With Small Business Saturday fast approaching, the time to be conscious of where you should spend your money is now. This week, the sustainability spotlight falls on Atmosphere Mountainworks. Owned and operated by Lindsay Olson and Jeff Hubell, Atmosphere Mountainworks is an outdoors store in Historic Downtown Laramie that primarily sells locally-sewn products. With five main seamstresses per week creating a total of fifty products, not one product appears the same. This is due to the variety of fabric colors Atmosphere sources from bigger companies’ end rolls. They make use of the leftover bolts of fabric that cannot be used in mass-clothing manufacturing methods. This leaves Atmosphere with around 12 packcloth and 12 cordura colors to mix and match when creating any of their bags, pants, or other custom-made outdoor pieces. Scrap fabric is turned into “Ditty Bags,” or simple, small one-zipper bags, and once the scrap fabric is smaller than a hand’s size measurement, it is used as stuffing for dog beds. This ultimately makes their production processes waste infinitesimally small. Not only is the method of zero-waste when it comes to production environmentally conscious, but it is economically smart, as co-owner Lindsay Olson points out.
“Sustainability is not just about saving the environment; it’s also about being a good business”
Why is Fast Fashion bad?
Fast fashion brands are focused on mass-production without sustainability in mind, ultimately limiting their financial gain and increasing their environmental damage to a significant degree. Cheapness of materials and retail prices are the main driving forces behind fast fashion business models. Often, little else is taken into consideration, ultimately limiting the quality of each garment whilst exponentially increasing the quantity of each piece.
A large part of the pollution and greenhouse gases emitted by the fashion industry deals with the excess inventory of production lines. For instance, “Apparel and footwear production currently accounts for 8.1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions” (Chua). This is due to excess inventory becoming waste in many cases as well as the lack of fabric reuse both by the manufacturer and consumer. For instance, fast fashion brands will dispose of unsold items in bulk quantities whereas consumers will wear their low-quality clothes for a short period of time before purchasing a new wardrobe.
“The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world just after the oil industry”
How can you shop sustainably?
Shop locally! This one major difference can drastically lower your clothing shopping carbon emissions. Without shipping or mass-manufacturing there are less greenhouse gases emitted per product created in Laramie or other towns. Atmosphere Mountainworks boasts zero-waste production methods that classify them as eco-friendly. As well, buy for quality and not quantity. By continuously wearing high-quality clothes for years, you’ll be less inclined to purchase other clothing pieces thus saving both money and the planet. One local business at a time, we can shift to a greener economy and atmosphere.
Citations:
Charpail, M. (2017). Fashion & environment. SustainYourStyle. Retrieved November 11, 2021, from https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/en/whats-wrong-with-the-fashion-industry#anchor-environmental-impact.
Chua, J. M. (2019, September 12). The environment and economy are paying the price for fast fashion - but there's hope. Vox. Retrieved November 11, 2021, from https://www.vox.com/2019/9/12/20860620/fast-fashion-zara-hm-forever-21-boohoo-environment-cost.