In 2000 the world’s consumers spent around US$1 trillion on clothing—split
roughly one-third in Western Europe, one-third in North America and one-quarter
in Asia (Make Trade Fair and Oxfam International 2004). Seven per cent of total
world exports are in clothing and textiles.
 
According to Kate Fletcher (2008), the process of transforming the industry
into something more sustainable—and more sensitive to our needs—takes time.
It is a long-term commitment to a new way of producing and consuming that requires
widespread personal, social and institutional change. In the shorter term,
thereexist other, more easily won, opportunities to tackle consumers’ patterns, such as
those that come from subverting well-recognised social and psychological mechanisms
that induce blind consumption such as: the pressure to compare themselves
to others, such as through the accumulation and display of possessions; the continuous
replacing of things with their ‘updated’ versions; the cultural obligation to experience
everything and buy things accordingly; and the constant consumption
as part of a continuous process of identity formation.