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When we talk about sustainability and the environment, people often assume its only about recycling and fuel emissions, however people don’t realise important water and the wastage of water is. Water is a finite and irreplaceable resource that is fundamental to human well-being.  It is only renewable if well managed. Today, more than 1.7 billion people live in river basins where depletion through use exceeds natural recharge, a trend that will see two-thirds of the world’s population living in water-stressed countries by 2025. Water can pose a serious challenge to sustainable development but managed efficiently and equitably, water can play a key enabling role in strengthening the resilience of social, economic and environmental systems in the light of rapid and unpredictable changes (United Nations 2021). The united nations have a poster with many water statistics, here are a few of them;

• 3 billion people have no access to safe drinking water.
• 1/5 of the population live where water is physically scarce.
• In 2012, 2.5 billion people did not have access to sanitation facilities.

Levis are a world known clothing brand, famous for their jeans. When It comes to sustainability, Levis take a different approach, instead of pretending to do an awful lot of eco-friendly activities. Levis do not pretend like they are part of movements or brands that are big on being environmentally focused, instead, they actively put money into bettering their marketing for the hashtag ‘doingyourpart’. Sometimes, being honest with consumers is better than lying about being sustainable. The hashtag ‘doyourpart’, is very effective because it implies you do not have to completely change your lifestyle to help be more sustainable, it’s about making small steps and changes. Levis is quite frank when they straight up say; change your habits. Use less water and please don’t wash your jeans every week – it’s absolutely fine to wait a couple of weeks between every time you do the laundry (Sustainability matters 2020). Levis launched a campaign encouraging people to adapt to a waterless lifestyle, to experience how much of a daily struggle it is for people who do not have access to clean and safe drinking water. To go with this, Levis launched a waterless jeans collection, to highlight the fact that an average pair of jeans uses 42 litres of water in the finishing process and Levis have already reduced this by 96% (Water Org 2021)! Vice president of the Levis brand states that “we’re excited about the results we’ve achieved so far, and we know we can make an even bigger impact by applying this innovative thinking to other aspects of our production process. Sometimes, the way to achieve a more sustainable design is to rethink a traditional process and find a way to do it better”, (Water Org 2021).

People in more than 1300 cities across the world took part in the Levi water challenge, here are some of the accomplishments;

• 1207 people actively showered less.
• 1850 pairs of jeans were not washed.
• 715 taps went untouched.
• 1374 water bottles were reused.
• 1.82 billion litres were provided.

Water is a basic human need and there are many people living without it, even worse, drinking water, which is dirty and unsafe, which could lead to numerous health issues. Many of these people consuming this type of water are young children, who need clean and safe water to be able to grow and live happily. Because we are not in this situation, we often forget how lucky we really are. In the UK especially, we take something as simple as clean water for granted. Not only for health reason, but for hygiene water is important too, for example, a very normal thing for woman to go through is getting her period. A country where there are no sanitation facilities, can make it very unhygienic and unsafe for females to deal with that safely. Little by little, one by one, small steps and changes can have a huge impact on the world. If every person in the world took one small change, combined would be a whole lot of change, do your part. 

• References
• Fill your well, 2021. Levis waterless jeans. [image] Available at: <http://fillyourwell.blogspot.com/2011/05/good-deeds-levis-waterless-jeans.html> [Accessed 6 May 2021].
• United Nations, 2021. Water sustainability. [image] Available at: <https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/images/Infographic_light_01.jpg> [Accessed 5 May 2021].
• Water.org. 2021. Levi’s® Water<Less Campaign | Water.org. [online] Available at: <https://water.org/about-us/news-press/levis-waterless-campaign/> [Accessed 5 May 2021].

Black lives matter first became a campaign after the unfortunate death of Trayvon Martin. In 2013, Trayvon was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, he was only 17 years old. The black lives matter hashtag was beginning to be used, as we watched more and more black lives being taken away. BLM became the phrase of a human rights campaign group. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives (Black lives matter 2021). Following Trayvon’s unfortunate death, thousands of people took part in protests and spoke out on social media, to raise awarness of the situation.

The image above is of a man named George Floyd. George sadly lost his life after being arrested, then pinned down to the floor with a police officers knee, where he could not breathe. George repeatedly told the officers he could not breathe; footage evidently shows over 20 times George had told them this. Derek Chauvin along with 3 other officers was at the scene, not one single officer helped him. The footage shows bystanders shouting at the officers, telling them to stop. The footage is extremely heartbreaking to watch and George loses his life due to the suffocation of the officer’s knee on his head. This devastating event is what caused the huge attention to the black lives matter phrase.

One of the top online fashion retailers, Pretty little thing, was one of the many brands to speak out about Black lives matter, alongside other large brands such as Boohoo and missguided. PLT showed their feelings of care and love towards the campaign by sharing this image of 2 people holding hands. However, shortly after sharing the illustration, the company’s social media followers pointed out the issue with the “jet black hand colour” and accused the retailer of “misrepresentation”.“I know y’all had a shade of brown for that hand,” one person tweeted (Ritschel 2020). A lot of people found the image inappropriate and demanded it to be removed, or for them to change the colour of the black hand and reupload it to social media. It was clear a lot of people were offended by the image. In honour of the BLM campaign, PLT has released a collection with the celebrity Saweetie, where the proceeds will go to the BLM campaign. PLT on their website wrote, “PrettyLittleThing understand how important it is to speak up, step up and take action. We are committed to implementing positive change and giving a voice to our community. Therefore, we will be donating all proceeds from this collection to Black Lives Matter. Because we know, we’re always stronger, together”. This has set a great example to other fashion brands, to show that all businesses can find a way of doing their part to help.

