Beyond growth?

Redefining overproduction as 'excess'

When I was 15, I did 2 weeks of work experience at a big vintage shop in Birmingham in exchange for a school reference and some discounted clothes. It was a pretty standard introduction to the type of retail work I’d find myself doing over the next 6 years, namely folding, steaming, hanging, tagging, tidying, and smiling maniacally at customers. The excitement I had before starting was immense; this was my favourite place to shop as a teenager for Levi’s cut-off shorts and 80’s t-shirts upcycled into crop tops. Predictably, most of the shine faded after the first 8 hours on my feet.

So far, so ordinary. But what I remember from that innocent time is the cold warehouse where I would meet delivery vans and unpack cable-tied bundles of crumpled flannel shirts. This warehouse was at least twice the size of the storefront itself, packed to the brim with more clothes than we could ever reasonably sell. This excess was my small glimpse of the sheer volume of clothes that already exist, let alone the new ones being churned out every day.

Of course, what I was seeing was a snapshot of a global business model utterly dependent on overproduction and overconsumption, from high street to high-end and even second-hand. You only have to peek at LinkedIn to see that this industry actively recruits its workforce from fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), like groceries and toiletries that we buy quickly and regularly, with convenience as a much bigger behavioral driver than quality. In amongst this ‘incomparable churn’ of mass-produced clothing, it can be easy to forget that this incredible access we have to whatever we want to wear is not fulfilling a human right to decent, sufficient clothing. It is nothing more than a luxury, an absurd excess.

“Our productive capacities are controlled by capital, and mobilise around what is profitable to capital, rather than what is necessary for human wellbeing and ecology. So we end up with perverse forms of production: SUVs and fast fashion and fossil fuels and advertising, instead of public transit, nutritious food, renewable energy, affordable housing.”

Jason Hickel at Beyond Growth (watch here)

Last week, experts gathered at the European Parliament in Brussels for the inaugural Beyond Growth conference, which confronted the EU on its own destructive growth logic and brought conversations about degrowth to mainstream policy, exploring meaty topics like universal basic income and services, just transition, wealth tax, the economics of care, democratic governance and more. I’ve been slowly working my way through the livestream, and although it was, of course, imperfect and incomplete, it certainly feels like a pivotal moment for addressing our relationship with excess.

Unsurprisingly, the blossoming degrowth movement is continually met with accusations of being anxious luddites desperate to crawl back into the cave. This response to The Economist’s critique ‘“Meet the lefty Europeans who want to deliberately shrink the economy” (lol) from Timothée Parrique is particularly good at dispelling that myth. It reminded me how grateful I am for the experience I had last year studying with the Centre for Human Ecology in Ullapool, which introduced rich new narratives of degrowth that really helped me to move past this tired debate and toward real-life examples of a prospering, post-growth society.

Meanwhile, this brilliant article from Rachel Arthur considers a fashion industry that slows down its relationship with the growth paradigm, suggesting that we need a “controlled reduction [of production] to align output with planetary boundaries as well as a social foundation.” To achieve this, Fashion Revolution argues that brands must first disclose their huge volumes of production (eg. Inditex produced 450,146 tonnes of garments in 2021), of which 85% currently do not. This report from Hot or Cool Institute published last year also addresses this topic from a consumer point of view, proposing hard limits on fashion consumption in rich countries.

While tinkering around the edges of sustainable fashion creates jobs, drives corporate profits and gives us plenty to write about, it’s clearer than ever, I think, that total system change is not only necessary but inevitable, whether by choice or as a result of disaster. I want to see every factory powered by renewable energy, fossil fuel fabrics phased out of every design, and every brand repairing, recirculating and recycling their products, and of course, living wages and decent work for every person connected to the supply chain. But even if we achieve all of this, the fashion industry will still need to face the elephant in the room. It is a business of excess, and our planet can no longer afford that luxury.

So what can we do about this wicked problem? It may not be much, but I believe we should start with interrogating the self. Creators like Aja Barber, Besma Whayeb, Kate Caric and Cora Harrington have long championed critical engagement with our own consumption habits, which requires letting go of ‘whataboutism’ and a pretty long, hard look in the mirror.

On a collective level, one of the most important things that everyone who cares about slowing down and scaling back fashion’s monstrous impacts can do is to sign on to the Stop Waste Colonialism campaign from The OR Foundation. Their vital work on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) at the EU level needs your support.

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Thank you so much for reading. I’ll be back with another newsletter next month. In the meantime, here are some podcast recommendations I’ve listened to recently if you want to explore some of these issues in more depth:

• Tipping Point: The true story of The Limits To Growth

• The BoF Podcast: The world is on fire but we’re still buying shoes

• Tech Won’t Save Us: Why tech billionaires want to shape our future