When Greta Speaks

Greta Thunberg’s recent Vogue Scandinavia cover interview urges one of the worst climate offenders, the fashion industry, to take more responsibility over its overwhelming impacts. She calls out fast fashion for abusing our world’s natural resources and polluting its environments for far too long and reminds us that workers continue to be exploited while irresponsible disposal of waste and chemicals still threaten public and ecosystem health. Will this challenge from one of the world’s most recognized and vocal climate change advocates get the industry’s attention? We hope so.

With the newly published IPCC report issuing dire warnings for the current and future state of climate change, it is as important as ever for organizations to re-evaluate, re-up, and re-commit themselves to sustainability.

These are the very reasons ISAIC was created - to be a resource for bettering our industry through solutions centered around people, education, advanced manufacturing, and the environment. In our first year in our innovative learning factory, we have been able to provide a living wage including full benefits to the entire team. We have seen three cohorts graduate from our Fundamentals of Industrial Sewing and Production class and take steps towards becoming apprentice industrial sewers. We have developed career paths for our team and established weekly paid training opportunities. We are proud to put the sustainability of people first as we build both better lives and a better industry.

We’ve also been quantifying our environmental impacts and identifying the ways we can contribute to the changes needed to address fashion’s role in the climate emergency. Under our banner environmental program, Progressive Good, we have developed monitoring systems to track our waste production and disposal, our carbon footprint and our material usage. This data will be integral in allowing us to make more informed and impactful choices moving forward. We are far from perfect and do not claim to have every answer to the problems plaguing our industry. We understand, however, that every positive action makes a difference. Whether reshoring production, promoting domestic suppliers or demonstrating “volume of one” production, we are making strides towards challenging the fast fashion model that Ms. Thunberg wisely acknowledges as a root problem. We’ll soon be sharing the work we’ve been doing and the solutions we’re implementing and hope it inspires others in the industry who are looking to address sustainability. One step at a time.

There is and always will be more work to be done and ISAIC is committed to leading responsibly.