts
Just massive landfills, I would imagine.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, it's massive landfills. There's been a lot, well, relatively a lot, there should be a lot more coverage of places like the Atacama desert in Chile, which is just massive areas covered in clothing. And also the Or Foundation is doing really great work covering the Contamanto, the waste stream coming out of that second-hand market in Accra, Ghana. It's being sent to countries that don't have the resources for a lot of reasons. And there is a lot of, like, illegal burning. When I was doing research for my book, the landfill was on fire.
David Roberts
Yeah. And I'm just, you know, like, burning polyester is gross.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. I mean, you are no longer. Yeah —
David Roberts
You're no longer sequestering the.
Maxine Bédat
Exactly. It's just going into the environment.
David Roberts
So we could say then, to wrap up on the waste disposal side, the best thing you could do for the waste disposal side is just to reduce throughput, just to reduce the amount that needs to be disposed of, basically.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. And I just, because I just feel like there needs to be some law that I say this is that: if you are marketed a product that is using recycled polyester and it's marketing how many beverage, how many bottles that it's used to go into it.
David Roberts
Your fleece.
Maxine Bédat
Yes, exactly. Unless that is actually taking plastic waste that is not otherwise in the recycling stream, you are not saving anything from landfill. Beverage industry has their own targets for recycling. So it's ending up on the back end, just a competition between the beverage industry and the clothing industry. And once you make a bottle into a textile, there's not much you can do with it. Or at least it's a more closed loop, though not perfectly closed loop with the beverage industry as well.
David Roberts
So it's not, it might make you feel slight, give you a good feeling, but it doesn't do, but it doesn't do much.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. Unless we're actually increasing recycling rates or reducing the amount of plastic that is used globally. We're not, we're not, yeah, it's not, it's not.
David Roberts
So we're almost out of time. I guess just as a last, as a final question,
I totally understand and empathize with and agree with your turn to regulation. Like, you know, I'm obviously a big believer in the power of good regulation, but I wonder, like, have you completely abandoned the idea of culture or behavior change? Like, I know there are a lot of people in my audience who are going to hear this and at this point in the discussion are going to be tearing their hair out because we have not yet mentioned, like, how about persuading people just to buy less, right.
Just to not participate in this churn, just to care more about clothing that lasts a long time, that can be repaired, et cetera, et cetera. Like, just trying to change the values. Have you really just kind of given up on that? Do you think there's any, I mean, how should we think about that? I mean, I've sort of come to think in areas outside of fashion that you'll get people to think differently when you — after you change the physical circumstances. You know what I mean? Like after you change the regulation, change the business, change the product flows, people will adjust their thinking after that.
But like, you're not going to cause that stuff to happen by adjusting people's thinking. That's at least my, where I've come out. So like, how, how do you think about culture and behavior change these days? Have you just completely written it off?
Maxine Bédat
No, I think it's a "yes, and..." situation. I often think of that Spider-Man meme, you know, where that's the three Spider-Men pointing fingers at each other. I think about that almost every day.
David Roberts
A remarkably powerful meme. Remarkably useful.
Maxine Bédat
Remarkably useful. And in my meme, the three Spider-Men are companies, citizen consumers, and regulators. And they're all just pointing fingers
at each other, like, what's wrong with you? And so it's not just like the law should do it, because regulators are only going to act if citizens care and they engage, and, like, everybody's going to point to each other. And whether we like it or not, it does come down to us making a noise about it. And that is both on an individual purchasing level and as a citizen, to voice to your regulators and legislators that this is something that matters to you and that they need to invest their political capital in passing. Culture on its own, there's so much money going into advertising to outcompete that.
David Roberts
You have to have a pretty big PSA campaign to compete with —
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, I mean, and I think there's a whole other podcast that can be done about the resources that do need to go into spaces on regulation and
the resource flow to create these types of basic common sense rules. You're gonna have the Cotopaxis, you're gonna have the Patagonias and the Eileen Fishers, and they're going to reach a certain audience, possibly the audience listening to this podcast.
David Roberts
Yeah, I'm sure there's some overlap.
Maxine Bédat
Yeah. But they are not gonna be on TikTok. You know, like, it's — unless we can put the exact same resources, it's not gonna be a battle that we're gonna win in the timeframe that we're gonna need to win it in.
David Roberts
Okay, well, real final question. After devoting yourself to this area for over a decade now, how do you shop for clothing? Like, what do you, you know, like, how much sort of, like, guilt and responsibility do you take on your own shoulders as a consumer versus sort of just being like, "Well, I'm just going to fight for regulation and shop like a normal person." How do you think about it, clothes, when you're buying them now?
Maxine Bédat
Yeah, so people, I feel like, are always asking, "Where should I shop?"
David Roberts
I'm like, I was going to ask that, but then I was like, "I bet she hates that freaking question."
Maxine Bédat
Thank you. Because I understand where it's coming from, but I do not like that question. I don't look out for specific brands. What I try to do is know my body type. This seems to be more impactful when speaking to shoppers, especially women. But, like, what drives what we actually wear is the thing that makes us feel good in our bodies. So I've tried to be more aware of that. So, just very practical things that I have done to slow my consumption is I remove the cues. Like I learned from psychologists in other spaces.
Like, I have removed the brand emails that I get. I unfollow influencers. So, there's less.
David Roberts
And for God's sake, don't let the algorithm find out that you care about clothes.
Maxine Bédat
Exactly. So, you know, I purposely silence those things and then I add other layers. Like, if I see something that I like, I will put it like, I have a private Pinterest page, so I put a bridge in there so I can go back to it and think, "Do I really want that? Is that something I want?" And just those sort of little mini barriers help me be more thoughtful. But I'm not somebody, like, I still like clothes. Like, I still want to look good. So I'm not like a monk who just doesn't enjoy it.
And it's more that I want control and not have it be marketing messages that are directing my behavior. So that's how I do it.
David Roberts
Well, that sounds like a good route. The other route is to do what I do and just have, like, two pairs of pants and five t-shirts. And I have such a low fashion carbon footprint. I feel proud of myself on that.
Maxine Bédat
Well done.
David Roberts
Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This is hugely illuminating and really interesting, and I hope people will take these thoughts out with them next time they're shopping for clothes or talking to their legislators. Thanks for coming on.
Maxine Bédat
Thank you so much for having me.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf. So that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.
Fashion's climate impact and how to reduce it