What is Intersectional Environmentalism? — Storey

What it is and why it's so important to fashion.

Wasteful fashion production disproportionately impacts communities of color.

If I were to ask you for some ideas on how to protect the environment, your mind might automatically jump to planting more trees or perhaps driving fewer cars. You're not alone in defaulting to these well-tread approaches, however there is much more we can do: as a society we tend to neglect that the word ‘environment’ encompasses humans, along with earth's ecology. This means we ignore the need to protect marginalized communities from further social injustice, which actually has a much larger net impact on environmental outcomes.

Let’s take a step back and re-establish what intersectionality means: originated by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, the concept was first applied to individuals, and outlines that there are multiple aspects to humanity including race, gender, class, sexual orientation, age, body type and many more, and these aspects don’t exist separately from each other; they are inextricably linked, meaning that individuals whose identities overlap with a number of these minority classes will face many more threats of discrimination in their life. Yet, because an amalgamation of these aspects is so unique to each person, they are difficult to model or remember. As Crenshaw says in her TED talk, "When facts do not fit within the available frames, people have a difficult time incorporating new facts into their way of thinking about a problem".

Coming back to our examples from the start, ‘using green energy or using your car less’ are good ideas, however, you are only helping a small number of already privileged people become more eco-conscious without considering lower income countries or those in poverty. If we take a look at how climate change and global warming disproportionately affect low-income countries we can see how important it is to move from traditional environmentalism to intersectional environmentalism.

These complex interrelationships also extend to the fashion industry, where fast fashion multinationals like H&M and Gap continue to have a huge environmental impact. In order to meet the latest trends quickly at the lowest prices possible, they harm the environment with practices like water-intensive cotton growing - a method of growing cotton extremely quickly, which rapidly degrades the soil making it infertile. The cost cutting extends to exploited sweatshop workers, who are paid as little as £25 a month. In Bangladesh, 85% of workers in the textiles industry are women, therefore these unethical practices hurt women of colour the most. Being underpaid, they often can’t send their kids to school, which leads to them entering the textiles industry early and incites a cruel cycle.

The worst impact of this unsustainable production is how it leaves these countries even more reliant on fast fashion as their natural resources are depleted and local topography is decimated. Toxic dyes pollute the rivers ruining the already limited local water supplies. As a result the surrounding areas have to pay to have bottled water imported, to provide their only safe source of water.

Organisations such as Green America and Global Labour Justice are fighting for firms such as H&M and Gap to take greater responsibility for their roles in environment and social injustices, and you can help by voting with your purchase power. Next time you buy clothing or accessories, make sure they are ethically sourced. Given that there aren’t many environmentally friendly methods of producing clothes, you can help reduce global pollution by buying second hand clothing and investing in products you know you will love. After all, as many are realising, the most sustainable clothes you own are already in your closet!

For the greater good of both social justice and environmental movements, we must first realise how thoroughly linked the two are. These movements must become intersectional and treated as one complex issue in order to even hope to treat oppressions that are all so entirely interconnected.

Now if I asked you for the first thing that comes to mind when I say, "We must help protect the environment", what would your answer be?