Episode 2 - Remaking Fashion: Fossil-Free and Feminist
Season 1, Episode 2 - Remaking Fashion: Fossil-Free and Feminist with Sophia Yang
About this Episode
How do we remake fashion so that it is regenerative, fossil-free, inclusive, and equitable?
Fashion and textiles are where climate change, waste, labour rights, and social justice all come together. Every single one of us interacts with clothing in our everyday lives, and fashion is currently one of Earth’s most polluting industries. We have an opportunity to remake our fashion system, so that it becomes the fertile ground for thriving local economies, creative expression, and circular loops that keep us in balance within nature’s boundaries.
Sophia Yang, Founder and Executive Director of Threading Change, joins Reseed host Alice Irene Whittaker for a conversation about fashion, justice, gender, circular economy, and climate - and how they all weave together.
Show Notes
Stand.earth Fossil-free Fashion Scorecard
Threading Change Global Innovation Story Map
TEDCountdown - Activist Lauren calls out Shell CEO
Transcript
Alice Irene Whittaker (intro): Welcome to Reseed, a podcast about repairing our relationship to nature. Reseed tells the stories of a RE generation: the people embracing repair, redesign, reuse, and reduction. The people who are uprooting the extractive status quo and rooting the future in justice, wellbeing, resilience, and care. This is a podcast for those of us who are re-imagining our relationship to the natural world and to each other.
Alice Irene Whittaker: I am Alice Irene Whittaker, the host of Reseed. Together, let's plant the seeds that transform us from being takers to caretakers. Today, I sit down for a conversation with Sophia Yang, the founder, and executive director of Threading Change to talk about fashion, justice, gender, circular economy, and climate, and how they all weave together.
Sophia Yang: We are taught to look at fashion as a commodity, as a consumer good. And sometimes even if we want to do the right thing, we can't look past that price tag, but when you start to embed stories - how was this made? Whose sweat was used to produce this? Where is it going afterwards? What’s the story of this brand? You know, when you provide this level of transparency and authenticity, people think twice. There are so many stories within the world that we don't even know.
Alice Irene: Anyone who knows me, knows that I love to talk about fashion. It's seen as too feminine in a society that looks down on the feminine. It's seen as frivolous, it's seen as outside of the serious realm of economic and social issues that we're facing. But really fashion is where it all comes together. From labor rights to social justice, to approaching the climate crisis with the courage and conviction that we require to the soil and connection with the earth.
Alice Irene: And being able to build these regenerative local economies through the way that we grow and create and distribute. And then yes, compost our fashion. It's also about creativity and expression, which are really important to me. So you'll probably end up hearing a lot about fashion and the very disparate and distinct and diverse perspectives and expressions of it that we see in the sustainable circular, ethical fashion movement, which is really building momentum.
Alice Irene: So with that, here is my conversation with climate justice, changemaker and advocate, Sophia Yang. Sophia is working to remake an industry that every single one of us interacts with and which is one of planet earth’s most polluting industries - fashion. Sophia has received the Starfish Canada's Top 25 Under 25 Environmentalist Award. She has attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference twice and founded Threading Change. Here is my conversation with Sophia about how she is remaking fashion to be ethical, intersectional, and circular.
Alice Irene: Welcome Sophia. Hi, it's really great to talk to you today.
Sophia: Hello, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Alice Irene: I wanted to start with a question looking backwards in your own life. I'd love to hear from you as a child. How would you describe your relationship with the natural world?
Sophia: Yeah, that's a great question. And just a quick introduction. Hi everyone. I'm Sophia. I use she/her/hers pronouns. My Chinese name is Ya Cheng Yang and I'm currently on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish people (aka Vancouver). I'm a settler on this land. I was originally born in Northern China in this place called Daqing, which translates directly to big celebration. And the reason why it's called big celebration is because that’s where they discovered copious amounts of oil in China, making it an oil and gas city. So my upbringing, it was interesting being raised in a family full of engineers and petroleum engineers at that, to later become an environmentalist. And I'll tell you a really quick, funny story.
Sophia: My Chinese name, Ya Cheng Yang. Ya means sophisticated, and Cheng means engineer. So my Chinese name means sophisticated engineer. But really they got a loud mouthy environmentalist. I start off with this fun fact about myself because my relationship with the natural world, despite coming from a family of oil and gas engineers, I'm so blessed to be raised in a family where I was exposed to nature at a very young age. When I was six years old, my parents took me to many different places in Southern China. Hainan, I have very fond memories of. It's pretty much like the Hawaii of China. It's the island beside Taiwan. And I didn't know this at the time, but they took me on this trip because we were preparing to immigrate to Canada just two years later. And they wanted me to see a different part of China before we left.
