Most of us in SITE4Sustainability are active in research and publications.
Of course, almost all of our publications now-a-days deal with sustainability! Here’s our latest on Slow Fashion – and how we can make it happen!
In April 2013, the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing more than 1,100 garment workers. Did you know that many major fashion houses outsourcing from Bangladesh were unaware they were doing business with intermediaries exploiting labour under such horrendous conditions?
And did you know that the fashion industry has a huge carbon footprint—consuming 79 trillion litres of water annually—and is one of the largest contributors to microplastic pollution in our oceans?
I never knew of such things until Noemi Lanzolla started writing her Master’s dissertation under my supervision in 2022 at UNU-MERIT. She introduced me to the horrors of fast fashion—business models where clothes are produced quickly, cheaply, and in massive quantities to follow rapidly changing trends. It was an interesting dissertation and I told her: “maybe one day we can turn this into a publication”. Then, of course, each of us went our own way.
Still, I couldn’t forget the fashion industry. I kept seeing news about it, and the film Unstitched (https://lnkd.in/gTX-qhBy) was particularly insightful.
Then in 2024, I was chatting with my friend and colleague Professor. Suraksha Gupta, a renowned marketing expert. We were reflecting on advertising and sustainability, and I said: “you know, we are mainly responsible for promoting fast fashion, because advertising has made trendy clothing affordable and accessible and so we are buying too much. So we are all contributing to overproduction, environmental degradation, and exploitative labour. Can advertising make us change our ways?”
She replied: “Of course, it can”—and gave me examples.
So, I contacted Noemi, who was in Peru (!), and Suraksha brought in her colleague Dr. Arnab Banerjee, a specialist in consumer psychology. Together, we reworked everything from top to bottom, asking:
👉 How can advertising be a tool for sustainable consumer transitions—towards Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG 12)?
We found both opportunities and challenges. Attitudes—shaped by advertising—matter a lot, but so do social approval from family and peers, transparency in supply chains, and inclusive branding. Interestingly, medium-sized cities and male consumers emerged as particularly important segments for sustainability-focused advertising.
And that is the story behind our latest publication! Like most of my articles, it came out of chatting about issues that matter to me and it was a collective effort—and one that strengthened our friendships along the way.
📖 Read the full article here 👉 International Journal of Advertising
Reference: Ramani, S. V., Lanzolla, N., Gupta, S., & Banerjee, A. (2025). Sustainable consumption with slow fashion. International Journal of Advertising, 1–24. https://lnkd.in/ggbH2zQ7