Why Sustainability within the Fashion Market Needs Education

Abstract

This project focuses on exploring sustainable-oriented options for young people as they are the primary target group of an accelerating fashion industry. The fast fashion market has major problems along its globally organised supply chain regarding its social and environmental compatibility. The project is conducted within a greater urban area, using the city of Freiburg exemplarily. Pupils of the Staudinger Gesamtschule, the only comprehensive school in Freiburg, engage themselves exploratively in the perspective of sustainability within the fashion market and create a catalogue of measures for sustainable-oriented handling. The main focus of this research project is to evaluate a sustainable-oriented course of actions by interviewing selected consumers and active participants as well as protagonists of the fashion market and textile research field. The empirical social research is conducted by using guidelines as an interviewing technique when contacting commercial and product enterprises as well as research institutes and welfare institutions. Explorations and interviews give pupils the opportunity to become familiar with the fields of work and its individual sustainability options within the fashion market. Thanks to the radio project, the pupils had the chance to widen their perspective outside of a protected school environment and to gain more experience about the complexity of the worldwide fashion market. The development of their personalities to competent consumers has become evident in first changes of attitude and more knowledge. The pupils of the study group have also gained know-how concerning journalistic strategies as well as in their articulation and their word-field on sustainability. The project was promoted by the programme “Our Common Future” of the Robert Bosch Foundation, Germany.