Sophia: When I grew up in Canada, we lived in Calgary for nine years. I remember in 2006, my grandparents came to visit and my dad took us to every single national park in Alberta. And I think that was really instrumental to who I am as a person today, because time spent in nature really instilled my fondness, my love for nature, my environmentalism, and the natural world. But also seeing reciprocal relationships between humans and land and how we are existing within the ecosystem and not to extract from it. And I think having this amount of relationship from an early age and being able to understand how nature is there for us to appreciate, to enjoy, to love, and also to learn from.
Sophia: And there's many cases where nature will swallow you in and spit you right back out. And it was almost scary, but like, just so interesting to me at the same time, I'm really thankful that I got to do that in 2006. For myself, I'm really blessed to have been living in Canada all these years. I really thank my teachers as well, that later helped me get different positions at Parks Canada, and Natural Resources Canada. My first couple of jobs when I was still in university were all outside. I lived in a national park for six months and, you know, doing that as a young adult was also really amazing to instill this very holistic view of the natural environment within me. So I'm really excited that this carries into my work today.
Alice Irene: It's really interesting to hear your roots in this work. And it's a great segue to fast forward, like you mentioned to today, and I'd love to ask you about Threading Change. So what is the story of how you founded the organization and what's the work that you're doing right now?
Sophia: Threading Change is a play on words on spreading change. That's really showcasing how we must view our clothing as stories and not commodities. And every single piece of clothing has a story, a personal anecdote woven into with each individual thread representing all the hands that have touched this piece of clothing before you who've made this possible. So Threading Change came about when I went to the United Nations Climate Conference in December 2019 when it switched from being in Chile to being in Madrid. This was my second time going to the UN COP conference. The year before in 2018, I went to Poland for the conference and I remember being so lost. And for me in 2018, I was interested in climate adaptation, renewable energy, ocean acidification, youth engagement, cities.
Sophia: I felt so overwhelmed. So in 2019, I stumbled into the one year anniversary signing of the UN Sustainable Fashion Charter, because I have an interest in ethical fashion and sustainability. And when I was in the audience, I was looking up on the stage and there were 11 people up on the stage. And there was only one visible person of color on that stage. And up on that stage, their speech was essentially saying, “Thank you for joining us today. We're here at this historical moment, convening industry leaders and government, and we're representing the global fashion industry.” I could feel the audience collectively, just think, huh? Because if we’re representing the global fashion industry, where are the millions of garment workers that are working within the fashion field right now that have no access to health care or childcare or equitable pay? Where are all the union workers and the lobbyists and activists who have fought so hard for some of us to even get to these spaces?
Sophia: Instead, they have representatives from places like H&M, Zara, Nike, Louis Vuitton, who are some of the biggest climate perpetrators in terms of emissions in the world when it comes to fashion. And they were up there saying we've made great strides in environmental sustainability and emissions reduction in our factories. And I was sitting there thinking, well, you know, if you are one of the top contributors to climate emissions in fashion, by saying that you're being more “sustainable”, you're not really doing anything revolutionary. In fact, you're kind of doing the bare minimum. It felt very ingenuine. It felt very greenwashing for lack of a better word.
Sophia: It also felt like the people that should have a voice didn't get to have that. And it was very corporate and I thought to myself, wow, there has to be more to the fashion industry than this. And it was very obvious that up on the stage they were mostly focused on the climate and environmental side. But when it comes to humanitarian side, the social side of fashion, political, and especially how fashion is a feminist issue. The fact that most women who work in these factories are in the global south and even in America, are women of color. It's very important that we don't forget them in this conversation.
Sophia: So in that moment, I decided that I wanted to do something about this topic. And I'm at the global world stage. Not only was there no youth-led organization discussing ethical fashion, a circular economy, there was no organization really at that COP conference at all that year that was discussing these topics. And I thought to myself, something needs to change. In May 2020 when I had more free time because of the pandemic, that's when I started to thread change.
Alice Irene: Beautiful. And I get chills thinking of that invisibility of people who are involved in everything we interact with and wear, and that they're just not there and at the table and part of those conversations. And it makes me think in terms of invisibility. You know, climate justice has been sidelined and ignored or treated as a sort of add on, but it's not really what we're here to do in the environmental movement. And I wanted to hear from you why you think justice is so often segmented out from climate change and circular economy conversations and how we can build it in?
Sophia: I think justice is oftentimes circled out because people can't handle what justice and this reality truly mean. You know, a fun fact - well not so fun but something I tell people is that out of the top 10 billionaires in the world, two of them are in the fashion industry. One of them is the founder of Zara and the other one is the founder of Louis Vuitton. You don't get to be a billionaire in this day and age ethically. When there's millions of people around the world, even billions living in poverty without equitable access to drinking water. And this is not a problem that's happening in the global south, this is a problem that's happening in Canada and the global north right now with many Indigenous communities and also Northern communities, not having access to equitable drinking water and access to even food.
