How The Economy Harms Our Planet By: Somara Son and Valentina De Pablos

The fashion industry has grown to become a main contributing industry to the global economy as decades have passed. Traditionally we have measured the health of a country through the GDP, or Gross Domestic Product. While GDP does take into account the productivity within a country, that includes retailing, manufacturing, and trade within the fashion industry, it does not consider well being (Robertson, 2017). For example, China is a large producer of clothing, shoes, and accessories for many large fashion retailers. Although manufacturing in the fashion industry has generated the second largest GDP in the world, the country is suffering environmentally (Bajpai, 2017). No matter how damaged the infrastructure and environment of a country becomes, the GDP still has the potential to increase. If there is a chemical spill at a Chinese production factory, their GDP increases as defensive expenditures are being used to clean up the area. While the activity within an economy can help improve the lives of its participants, the quality of life has not increased as the world’s GDP has increased. Many parts of our global economy rely heavily on trading fashion goods and the outsourcing of production, however this economic activity does not consider the damages being inflicted on the planet or its people in the process.

            Many people have the wrong concept that sustainability can growth, the fake believe that our natural resources can last forever, this means that once petroleum is over there is no way to restock it, however, sustainable development offers a more realistic point of view that does not require of quantitative growth. Sustainable development refers to an increase of quality in consumption or production improving our well-being. This approach not only benefits human life but also the health of our environment, in economic terms, “we are meant to life from nature’s income rather than consuming its capital”. Natural capital can’t be replaced with by human-made capital and technology won’t substitute our most precious and limited resources, those are the believes that need to be broken. While we can give monetary value to clothes, machinery, materials and services extracted from earth, there is no value for natural resources as we can’t give a price to a forest or an ocean full of diverse living systems. This is what Strong sustainability stands up for, the fact that human and natural capital are not interchangeable, natural resources are greater than any technology and they can’t be replaced. In order to have a better future we need to learn to preserve and improve, instead of consume and replace our main resources.