When we think about reducing fashion’s heavy toll on climate and biodiversity, material choice is one of the most important factors. In this piece, Stella evaluates many of fashion’s sustainable fabrics — and other popular materials — to evaluate their benefits and concerns.
Understanding the systems below the surface of our clothing is the first step we need to take in reimagining and remaking these systems into ones that are more sustainable and just. Part of this is learning about the materials and fibers that make up our clothes, the contexts they were created in, their impacts, and their potential for circularity.
The materials our clothes are made of do affect the impact our clothes have, such as their water consumption and pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, microplastic pollution, soil degradation, deforestation, and waste.
But, Even Sustainable Fabrics Are Nuanced
Rather than going in search of a “perfectly” sustainable fabric or fiber, creating more conscious clothing is about learning about the pros and cons of each material and using this information to help make informed decisions — as designers, fashion professionals, sustainable fashion advocates, consumers, and conscious citizens.
For example, in general, natural fibers are preferred, because they aren’t made from fossil fuels and won’t release microplastics. But even natural fibers can have sustainability concerns, such as if they’re treated with toxic synthetic chemicals and dyes or produced by people working in unethical conditions.
And as Sofi Thanhauser — author of Worn: A People’s History of Clothing — explains on this episode of the Conscious Style Podcast, the reasons why certain materials have risen to popularity in the fashion industry are also a reflection of various complex historical and political contexts.
This is all to say that each fabric will have its strengths and tradeoffs. Below is a list of some of the common materials and fibers that are found in our clothes, along with an overview of each one’s sustainability and design pros and cons, and related certifications.
If you are a designer or brand owner and would like to learn about where to sustainably source these materials, join the Conscious Fashion Collective membership to access our sister site’s guide to 70+ Places to Source Sustainable Fabrics and Materials.
NATURAL
Cotton
Chances are, if you look into your wardrobe now, you’ll find a garment made from cotton without any difficulty. It’s the most common natural fiber in our clothing. Cotton is 80% of the natural fiber market and is the second most commonly produced fiber after polyester, accounting for 24.2% of global fiber production as of 2020/2021.
Its versatility and durability mean that it’s used widely for many different garments from jeans to dresses, to underwear. Cotton is often blended with other fibers — such as polyester — for various applications. Different kinds of cotton include recycled cotton, organic cotton, color-grown cotton, and Supima cotton.
According to the Transformers Foundation’s 2021 report, Cotton: A Case Study in Misinformation, cotton is grown in many water-stressed regions and can contribute to water management challenges. But cotton is a drought-tolerant plant adapted to arid regions, which is why farmers in dry climates often choose to grow it because it can survive and produce a crop in harsher environments. While it has earned a reputation for being a water-intensive crop, it’s not a proportionally high consumer of irrigation water compared to many other crops, according to Transformers Foundation’s research.
While it’s a natural fiber, conventionally grown cotton is also known for its usage of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, biodiversity risks, and hazardous labor conditions.
The more sustainable alternative is organic cotton which is grown from non-genetically modified seeds, cultivated without using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers that harm soil health and the health of farm workers, and typically processed without using toxic chemicals that harm natural ecosystems and the people in cotton supply chains. While it has been widely believed that organic cotton uses significantly less water than conventional cotton, there are arguments that cotton is a water-intensive fiber regardless.
The most sustainable cotton option today is regenerative cotton. This means the cotton is grown on a farm that uses regenerative cultivation practices. While alternatives to conventional cotton farming — including organic — aim to do less bad, regenerative cotton farming aims to have a net positive impact on the environment.
Regenerative farming is based on holistic, indigenous, traditional ways of land management including minimizing soil disturbance, maintaining living roots in soil, crop rotation, and restoring degraded soil biodiversity. While it’s not yet as widely used as organic cotton, there are a few brands — such as Christy Dawn, in partnership with Oshadi, — who are leading the way. And initiatives such as California Cotton & Climate Coalition and organizations such as Fibershed that are helping brands source from regenerative farmers.
Paying attention to the ethics of cotton production is just as important as environmental sustainability. For example, cotton cultivated in the Xinjiang region of China is some of the most widely used cotton in the world — accounting for 85% of Chinese production and 20% of world supply. But, according to a BBC investigation in 2021, the cotton is predominantly picked by Xinjiang’s Uighur minority, who are forced into this labor in inhumane conditions. So regardless of what kind of cotton you are sourcing, traceability is essential for ensuring that the cotton was ethically and sustainably produced.