Unfortunately, as amazing as the black lives matter campaign is, there will be people who disagree and backlash no matter what you promote. In response to the BLM phrase, some people have been using the phrase “all lives matter”, in retaliation to the movement. Although there is nothing immediately wrong with that phrase, below the surface it is seen as a very problematic statement. “Nobody involved in the Black Lives Matter movement is saying that only black lives matter, or that all lives don’t matter, or that white lives don’t matter. The issue is that is white lives have always seemed to matter more,” Shaka Hislop explained. “What Black Lives Matter as a movement is saying is that all those lives matter equally. Black lives have to matter just as much as everybody else’s”, (BBC 2020). It is a huge shame that the world can not just agree with one thing and that is equality and being against discrimination.

• References
• BBC Newsround, 2020. Anti-racism: What does the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ mean?. [image] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/53149076> [Accessed 6 May 2021].
• BBC, 2020. George Floyd: What happened in the final moments of his life. [image] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52861726> [Accessed 6 May 2021].
• Independent, 2017. Black Lives Matter movement awarded Sydney Peace Prize. [image] Available at: <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/black-lives-matter-awarded-sydney-peace-prize-a7759031.html> [Accessed 6 May 2021].
• Independent, 2020. PRETTY LITTLE THING SPARKS BACKLASH WITH ‘INAPPROPRIATE’ ILLUSTRATION OF ‘JET BLACK HAND’. [image] Available at: <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/pretty-little-thing-hand-twitter-racism-skin-colour-minneapolis-protests-a9539456.html> [Accessed 6 May 2021].

Inclusivity is an important part of success for a business. For many years, brands such as Abercrombie, have been major culprits of using relatively slim models for the face of their brand. If you know have ever shopped at Abercrombie, you will know this slim aesthetic also runs right down to the cashiers and floor staff, not just the models representing the brand. Tall, golden-skinned men, with more abdominal muscles than you can count and petite females with long blonde hair and sunkissed skin, have been the face of Abercombie for years now. However, this aesthetic might be what is bringing them down, is this really a smart business move?

As the world begins to learn that all bodies are beautiful, many brands are attempting to rebrand themselves to fit in with the current body positivity movement.

The decision for this new campaign has come a long 14 years after the clothing brand had faced a lot of controversy for comments made by the former CEO Mike Jeffries in 2006 about the types of customers the brand aims to target (Ritschel 2020). Originally, it was seen that the brand was made for kids that were attractive and classed as cool, the price tag too reflected this. The brand was said to go after the cool kids with “a lot of friends and good attitudes”, the “all American kids”. Jeffries told Salon, “a lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla” (Ritschel 2020). In today’s society, this would be seen as an outrageous target for a brand and the complete opposite is now happening. Brands that have started to target their clothing to everybody, or more than what they did before, are increasingly becoming favourited and more popular. Before 2014, the brand sizes did not exceed a size 10. The average dress size currently for females in the UK is a size 16 (Hosie 2017). Excluding larger sizes can sometimes make consumers who fit into their target audience feel special, however, this is not a healthy way to live. The only way we can get out of this message is if more and more brands continue to expand their sizes and models. The good news: leading retailers and brands, including Walmart, Marks & Spencer and athleisure giants Nike, Puma and Adidas, have all developed plus-sized lines. And in the US, Universal Standard, founded in 2015, has taken size inclusivity to a new level, selling clothes up to size 40 (Ashley 2020). Brands as large as Nike and Walmart developing plus-sized lines is a huge improvement and honour to the plus-size community. For so long, there have been many negative connotations with being plus size and it’s finally starting to sink into peoples minds that we are all the same, no matter what shape or size. Plus-sized consumers should always be able to shop at the same places as people who are considered slim, it really does paint the world of fashion and business in a bad light. A lot of brands use the excuse that there are a lot more productions costs when it comes to the manufacturing of plus size garments, fabrics often come in only a few different widths, resulting in wasted material when changing the size of the materials. They also often argue that factories lack experience in making clothing for plus-sized people.

“History of exclusion”.

The term “history of exclusion”, implies that this type of exclusion has been going on for many years. “Exclusion” portrays a very negative idea, in that plus-size consumers are not part of the same group and in an extreme opinion, not human. As extreme as that may sound, a history of exclusion may have made plus-sized people feel exactly that, which is why the body positivity movement extremely needed, to ban body-shaming and discrimination.

• References
• Abercrombie&Fitch, 2020. Introducing the fierce family. [image] Available at: <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/abercrombie-and-fitch-plus-size-inclusivity-ad-campaign-jeans-a9322031.html> [Accessed 9 May 2021].
• Ashley, B., 2020. What happened to plus-size?. [online] Vogue Business. Available at: <https://www.voguebusiness.com/fashion/what-happened-to-plus-size> [Accessed 6 May 2021].
• ELLE, 2015. An ode to the shirtless Abercombie & Fitch models. [image] Available at: <https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/news/g26180/abercrombie-fitch-models/> [Accessed 5 May 2021].
• Hosie, R., 2017. How women’s bodies have changed over the years. [online] The Independent. Available at: <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/womens-body-changes-1957-self-image-fashion-weight-health-sizes-positive-a7633036.html> [Accessed 6 May 2021].