Understanding Clothing Consumption Choices in Oslo; Identifying and addressing barriers to sustainable consumption of clothes

The success of the garment and textile industry has contributed immensely to a culture of mass consumption. In 2011 Norway accounted for 16.2 billion NOK worth of clothing imports (Garberg, 2012), with households spending 23,618 NOK on clothing and foot wear yearly(SSB, 2012). However, the industry s indiscretions towards ethics and the environment have been seemingly ignored by consumers. In order to understand the reasons why consumption practices remain unaltered towards sustainable consumption, this study aims to present factors that shape and explain clothing consumption patterns in Oslo. The knowledge, awareness level and attitude of consumers towards their ecological foot print are also presented. The study was conducted with a total of 25 participants ranging from consumers to fashion designers, authors and project managers. Interviews were conducted over a three month period and all them took place in Oslo. The key findings of the study showed that consumers were not able to consume clothing sustainably due to two major factors: lack of information and price. Owing to the lack of transparency of the production line as well as the geographical separation of the manufacturing process from the location of the consumer, consumers have access to very little information about the conditions under which their clothing was made. The price element also played a key role in the deterring of consumption of sustainable clothing. As the sustainable fashion designers incurred higher costs they offered higher prices than their established competitors such as H&M & Zara, which provide lower quality but cheaper and trendy clothing. The paper further goes on to show that the onus of sustainability cannot be said to solely rely on the consumer. The government also has a key role to play in this endeavor. The government can reduce consumption in various ways, one of the proposed ways to discourage bulk and frequent buying is by increasing the taxes on fast fashion clothing brands. This money can then be used to subsidize the sustainable fashion designers clothes. The government can also run financed national level campaigns aimed at informing the public on various topics related to sustainability and clothes. All these efforts combined by all the stakeholders will help move the Norwegian consumption pattern to that of a more sustainable level through the consumption of higher quality clothing at lower frequency.