The Netherlands’ most famous shopping street – the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam – was partly blocked during a fashion protest on Friday, December 20. 6,000 kilos of discarded clothing was dumped in the shopping street. The protest calls on fashion companies to be open about production volumes and asks policy makers for more effective legislation.
It is an initiative of the Dutch Sustainable Fashion Circle and is the start of the ‘Fashion Statement Now’ campaign. Dutch Sustainable Fashion Circle is a collective of sustainable fashion activists including Kiki Boreel and Sara Dubbeldam.
Kiki Boreel, initiator and spokesperson for DSFC: “Fast fashion is causing the entire fashion system to go haywire, with collections following each other at an increasingly rapid pace. This not only encourages overproduction, but also creates an ever-growing waste mountain of ‘outdated’ trends. This mountain of clothing in the fast fashion shopping street of the Netherlands symbolizes the physical and moral burden of an industry that runs on waste. As long as brands remain silent about their actual production volumes, the true extent of this problem will remain hidden. We make that visible with this action and campaign.”
The call for transparency is part of the campaign. The collective also advocates tightening extended producer responsibility (UPV) so that not only clothing that is placed on the market is covered by the law, but also unsold clothing. Boreel: “It is more profitable for companies to produce in bulk and throw away large quantities of clothing at the end of each season than to produce less and run the risk of not being able to meet all demand. This keeps fashion industry trapped in a vicious cycle of waste and pollution.” Nice: 22 companies have already made their production volumes public after the call from the Dutch Sustainable Fashion Collective. These companies include Kuyichi, Mud Jeans and Ronald van der Kemp.
After the action in the Kalverstraat, the mountain of clothing is taken to Milieuwerk where it is sorted for reuse or recycling.