Sophia: Some of the food prices in Nunavut, for example, are absolutely atrocious. This level of equity is embedded with a lot of our systems and that is due to deep injustice and problems in how societal structures and our system is built. And in terms of the lack of justice within the climate it's also because a lot of these actors that do have a say, whether it's an oil and gas industry, whether it's in the fashion industry, in the materials industry or plastics industry, a lot of this decision-making is still at the core completed through shareholders, stakeholders, their interest, and their view of how they want to see the world progress.
Sophia: In the way of fashion what we must realize is that we're way beyond the point where we're just thinking about materials recycling and thinking about shopping secondhand. We're at a point where there's so much clothing in the world that even if we halted production, we still have billions of garments that's in use, in stores and people's closets. And we're seeing it in the landfill. If we think about the 7 billion people in the world and just pretend that half of these people, say in the global north (this is a generalization), had about a hundred articles of clothing because you count shoes, socks, et cetera. And then others maybe have less than that. A hundred articles of clothing times 7 billion. There is so much clothing in the world that we can't even fathom. And if we're going to look at this from a justice based lens, it's imperative that our thinking is intersectional. And sometimes it's hard for people at the very top to think about these things through an intersectional lens because it's easy to look at your ESG and it's easy to look at your social responsibility and governance, to look at how much emissions are being reduced.
Sophia: It’s easy to kind of focus, maybe just on one part of the supply chain. But when you have to bring in the equity, the fair pay, the labor rights - are they getting childcare? The material being shipped. Where are they coming from? Do you have representation within the media, within your shoot? All these different angles will in turn, you know, cost more resources and money to produce. And there's brands out there such as Fashion Nova, where they can do the bare minimum and make a huge profit. The profit margin is huge and social media doesn't help with that either with influencer marketing and Instagram marketing being particularly hotspots for where fast fashion thrives. Justice is lacking within the climate movement. And also the fashion movement more specifically because it is these large players that are making the majority of the decisions, the same large players that were present in the UN meeting room.
Sophia: We talk about the extractive ecosystem of the fashion industry. You have clothing, mostly produced in the global south. That's done for a very cheap amount of money, and then it's exported to different countries for photo shoots and for sale. After the clothing is finished with, most of it goes to landfill in the global south as well. We are using the global south as a dumping ground, particularly in countries, such as Ghana, Haiti, Philippines, Kenya. Unless we address this deep inequity, even the post-consumer side, there is no justice. And the last thing I'll say about this is that consumers are presented with a very, very romanticized view when it comes to “recycling”, and the circular economy, as people are becoming more aware, recycling in the plastic sense, it's not always possible.
Sophia: Same thing for fashion. H&M might show you how they have a machine that can recycle one article of clothing. Guess what? The rate that it’s happening at is 0.0001 fraction of how fast it needs to happen for how much clothing is going to the landfill. It's easy to present consumers with “Look what we’ve done. It's so innovative!” But in the background, unless you're drastically halting production and promoting more secondhand clothing, we're going to be a long way away from true justice in the fashion industry.
Alice Irene: So true and something that comes up for me a lot, and many of us I'm sure too, is you know, people are happy to talk about justice until it comes to transferring any power or giving voice or decision-making presence to people. It's like a ‘nice to have’, you know, like let's talk about it as long as it fits within everything else that we're already doing. And same with the recycling. Let's do this, you know, incremental improvement, as long as it justifies what we're already doing. Your mission of the six F's resonates with me, a feminist fossil fuel free fashion future. Can you talk to me about how fashion can be fossil free and how it can be feminist?
Sophia: I love this question. I think in order for us to change the fashion industry, and to collectively move towards a more justice based fashion industry. It's not a matter of how we're going to be doing the six Fs. We need to know that we need to be implementing the six Fs. Threading change, our three main pillars of action have always been rooted in intersectionality.
Sophia: So clarity and equity, and we really strongly believe that our mission statement showcases that. So on the fossil fuel free side, this is really touching on the climate justice aspect of our conversation. Fashion needs to be fossil fuel free. There's a really amazing report that came out by Stand.earth recently that examined the largest 50 brands in the world and how they're doing in terms of the five UN science-based targets that are determining progress in fashion. And these targets include things such as shipping costs, shipping emissions, advocacy for sustainable fashion, long-term emissions reduction goals, short term emissions reduction goals, and also materiality.