Sustainability takeaway: Pure cotton fabrics are recyclable, durable, and versatile. The most sustainable cotton option is regenerative cotton, organic cotton, or recycled cotton. Recycled cotton is produced using either post-industrial or post-consumer waste. But, to ensure that the cotton you are using was sustainably and ethically cultivated, you should do research into how and where and how it was grown and processed.
Sustainability certifications: USDA-Certified Organic, Global Organic Textile Standard, Better Cotton Initiative, Fairtrade, Global Recycled Standard, OEKO-TEX Standard 100, Fibershed’s Climate Beneficial
Verification, Regenerative Organic Certified
Price range: $-$$
Hemp
Hemp is a fast-growing, high-yielding, multi-use, hero fiber. Hemp is known as a “bast” fiber, which means it’s derived from the stem of a plant — in this case, a Cannabis sativa L. plant that contains 0.3% or less of THC.
It’s one of the most durable natural fabrics and is used to create anything from flowing summer dresses to workwear sets and even swimwear. It’s absorbent, which allows it to accept dyes readily and retain color better than other natural fabrics.
When compared to cotton, the hemp crop requires significantly less land and water to cultivate the same yield. Importantly, its deep root system can restore nutrients in the soil, keeping it fertile. It’s a carbon-negative material because hemp plants absorb carbon as they grow — far more than trees.
Because of hemp’s natural resistance to many insects, it’s possible to easily cultivate hemp using organic methods that don’t heavily rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
In addition to being used for fabric, hemp oil and seeds are used for food and beauty products. Hemp can be used for paints, inks, paper, and composite boards. So no part of the plant has to go to waste.
Sustainability takeaway: Hemp is one of the most eco-friendly fibers on the market. Only organic hemp guarantees that no harmful chemicals were used, so look out for certifications and do your research to learn about the farm the hemp was grown on and how it was processed.
Sustainability certifications: USDA-Certified Organic, Fairtrade, OEKO-TEX Standard 100
Price range: $$
Jute
Jute is another bast fiber derived from the jute plant. It grows best in warm, humid climates with significant rainfall and is mostly produced in India and Bangladesh. Jute plants require minimal fertilizers and pesticides and was found to sequester nearly 5 tons of CO2 per ton of raw jute fiber production.
Jute fabric is quite coarse, which means it’s mostly used for fashion accessories. But it can be blended with cotton for a softer feel to create a wider variety of garments.
Although jute is primarily known for its fiber, each part of the plant can be used. The jute leaves are eaten as vegetables, while the remaining stick can be used as a building material.
Sustainability takeaway: Jute is a plant-based biodegradable yet durable material that can be a sustainable choice when sourced responsibly.
Sustainability certifications: USDA-Certified Organic, Fairtrade, OEKO-TEX Standard 100
Price range: $
Animal Leather
Leather is a material made from the skin of animals including cows, sheep, crocodiles, snakes, ostriches, and crocodiles. It’s known for its longevity and is commonly used to create footwear and accessories. It’s particularly common in the luxury fashion world.
The most glaring ethical concern about the production of leather is animal cruelty. In addition, leather requires more water and land than almost any other material — not to mention the emissions associated with animal agriculture. It’s also a cause of deforestation and habitat destruction due to cattle ranching.
Some argue that because leather is a natural byproduct of the meat industry, it makes sense to reduce wastage and still find ways to use it. But this argument doesn’t account for the fact that leather processing is where a significant part of leather’s environmental footprint lies. Notably the tanning process involves extremely harmful chemicals, including heavy metals, that end up in waterways and pose risks to workers’ respiratory, skin, and internal health. Some evidence suggests that all tanning processes — including vegetable tanning — can hinder the ability of animal skins to biodegrade.
Sustainability takeaway: Leather is a long-lasting material, but it comes with many sustainability and ethical concerns. Vegetable-tanned leather provides a less toxic alternative. Recycled leather is a more sustainable option, made from leather waste scraps, but may be combined with plastic.
Sustainability certifications: The Leather Working Group, OEKO-TEX STeP
Price range: $$$
Vegan Leather Alternatives
In response to the concerns around animal cruelty and the harms of the leather industry, leather alternatives are being developed. The most common vegan leather alternatives are plastic, specifically Polyurethane (you may see it labeled as PU) or Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which are made with fossil fuels.
Improvements to purely plastic leather include partly bio-based and plant-based leather alternatives, like VEGEA, made from repurposed grape waste from the wine industry, Desserto, made from cacti, AppleSkin, made from apple skins, cores, and seeds, and Piñatex, made from pineapple leaf fiber. American start-up Bolt Threads is developing Mylo, a lab-grown leather made from mycelium, the underground root structure of mushrooms.
