Why "Impact per Wear" matters

and more brands should talk about it with their customers

Welcome to another issue of The Crisps – your newsletter on anti-greenwashing and honest fashion communication. You can support us by subscribing to a free or pro subscription, liking, sharing, or commenting on our posts.

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In our last issue, we introduced concepts and movements such as #ruleof5 that brands can use to engage with their customers beyond product-level sustainability. This time, we’re diving deeper into “Impact per Wear” and why brands should not only speak about the impacts of a product at factory gate.

We are off for a little summer break and will be back in August with our updated concept of The Crisps. From August on, we will publish two issues per month.

In the meantime, we have a goodie for you! We just opened our archive, so you can enjoy our past issues.

All the best,

Tanita & Lavinia

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Whenever we analyze the communication of textile brands, we usually see a focus or even a tunnel vision on three topics:

• CO2 emissions

• Materials

• Technology

What’s rarely the focus is how the use phase influences the impact of a product. But a big chunk of impacts is caused (and can be reduced!) exactly then. So educating them on what impacts their behavior has is a great opportunity. That’s why we’d love to see more brands educating their customers about these aspects as well.

One way to make the impacts understandable for customers is “Impact per Wear”. The idea is simple behind the concept is simple. It means that the environmental footprint of a garment is based on how often it is worn. So the more a garment is worn, the lower its impact per wear becomes.¹