I don’t know if it was the lockdown or the landfill documentaries or the very visible fires on our planet, but somewhere along the line, caring about sustainability went from niche to necessary. One minute it was just the eco-girls on Depop and the next, Burberry’s releasing carbon-neutral collections. Fast fashion brands have entire “conscious” sections now. Luxury houses are shouting about regenerative agriculture. Even your local MP probably drops “circular economy” in a sentence without blinking.
But why now? What actually sparked this movement? And who’s behind the sudden pressure?
First, let’s be real: it didn’t just happen. The shift has been brewing for over a decade, quietly pushed forward by climate scientists, activist designers, Indigenous communities, youth protestors and EU policymakers with more patience than most of us. Fashion's reckoning was always inevitable, it just needed enough smoke to make the fire visible.
The 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh woke people up to the human cost of cheap clothing. It made sustainability a conversation about lives, not just landfills. And then came the waves: the 2018 UN Climate Report warning we had 12 years to act, Greta Thunberg’s global climate strikes, Extinction Rebellion’s occupation of fashion week. Gen Z’s refusal to separate style from ethics. The pandemic, with its eerie stillness, made us notice the waste more clearly, like the 10 billion dollars’ worth of unsold clothes piling up in silent warehouses. That unease? It stuck.
But it wasn’t just vibes, it was legislation too. The EU started drafting the Green Deal, the Extended Producer Responsibility laws, and Digital Product Passport rules. Suddenly, if brands didn’t shape up, they’d be fined. France banned companies from destroying unsold goods. New York proposed the Fashion Act. And in the UK, campaigns like Fixing Fashion and MPs like Caroline Lucas began calling out greenwashing publicly. Basically: political pressure and public pressure began closing in.
Brands began to feel the squeeze, not just because they cared, but because they had to. Investors started asking questions. Customers started unfollowing. Designers started quitting to go independent. Sustainability went from an option to a KPI.
But let’s also give flowers to the creatives, communities and culture-makers who kept the vision alive long before it became a marketing trend. The upcyclers, the soil scientists, the deadstock darlings, the collectives that made repair culture sexy. Black and brown communities have been practicing low-waste living forever—it just didn’t come with PR campaigns. So if sustainability feels “trendy” now, remember: it’s built on years of unpaid labour, invisible influence and grassroots resilience.
So who made us care? Honestly: the planet did. The people did. The creatives did. The politicians (some of them, anyway) did. And now that we’re here, the question becomes, how do we make sure this isn't just a moment, but a movement that actually delivers?
Because the climate doesn’t care about branding. But our future? It absolutely does.