The Canadian Ethical Fashion Directory
This site provides useful information for people interested in ethical fashion in Canada. Some refer to it as eco fashion, green fashion, sustainable fashion, organic clothing, or fair trade clothing. The concept of ethical fashion integrates all these individual components into one unified and holistic movement.
If you’re a designer or retailer and you believe your business aligns with this website’s concept of ethical fashion, let us know about it.
What is Ethical Fashion?
Ethical fashion is an approach to the design, production, and distribution of fashion that strives to minimize environmental impacts and maximize social benefits.
Ethical fashion is based on the Triple Bottom Line business model, an expanded conception of value, which integrates people, planet, and profit into one unified objective.
Triple Bottom Line: People – Planet – Profit
People refers to the individuals and communities involved in and affected by every link of the production chain. This means the enterprise strives to benefit rather than exploit people by ensuring fair wages, the right to organize, healthy and safe working conditions, and encouraging a healthy body image.
Planet refers to all the ecosystems affected by the production of fashion from the cultivation of fiber crops, to production and manufacturing, to distribution and retail. This means reducing the use of toxic chemicals on the farm and in the the factory, reducing the use of water as much as possible, reducing the use of fossil fuels as much as possible, and supporting initiatives that strive to heal the damage that has already been inflicted upon the natural environment.
Profit refers to the need for a business to make money in order to survive. If a business is not profitable, it won’t be able to help anything, including people or the planet. The key idea is that profit is not considered the one and only objective of a business, it is one necessary part of the wider goal of the triple bottom line.
More Information
Ethical Fashion Forum is a UK based initiative striving to support and promote ethical practices in the fashion industry. Their definition is extensive and expansive.
Ethical Trading Initiative works to improve the lives of workers around the globe who make or grow consumer goods.