Sophia: And what you'll find interesting is that some brands on there that you think are so great - examples being Patagonia, or perhaps our Arc’teryx or Lululemon, because these are outdoor apparel brands that really do have sustainability within their promotions and marketing material. They actually score a big fat F when it comes to these different categories. Whereas a brand like Nike that has been criticized so many times for child labor and slavery and burning some of their unsold clothing actually scores higher than Patagonia, a brand that many of us know to come and love. And this is the thing about fashion is some brands do a really good job at one aspect. Patagonia’s repair policy - their right to repair is fantastic. Are there supply chains as great? Obviously not. And something with Nike is that they made strides in climate emissions reductions for sure. Do they still have slave lavour in China? Yes. So it's important to note that fashion is an intersectional issue but these companies right now are not viewing it as such.
Sophia: Some of them might be doing something great in one area but completely flopping in another. And as we indicated and talked about previously, if we want to embed justice within these structures in fashion it is imperative that we're working on the climate side, the gender side, and also the diversity side. And the second part of our mission statement, which is the feminist part. We're feminists in the first part too. This is so important to us because just the fact that, you know, as I mentioned before, something that really, really grinds my gears when people say stuff like ‘Fashion is such a girly industry. Like I don't really care about clothing or how I look. So, you know, I'm already an ethical consumer.’ Well, the fact is you think fashion is a “girly industry”, but out of the top 10 CEOs in the world of fashion companies, the only female is Helena from H&M. And she's one of the only people on that list that's not yet in the millionaires or billionaires list. Right.
Sophia: 90% of women in the fashion industry, and it is 90% women, women of color at that, are working in the global south to make clothing. And even in the global north, in America, where there's a lot of garment workers in Los Angeles, 90% of them are still, you guessed it, women of color. Immigrant women from other places. So if fashion is really a girly industry, how come women are really at the bottom supporting all these big figures that are male who are at the top, making a much higher earning. On top of that, women's fashion, especially fast fashion, has gotten so popular from the exploitation of women's bodies. And also the exploitation of young girls, especially in their self-esteem. You look at Instagram marketing, influencer marketing, it's mostly targeted towards young women with very, very dangerous trends on there, such as diet teas, fit tea blogs, not to mention the amount of fatphobia that also persists in a lot of these different marketing.
Sophia: Fashion is a feminist issue because it intersects from the labor aspect of feminism. It intersects from the wage earning aspect, child childcare for example, health care, and also with how women perceive themselves. All these global south places, such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal, where women are in factories, making clothing. There's a lot of intergenerational trauma passed down from that. There are women in these factories who started working when they were eight years old and they work until they're 50 and their children and their grandchildren also work in these factories. And do you think they get opportunities for advancement or they have childcare and that kind of stuff handled for when they're working? No, because they're working over 15 hours a day with very little pay. Fashion is a women's rights and feminist issue in every corner of the world, whether it's a global north or the global south. And it's not being talked about enough because we had this misconception that because fashion is ‘girly’ women benefit from it, but that’s far, far from the truth.
Sophia: And the last aspect of our mission statement is - so it's feminist fossil fuel free fashion future - the free fashion future part. We're really viewing it as liberation and collaboration. For us in order to radicalize the fashion industry and also to bring it to a state where it is truly “sustainable”, liberation must happen. Liberation of women's bodies and of structural barriers that prohibit us from seeing what's possible. And part of that liberation is also recognizing how we need to be producing less clothes anyways. One of our main pillars of work is our innovation and storytelling component, which is realized through our global innovation story map. And part of this fashion future is really looking ahead and seeing what's possible and promoting a culture of transparency and authenticity within different brands.
Sophia: So that brands are more transparent in their emissions reports, brands are more transparent in sharing resources, but also with a robust understanding that collaboration is absolutely needed. But then those that have been perpetrators from, um, from the get-go that have really benefited from slave labor and emissions , these people need to be penalized.
Sophia: There needs to be different policies in place. People need to come together and realize that voting with their dollar is one thing but also the policy changes are very important. And the last thing I'll say is holistic steps encompassed together, to us that is a showcase of diversity, of intergenerational wisdom and also intersectionality. We really do believe that for far too long, fashion has been rooted in very global north aesthetics, white, blonde, European, blue eyes. And that's just not the real world. We are beautiful and diverse in all our individual and different ways. And it's time that we also ensure that racial diversification in a meaningful way.
Alice Irene: That's so powerful, Sophia. The work that you're doing and the connections you're seeing - this nexus that you're creating at is very powerful. Greenwashing is such a danger with the circular economy and with this term, which is used in so many different ways. And that's certainly true in fashion as well. I want to ask about how we resist greenwashing and specifically this co-opting of the term circular economy?