Sustainability takeaway: Bio-based leather alternatives are not as widely available as vegan leather. It’s too early to assess the overall environmental impacts of these new leather alternatives, but what they do have in their favor is that they are not purely plastic-based — read: made from fossil fuels — like other vegan leather options.
Sustainability certifications: OEKO-TEX Standard 100, PETA-Approved Vegan, Vegan Society Registered Verification Test
Price range: $$$
Linen
Linen is one of the oldest fibers known to humankind. Linen is reminiscent of light, flowing summer dresses and breathable beach wear. It’s yet another plant-based bast fiber, this one hailing from the flax plant. Flax is able to grow on the majority of soils and, in contrast to many other fibers such as conventional cotton, natural production of flax does not require pesticides, artificial irrigation or fertilizers.
Two different kinds of flax are grown: flax for fiber, which is used to make linen textiles, and flax for seed, which is used to feed people and livestock. To create linen fabrics from the flax plant, the long fibers from within the stem of the plant are extracted and spun into linen fibers, which are woven into fabric.
Linen fabric is known to be an effective temperature regulator — keeping you cool in summer and warm in winter.
Sustainability takeaway: When it comes to sustainability, organic linen is your best bet. Linen is fully biodegradable when it’s left untreated. Its natural colors include ivory, ecru, tan, and gray. Once synthetic dyes and finishes are applied, biodegradability is no longer possible.
Sustainability certifications: USDA-Certified Organic, Global Organic Textile Standard, OEKO-TEX Standard 100, Masters of Linen, Fibershed’s Climate Beneficial Verification
Price range: $$
Silk
Silk is synonymous with luxury. Silk is one of the strongest natural fibers and is animal-derived. It’s harvested from silkworms who line their cocoons with silk threads, which are the saliva of the silkworm produced to insulate the work in its cocoon until they transform into silk moths.
These threads are spun into the fabrics we know today. About 3000 cocoons are used to make one yard of silk.
In conventional silk-making techniques, known as sericulture, the silkworms are killed during the process of extracting the silk threads, raising a red flag in the ethical fashion community. There are less harmful ways of creating silk — known as “peace silk” — where the silkworms are not harmed, and the threads are taken from the cocoon once the silkworms have transformed into silk moths and are left behind.
Wild silk, on the other hand, is cultivated from silk moths that live in the wild, instead of silk moths that are kept captive for the pure purpose of silk production. Wild silk cocoons are harvested after the moth has left the cocoon and are found in open forests. There are varying types of wild silk depending on the type of moth, plants they eat, and regions in which they live. Some wild silks are naturally colored yellow, orange, or green.
There are also human-made silk alternatives for those who want to avoid animal-derived silk entirely. This includes Bold Threads’ lab-made Microsilk which imitates the silk fibers produced by spiders. Or Banana Sylk which is made from 100% pure banana plant stem.
Sustainability takeaway: Pure silk is naturally biodegradable. Opt for ethically farmed silk and organic silk whenever possible. Organic silk production is a more environmentally friendly, non-violent, and sustainable practice of silk cultivation. The silkworms are allowed to live out their full lives and die naturally, and no chemicals or treatments are required. Or look into peace silk, wild silk, or cruelty-free alternatives.
Sustainability certifications: OEKO-TEX STeP, OEKO-TEX Standard 100, Global Organic Textile Standard
Price range: $$$
Wool
When we think of wool, the warmth of cozy knitwear probably comes to mind. Wool is a renewable, biodegradable, and lower-impact natural fiber. Wool is made from keratin — the same protein as human hair — and is grown on the backs of sheep or other animals such as goats, camels, alpacas, and llamas. There are many kinds of wool including mohair (from Angora goats) and merino (from Merino sheep).
In terms of making clothing, wool is naturally breathable, an effective insulator, reacts to changes in body temperature making it perfect for trans seasonal wear, and requires less frequent washing, because it’s naturally odor- and stain-resistant.
How the sheep are farmed determines both the quality and sustainability of the wool. This is why it’s ideal to opt for regeneratively farmed or organic wool, to ensure that the wool has been cultivated in a way that doesn’t harm the animals, or natural environment, and doesn’t expose workers and animals to harmful chemicals.
Animal cruelty is another consideration when looking for ethically produced wool. Mulesing is one of the cruel practices that were common in the wool industry. The Responsible Wool Standard certifies that the wool is mulesing-free.
Wool can also be recycled. This happens through a mechanical process that returns garments to the raw fiber state and turns the fiber into yarn again, to produce new products. Additionally, wool that isn’t used in the fashion industry can be used for insulation and carpeting.
