Fashion Takes Action

Our mission is to advance sustainability in the entire fashion system through education, awareness, research and collaboration. Since 2007 we have worked with more than 800 brands, designers and retailers, participated in over 300 events, and reached millions of citizens through social and earned media as well as hundreds of speaking engagements. We are leading a research study with the Canadian Ministry of Environment & Climate Change on textile recycling and will produce a roadmap for industry; we convened the Ontario Textile Diversion Collaborative for 3 years in an effort to get textiles out of the landfill; we produce the annual WEAR conference (since 2014) and in 2019 we created a Sustainable Fashion Toolkit in partnership with PwC. Our role is to identify barriers to sustainability and do what we can to remove them. At FTA, we are also continually engaging the consumer - not just about how or where to shop but about so much more: reducing consumption, keeping clothes in use for longer, swapping, donating unwanted textiles, how to launder and take better care for your clothes, buying quality over quantity, supporting local businesses, buying fair trade garments, understanding the social and environmental impacts of fashion - from the amount of water, toxic chemicals and energy required to make our clothing, to fair labour, wages and working conditions. We also highlight the leaders who are working to solve these complicated problems. Our youth education program, My Clothes My World, has been delivered to more than 20,000 students in grades 4-12 across Ontario and now in Vancouver. Our in person and digital workshops provide interactive activities that elicit discussions around labour rights, consumerism and environmental degradation. It opens the students' eyes to the truth about the apparel industry and inspires them to take meaningful action.