Sophia: Great question. I touched on this in my last response with the example of Patagonia, Lululemon and Arc’teryx scoring worse than Nike. So would we call it greenwashing? I think in some cases, yes, greenwashing is such a problem within the circular economy and also within the fashion industry, because sustainability sells. I hate to say it, and it's unfortunate, but in the last decade, we've seen much more awareness about climate justice and the climate emergency, which is great. But that also comes with people trying to make a profit from it. Bringing another example of how fashion is really intersectional - people are also greenwashing in ways that are also intersectional.
Sophia: You know, those ways of persisting, those people that are just focusing on, ‘look how much better we're doing in terms of materiality’. But then there's also greenwashing in the lens of bringing in even activists to help promote your brand. That's going to happen with some brands as well. These different brands are very, very clever at realizing how to appeal to the masses. And I think it's so dangerous because we don't have time to use greenwashing to sell products. We just don't. We are so far along in the climate emergency and we're in a state where our world is very, very fragile right now.
Sophia: I think in a way, COVID helps some people realize that what we really care about is human connection and not some materialistic thing. But I'm seeing so many people going back to what Aja Barber, who's a great thought leader in the fashion space, says is revenge shopping where so many people are like, oh, now things are opening up, now I can travel. I'm going to buy all this stuff.
Sophia: And it's like, have we learned nothing? But I don't want to blame it on just a consumer because it’s not just a consumer's fault. There are an increasing amount of consumers that sometimes justify the purchasing decisions because of greenwashing, because of performative activism, because of social justice washing, which is another thing that lots of brands are doing. Especially after Black Lives Matter got more recognition in June, 2020, we see lots more brands, including more black models and also more LGBTQS+ models in their campaigns. But do these brands actually, are they actually advancing work in this area? Most of the time, they are not. I think the co-opting of the term circular economy within greenwashing. So the way I would explain this is that circular economy is not a concept that's new. It's been around for centuries. Indigenous communities and lots of people of color communities have been practicing the circular economy for decades.
Sophia: Circular economy is just a fancy term of looking at it in many ways. And even the term circular economy is something that's very, very rooted in, in Western culture and Western ideology, because it's from the belief that this is only significant because previously the economy was linear. If you talk to someone from a certain tribe that has practiced circularity for centuries, they would say, what do you mean? It's always been this way. Why do you have to tack on the word economy to it as well? And I think, you know, when it comes to corruption, circular economy, we must know that this is rooted in colonialism. If you look at fashion for a lot of these, where clothing is produced - the hotspots being Nicaragua, Honduras, Vietnam, Nepal, China, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.These are all places that were getting past colonialist rule - mainly colonialist from European countries. And a lot of these clothing designs and trends are popularized and put into, you know, into a drawing from where? Brands from Europe. And a lot of the consumer demand is again from Europe and the global north.
Sophia: So we're seeing how even though we're saying and talking about circular economy, the fashion economy is not circular. As I said, it starts with the design thought somewhere in the global south, goes to people in Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, to design. Gets shipped out all across the world to later be marketed and photos taken of, get sold in places all around the world. And then it goes to landfill in the global south. Our system in a way you think it's circular because it's like, oh, it started in a global south. That was going there again, not in the right way, not in a way of dumping tons, like billions of tons of clothing into their landfills, into their waste streams. This is not the way that it should be.
Sophia: And I think something that consumers must be vigilant about is also seeing greenwashing when they recognize it. And so recognizing greenwashing when it's there. Threading Change did a survey with over 200 youth in August. We see within these youth across 40 countries that we surveyed a whopping 69% of youth said that they experienced greenwashing on a daily to weekly basis. That's a lot. That is a lot. And we ask a follow-up question, do you use Instagram? And 98% of them said yes. So how marketing and advertising is working - we're so far away from the traditional print, television, media. There's so many different advertisements at us on a daily basis. Brands are getting really good at hiding all the greenwashing with the different ways that it's come about.
Sophia: Some of it's through interviews, podcasts, Instagram posts, YouTube videos. It's so prevalent in society, and we don't always know how to decipher it. So I think that's something else we're trying to do is helping people realize when is greenwashing in the fashion industry happening? How can you spot it? And what can you do about it?
Alice Irene: Those numbers are staggering, but not so surprising, right? Like just as an individual experiencing that on a daily basis that makes a lot of sense, but it's really sad and it is important that people can learn how to navigate it. And obviously important that people stop doing it at the outset. You've brought an essential youth perspective to national and global forums about the circular economy and other topics. Why are youth perspectives essential to decision making tables and high level conversations? And what happens when they're not there?
Sophia: I love this question. For me, I think it's imperative to know that we have always been excluded from the conversation as young people. Particularly Black, Indigenous, people of color, young people, and, you know, they invite us, especially Black Indigenous youth, to global conferences. They have us speak, it looks really nice. Everybody claps. Wow. Take a photo. In a way youth engagement has become so tokenistic that when their intention is that photo op, you feel it. I can tell you it’s one of the worst feelings in the world, because you feel like at that point in time, you are reduced to your age and sometimes you are reduced to how you look. For me, it was never about making sure that we’re yelling from the masses and like, they have to be so aware of this. For me, it was really about helping provide this platform for people to realize that fashion is such an important aspect of our everyday lives.
