MUD Jeans CEO Bert van Son has issued a bleak warning to the fashion industry, ahead of the inaugural Sustainable Brands conference in Sydney.
van Son, keynote speaker at the event this month, said the changing power of millenials will demand greater responsibility from brands.
By 2025, Deloitte estimates millenials will make up 75% of the global workforce.
Born between 1982 and 2000, van Son said this generation is significantly more engaged with sustainability and social justice than predecessors.
With millennials embracing the decoupling of growth from natural resource consumption, known as the Circular Economy, van Son believes it is the future of trade.
Accenture recently revealed that it will be an industry worth $4.5 trillion in the next 15 years.
“For decades supply chains and products flowed in one direction: from manufacturing to consumption, ending in landfill, yet we live in a world with limited resources, so it’s time to consider the well-being of the earth and its resources across all industries including fashion.
“Brands need to reduce their dependencies on the world’s scarce natural resources and benefit from the opportunity to generate revenue from waste, to create more innovative, responsive and customer-centric product and services that millennials engage with. It’s not about losing money, it’s about boosting competitiveness in saturated markets.
“I’ve been in the fashion industry for 30 years, and it has many problems.
"Cotton is one of the worst things we grow on this earth. Every year we grow 24 billion kilos of cotton on 2.5% of our cultivated land and we spray 25% of pesticides and insecticides over it.
"Consumers want cheap products, and brands want fast fashion and maximum revenue, so we see many products made in very bad conditions.
"Then, the fast paced nature of fashion sees the world burn garments, which equates to about 10% of the world’s global carbon dioxide. All in all, bad for humans and bad for space ship 'earth'.
“At MUD Jeans we are the first and only circular fashion brand, making sure our organic and certified cotton jeans come back to us for recycling, by our Lease a Jeans concept. We target the market of millennials; our conscious explorers."