Sustainability takeaway: Look for 100% wool (or wool with other natural fibers) and not a synthetic blend when possible. Also look for mulesing-free wool and for wool sourced from farms employing regenerative practices to enhance environmental health, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and water quality.
Sustainability certifications: Responsible Wool Standard, Responsible Mohair Standard, Woolmark, Fibershed’s Climate Beneficial Verification
Price range: $$
SYNTHETIC
Nylon
Nylon was the world’s first fully synthetic fiber made from petroleum, introduced in the 1930s. Now Nylon is one of the most common synthetic fabrics and is found in everything from swimwear to activewear, due to its elastic recoverability (meaning nylon can stretch without losing shape). And due to its low liquid absorbency, nylon clothes dry faster than natural fabrics like cotton, and usually don’t need ironing.
Nylon starts as a type of plastic derived from coal and crude oil that is then put through a chemical-, water- and energy-intensive process to create the strong, stretchy fibers that make it so useful as a fabric.
Sustainability takeaway: Nylon is a plastic fabric and therefore not a sustainable option. It’s used because of the properties it can give garments that allow for more versatile and longer lasting wear. If nylon is unavoidable, opt for a lower-impact alternative such as ECONYL. More on this below.
Sustainability certifications: None
Price range: $-$$
ECONYL
ECONYL is a regenerated nylon product made from repurposed plastic waste. ECONYL is created by Italian firm Aquafil, using synthetic waste such as industrial plastic, waste fabric, and fishing nets from oceans, that are recycled into a regenerated nylon yarn. The closed-loop production process requires a lot less water — and is virgin fossil-fuel free — in comparison to regular nylon.
Currently, there are two types of ECONYL fibers: ECONYL Textile Fiber, which has a softer attribute making it fit for weaving garments. And ECONYL Carpet Fiber, which is replacing the traditional nylon used extensively in carpet manufacturing.
It’s a lightweight elastic fabric that possesses all the desirable characteristics of virgin nylon. And it can be recycled infinitely at end-of-life.
Sustainability takeaway: ECONYL is a viable more sustainable fabric for designers who want to create garments or apparel that require the characteristics of nylon — such as swimwear or activewear. But even though ECONYL is a circular alternative, it’s still a synthetic fabric, which means it still releases plastic microfibers and contributes to microplastic pollution.
Sustainability certifications: OEKO-TEX Standard 100
Price range: $$
Polyester
Polyester is infamous in the fashion industry for being the most common fiber in our clothing — it accounts for about half of all fibers produced in the world — but it’s also among the most harmful. To make polyester fibers, PET plastic pellets are melted and extruded through tiny holes called spinnerets to form long threads, which are then cooled to harden into a fiber.
Polyester is cheap to produce and purchase, easy to care for, sturdy, and lightweight. It retains its shape, dries easily, and tends not to wrinkle or crease.
But polyester’s allure comes to an abrupt halt when we consider the social and environmental effects of producing and discarding this fiber. The fiber is derived from fossil fuels, not to mention polyester contributes heavily to microplastic pollution and polyester clothing doesn’t biodegrade, dooming it to sit in landfills for hundreds of years.
Sustainability takeaway: If you can avoid using polyester, do so. It’s one of the least sustainable fabrics and fibers in fashion. There are recycled polyester options on the market — most often made from recycled plastic bottles. While the sustainability credentials of these can also be debated, they’re lower-impact options to look into if you can’t avoid using polyester.
Sustainability certifications: None
Price range: $
MAN-MADE CELLULOSIC
Rayon
The best way to understand rayon is to consider it an umbrella term for textiles that are made from chemically treated cellulose — the building block of most plants. Rayon is typically made of wood from eucalyptus, spruce, and pine trees, but can also be made from cotton or bamboo.
The general process for creating all kinds of rayon involves chemically dissolving the wood pulp, converting it into filaments, and then spinning it into fabrics. This is also why rayon is known as semi-synthetic, because it’s derived from plants, but requires synthetic chemicals to be turned into fibers and fabrics.
When rayon was first manufactured in the early 1900s, it was originally marketed as artificial silk due to its softness, nice drape, and luster. It quickly rose in popularity because its price point was significantly lower than silk and cotton. Designers gravitate toward rayon because it’s multi-purpose and easily combined with cotton, polyester, or silk.
The glaring issue with rayon is the chemical-intensive process required to dissolve the wood into pulp. These chemicals are not only environmentally damaging, but damaging to workers in the supply chain too. Carbon disulfide is one of the main chemicals used and it has been historically linked to widespread, severe, and lethal illnesses experienced by those employed in rayon production.