Sophia: I could not fathom how we've been talking about recycling since the seventies, right? Like that entire mantra, reduce, reuse, recycle, reduce, reuse, recycle that has been drilled into us in elementary school, which we now know is really much more complicated than that. But for some reason, the conversation on fashion and clothing and the circularity of clothing, just somewhere along the way, lost significance compared to bottles. It's something that we wear every single day. Most people around this world are not naked all the time. And I just - it's so baffling to me how this is not an area that we have more people talk about and even for those that were aware about it from a long time ago, they didn't really get much airtime and much time to deliver on this message.
Sophia: Youth perspectives in this case are very, very, very vital to international, local and also national spaces. Because this narrative of the fact that we are the leaders of tomorrow, then give us a space. I think that's bogus. We're not the leaders of tomorrow. We're the leaders of today. There's people as young as eight years old that have been in the streets, protesting from the Fridays for Future movement. There's been young people from the Amazon rainforest or Indigenous youth at these conferences from a very young age, representing their personal interests from their tribe, for their community, and directly standing up talking to the CEOs of fossil fuel extraction companies. They've been here. They've been doing the work. Are you listening? Because many times it seems like we say something and it goes in one ear, and out the other.
Sophia: And I can say, even for things I participated in, you know, you sometimes do such a robust consultation process to make sure that you're adequately representing young people in your community and shareholders and people think, oh, it's nice. Like, you know, like when they did this, like that that's really great. I always follow up. Like, what do you think about my policy recommendations? Did you read my brief? Do you think what I'm suggesting is feasible? Is there extended producer responsibility within Canada anytime soon? Is it going to be a provincial jurisdiction, municipal, perhaps federal, how will you mandate that? It is through these follow up questions that have government officials and people in power shaking their boots because you know, sometimes they invite us for the photo-op, but then afterwards, like, oh wow. Like they're really saying something fantastic. And I see this happening so much because I think young people are brilliant and refusing to be given our world in this state we’re left with.
Sophia: You are taking our planet right now the way we left it to you as bread crumbs. We've used our earth, like a credit card. Swiping left and right, cutting this tree down, clearing this area, this oil spill, that oil spill, you know, this investor interest, that new trade agreement. And this is what you're left with. And you have to not only deal with the repercussions of the climate emergency, but we also have to be strong, to be resilient, to be bright-eyed, to be innovative and to do the right thing. That's a lot of responsibility for a generation that's already born in a time that’s very very hard on us from the economic crisis in 2008 and now, particularly with COVID, you know, people in the millennial and gen Z generations, there's so much ongoing mental health issues and struggles that COVID brought upon that we don't talk about nearly enough, and we're still expected to, you know, have a voice and do all these things.
Sophia: Just the fact that we're here and resilient and talking and standing up, I think is so amazing. And I think this is exactly why our perspectives are all the more important because we don't get to retire in a few years, like we’re thinking actively about - this is our future, how are we going to provide a future for our kids? Is that even something that we want to do? You see the level of eco anxiety that arises within every incoming generation.
Sophia: I think it's important that young people are in these spaces so that we present the harsh reality of what is going on. And even if we are invited in rooms, I'm going to be very honest, for a lot of the discussions where big decision makers are there, young people are not there. They put us in a panel maybe towards the end that has this for like five minutes. Or they put us through an introduction in the beginning. Or they put us somewhere in the middle during lunch hour. But the ones with the big speakers there, with huge organizations. The ones with Justin Trudeau, the ones with people with a lot of power, we are nowhere to be found. So we’re involved, but not at a level playing field that needs to happen. Because that politician might be voted in because they think he has the credentials. Well, guess what? So do we - lived experience - just through this hardship, funding our own organizations, being very innovative.
Sophia: I want to see the day we’re included in the same spaces, on these panels as those big speakers and what that campaigner did at TED countdown, by looking into the shell CEO's eyes and telling him you're responsible for the climate crisis, you're responsible for the degradation of our planet. That was something that she had to fight to do. Those kinds of conversations don't get to happen easily because it makes people uncomfortable. And if we're going to be solving the climate crisis and also the fashion industry's problem, guess what? There's going to have to be a lot of uncomfortable situations, a lot, because people at the top have to come to terms with what they've done using earth with a credit card. And as a young person, we will not stop until we're able to be in these spaces. And look them in the eye and show them what they've done and also provide solutions because I think it only goes so far to point it out, but solutions are also equally important.
