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The next generation of fashion designers has a heady task to tackle. They have to save the planet.

World Fiber Production/Consumption Estimates Million Metric Tons 1960-2050 (SOURCE: PCI Fibers, West Sussex, UK)

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That was the objective presented before students at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona during the second annual Apparel Merchandising & Management Symposium, held May 30 at the college’s AGRIscapes center.

The symposium is presented before the college’s graduating class and features industry speakers from leading companies.

The sustainability and eco movement, which has captured the attention of the apparel industry over the past couple of years, has been focused on eco fabrics and fashions. But the panelists at Cal Poly delved into the reasons why the industry needs eco fashions.

Program chair and professor Peter Kilduff led off by painting an alarming picture of the state of the planet.

He said the earth is actually entering into a new stage of extinction, the Anthropocene epoch, based on the degradation of natural resources by man. Citing various studies, Kilduff rallied off a number of anecdotes. For one, he noted that two-thirds of the global population will live in areas with shortages of water by 2025.

In two years, oil production will be on the decline. Animal species are disappearing at a rate between 100 and 1,000 times the norm. Consumption is one of the major causes of the planet’s deterioration.

“We are creating trash faster than the landfills can hold them,” he said.

The world’s population, currently at 6.7 billion, will hit 10 billion by 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That population consumes close to 100 plastic shopping bags a year on average for each person. Those bags clog up landfills and take hundreds of years to degrade.

As for apparel, consumers use 76 million metric tons of fiber each year, and, by 2050, that amount will grow 3½ times, Kilduff said.

“Even cotton uses a huge amount of energy because of the need to wash it,” he said. Organic cotton has done a lot to reduce the amount of chemicals into soil, but there is still a lot of waste. According to a British study, consumers put about 66 pounds of clothing into landfills a year. That’s 60 percent of all discarded clothing. About 30 percent reaches the second-hand market.

“We are over-consumed,” noted Howard Gabe, a former eco retailer and current producer of the E.C.O. trade show, held twice a year in Las Vegas. “We need organic and sustainability.”

Gabe said as much as the industry does not like to hear it, clothing consumption is part of the problem hindering conservation.

“We go out every season and buy garments that have the quality and characteristics to last us 10 years, but two months later, we need to buy another shirt,” he observed.

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