Alice Irene: Very well said, Sophia I've watched that video so many times and the courage it takes is inspiring and not just her, but so many that are doing that - yourself included. You're a really great storyteller, you're articulate and provocative and compelling. And I wanted to ask you about telling stories, which is something I'm really passionate about and at Threading Change, how storytelling is a part of the work you're doing?
Sophia: Storytelling is one of the main pillars of Threading Change. Our second pillar is innovation storytelling, and that's done through our Global Innovation Story Map. And for us, it's such an integral part of the work that we do, because I really think the connection point for a lot of people from why they care about fashion is because fashion is storytelling. Fashion is one of the greatest forms of self-expression and of creativity. It says so much about who you are, where you came from, it's culturally embedded, your clothing decisions, whether you thrift or secondhand, or you just get hand-me-downs, whether you buy completely new. That also says a lot about you as an individual.
Sophia: And we really want to embed storytelling into our work because we saw this as a way to break down silos and break down societal barriers and also to have a more intercultural understanding of what fashion really is. For us, storytelling is a very important avenue to bring people together, to share what they think is working, and what they think is not working. So our Global Innovation Story Map is pretty much a convergence of showcasing some of the most ethical brands in the world. And this is on issues related to fair and equitable pay, circular materials, if they have take-back programs, mainly women of color, executive team or board, you know, also if they have agreements with different folks that they give back to the community, donations, charity, and also of course, BIPOC visibility. The reason why we're kind of scoring based on this criteria is because again, it relates directly to our mission of the six Fs, which is a feminist fossil fuel free fashion future.
Sophia: We want to be showcasing some of the best, most exemplary intersectional brands. And when we were doing this, we tried a few different methods. We're like, okay, we could do like video interviews, could do podcasts, or we could just give them a center set of questions. We saw a lot of different maps out there that were showcasing different initiatives across the world when it comes to fashion. But we didn't see any of them written in a story format. It was mostly done in an interview format or done in just, you know, here's their name, the website, where you can contact them. But I don't know if it was done in a way that was promoting storytelling. And we thought, gee, if fashion is something that intersects everybody together, regardless of culture, if we wove it into the format of a story, that's a story map.
Sophia: So that's what we did. And we went to have our Global Innovation Story Map launch about a month ago. You know, one of the questions we asked some of our featured brands was why did you join a story map? And they said, I joined because of this notion of exclusivity and secrecy within the fashion industry - don't share who your supplier is, don't show where you got that recycled material, keep mum about what your take back program is. It's because there's so much competition pervasive in these communities, particularly for small and medium sized enterprises and brands. They're struggling, but they're trying so hard to do the right thing. Meanwhile, H&M and Zara are making billions of dollars and still sending all their clothing to a landfill.
Sophia: These store owners said to promote this air of transparency and authenticity, and vulnerability is important to me because nobody has it figured out in terms of these different businesses. But we think each other do, because they're not communicating, we're not talking, but if we were able to share our resources and poor minds together, we could be as powerful as some of those other brands. And these other brands, like I said, are powerful because of a huge influencer marketing, greenwashing budget, right? When you do a true deep dive on what they're scoring on the climate sense, they're not doing so hot. Have you scored them on the justice ends of gender equity? I bet you they're also not doing so hot because most of the CEOs are white men in the global north.
Sophia: So for us, like that's also a story. We've noticed that in something such as fashion, you can spit facts all day about emissions. You can spit facts about how many women are employed and how little money they get. You can spit facts about the amount of waste that goes into landfill. We feel a lot of people already know these facts. And you know what a scary part about fashion is when we survey young people on how much do you care about fashion in terms of sustainability and an overwhelming amount of them said, yes, I do care and I'm interested in learning more. And then we asked if a sweater that was $90 from your favorite brand went on sale, even if it was not ethically produced, would you buy it? And most of them said yes, because what we have to realize is that we are taught to look at fashion as a commodity, as a consumer good. And sometimes even if we want to do the right thing, we can't look past that price tag. But when you start to embed stories into the timeline. How was this made? Who sweat was used to produce this? Where's it going afterwards? What’s the story of this brand? Why did it come out?
Sophia: But in the first place, when you provide this level of transparency, authenticity, people think twice, they might actually want to spend more money on something that was more carefully thought out than a t-shirt that someone is selling for $10 but the true cost is really $80, but they're not paying people enough money to make that t-shirt. I'll just finish off with saying, you know, through storytelling, we've seen so many more people make conscious decisions about their purchasing decisions. We're also seeing a lot more brands being more vulnerable and open and glad that, you know, sometimes they mess up in this area and now they have more people to connect with and realize how they can do better. And I think when you promote this air of openness, you're just able to bring people together, which is one of our biggest goals. And because fashion is such a great form of self-expression, we can not forget storytelling.
Alice Irene: I had one last question which was around intergenerationality. Something through conversations that I've been having with people over the last few years, are these echoes from the past that come forward in the work people are doing often, not always, but something that they learned after they chose a path or a project or a vocation, or what they're creating in the world. And then they would piece together later that connected to something from their ancestors or other generations in their own family or elsewhere. And actually you mentioned intergenerationality in Threading Change as well, which really piqued my interest. So I wanted to hear any thoughts you have on being intergenerational and anything from your own experience that speaks to this.
Sophia: I'm very lucky to have been raised by very strong women. My grandma raised me and later when I was in Canada, when we immigrated and my two grandmas came again to help my mom when she was pregnant with my sister and this feminine energy is something that was very pervasive in my childhood, which I think is just incredible. Because the way that, you know, we think about feminine/male energy. Male energy is a lot of this dominating sort of power. That kind of like, go, go, go, go, go, hustle culture, get this done. Whereas feminine energy is more about connection, spirituality, being aware of where we are in the current moment, being kind to others. Not saying that's not what male energy is. But female energy has a bit more of that. And I think that's also the reason why I'm so interested and why I purposely put feminist and, you know, work on gender equity in our mission statement. Because I come from a low income, middle class family within China, where I see a lot of these women in my life hustling and working so hard to provide for a kid like me.
Sophia: And that's so inspiring to me because when you're in this economic situation, you might not necessarily be thinking about fashion. You’re thinking about providing, but they've always encouraged me to be expressive with my thoughts. They've always encouraged me to try out different things and be like “that hat? Go for it. We'll make it work.” And later on in my adult life, I was working one of my first jobs, I was very lucky to be mentored and to be guided and also to be given some opportunities through this amazing elder. She currently is a board member at SPEC, which stands for Society Promoting Environmental Conservation. It’s one of the largest not-for-profit organizations in Canada. It is, I think, as old as Greenpeace actually since 1951. Working with her has been amazing because our dialogue goes back quite a bit with regards to intergenerationality and why that is a very, very important storytelling aspect, but also connection aspect, but also organizing aspect within the climate movement.
Sophia: I've been to panels where I've spoken and I've had people say things like I've experienced the exact same protests in the eighties, the exact same protest in the seventies. And let me tell you things are not that much different. They're worse. That just makes you go like, oh my goodness. We have someone here who lived through that decades ago, who has a lived experience. What a story to tell, please tell me more. This level of connection with the older generation really interests me and invigorates me because you really have a toolkit right here. That sounds bad - not a toolkit - you literally have an amazing resource right here that's going to prevent you from repeating history. That's going to show you the ropes. That's going to share what worked well, what didn't work well. So why is it that we're not listening to them?
Sophia: And in many circumstances with elders, particularly Indigenous elders. They, at least in my experience, they're really there to tell you what to do. They're not there to tell you what to do because they know the world is very different now than how they were young. They're here to provide wisdom. They're providing guidance. They're providing you with the steps to ensure that you are taking their knowledge base and applying it to what you know as a young person in this day and age. And that is information you can not buy. That is not something you can just go ask a consultant on, can you consult me on the past? Can you consult me on what happened 50 years ago? And they might be able to do that from a historical perspective, but can they do that from the lived experience perspective? And this is why working intergenerationally is so important to me because the level of stories, admiration, hardship they’ve gone through - these are the things to me that should not be ignored.
Sophia: Intergenerationally, especially in the climate movement is so important because our natural environment and natural world has been around for so long. There's so many stories within an actual world that we don't even know, that we will never know. And we're watching the video yesterday that was saying that imagine if planet earth existed for 24 hours, how long have humans been on this planet? Three seconds. That's how long we've been here relative to just how, how old our planet is and how young. And in that three seconds, we have done so much destruction. So we can talk to those that have been here for even just a little bit more seconds I bet you, we can learn a lot. And that is why on a personal level, professional level, I always try my best to talk to the elders in my life. Those that are younger than me and older than me, of course, because there's so much we can learn from every generation and it will be a miss if you don't discuss with them and talk to them and share stories.
Alice Irene: I'm so grateful to you for talking with me today and sharing your insights, your experience, your knowledge. I'm really heartened by everything you're doing. I'm in awe of it. And thank you for sharing it with me today.
Sophia: Thanks for having me, Alice. This was fantastic.
Alice Irene: That was today's episode of Reseed. I'd love to hear what you thought about our conversation. Reseed is created on unceded Algonquin land. Thank you to this place. Thank you to Rebecca Ryvola for podcast cover art, and Teghan Acres for being an outside eye. And thank you for listening. Together, let's plant the seeds that transform us from being takers to caretakers.