Rayon also has strong links to deforestation. Much of the wood pulp used for rayon production is still sourced from ancient and endangered forests. According to the nonprofit Canopy, 300 million trees are felled each year to make textiles.
Sustainability takeaway: The wood pulp used to make rayon can be sustainably harvested, but often isn’t. The potential environmental and human health risks of the chemicals used to produce rayon should also be considered.
Sustainability certifications: Forest Stewardship Council Certified, OEKO-TEX Standard 100
Price range: $
Viscose
Viscose is a type of rayon. Viscose goes through a slightly different manufacturing process than viscose rayon, which gives it a slightly different feel. Viscose is made specifically with liquid viscose, while rayon is not. It feels like rayon, but has a silkier look.
Sustainability takeaway: As with rayon, the sustainability concerns are related to deforestation and extreme chemical usage.
Sustainability certifications: Forest Stewardship Council Certified, OEKO-TEX Standard 100
Price range: $
Modal
Modal is a type of rayon, and is made from the cellulosic pulp of beech trees. This semi-synthetic fabric has become a popular choice in the fashion industry, because it’s versatile, breathable, and absorbent. The wood fibers are pulped into liquid form and then forced through tiny holes, creating the thread. The resulting fibers are then spun into yarn, sometimes in blends with other fibers such as cotton or elastane. These yarns can then be woven or knitted into fabric.
As with any other type of rayon, sustainability concerns relating to deforestation and chemical intensity apply. Today one of the best-known producers of Modal is the Austrian company Lenzing AG, which now markets its version under the name TENCEL Modal (previously Lenzing Modal).
TENCEL Modal is protected by a global certification system. The trademarked TENCEL Modal is harvested from Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification or Forest Stewardship Council sustainably-managed beech tree plantations in Austria and surrounding European countries.
Sustainability takeaway: While Modal raises similar sustainability concerns to other forms of rayon, Lenzing AG’s TENCEL Modal is the more sustainable fabric option, because it’s traceable and sourced from sustainably managed forests.
Sustainability certifications: Forest Stewardship Council Certified, OEKO-TEX Standard 100, bluesign®
Price range: $$
Lyocell
Lyocell is another type of rayon fabric. It’s produced by dissolving wood pulp with an NMMO (N-Methylmorpholine N-oxide) solvent, which is less toxic than traditional rayon solvents. While Modal is made from beech trees, Lyocell is made from Eucalyptus trees, oak, bamboo, or birch trees.
With Lyocell, the solvents used in production are almost entirely reusable from one batch to the next. This sets Lyocell apart from other forms of rayon.
Lyocell is also attributed to Lenzing AG. So Lyocell is better known as TENCEL Lyocell. TENCEL Lyocell is known for sourcing wood pulp sustainably. Unlike viscose and other types of rayon, TENCEL Lyocell is made using a closed loop process, which means that the chemicals used in the production process do not get released into the environment.
Lyocell is like cotton or linen and is often blended with those fabrics. Lyocell is also 50% more absorbent than cotton, which means it’s often used for activewear. It’s also often used as a more delicate fabric in garments like underwear, dresses, and dress shirts.
Sustainability takeaway: It’s ideal to look into the sources of the Lyocell you choose to use. With TENCEL Lyocell fabric, the trees used are only sourced from Forest Stewardship Council-certified sustainably managed forests, which provides safeguards against deforestation risks.
Sustainability certifications: Forest Stewardship Council Certified, OEKO-TEX Standard 100, bluesign®
Price range: $$
Bamboo
Bamboo is a natural fiber that can be processed as a natural bast fiber to create bamboo linen or go through a chemical process to create a cellulosic fiber that results in bamboo rayon or Lyocell. Bamboo material is made from the pulp of the bamboo plant. The stalks are crushed, and the cellulose is separated from the fiber. The cellulose is then turned into thread and woven into fabric.
Bamboo is a sustainable crop — if grown in the right conditions — because bamboo plants are fast-growing (they’re a grass, not a tree), renewable, and have positive impacts on the soil and air. When bamboo is harvested, it can be done without killing the plant itself, and can renew quickly.
But most products labeled as “bamboo” are rayon and involve intensive chemical emissions and energy in the processing of bamboo. These processes — in comparison to the lower-impact production of bamboo linen — cause sustainability of this fiber to take a dip.
Bamboo fabrics are soft and absorbent and are most often used to make basics and lifestyle wear. Bamboo linen is coarser than bamboo rayon, viscose, or Lyocell.
Editor’s note: Kohl’s and Walmart were fined $5.5 million by the FTC for making deceptive eco-friendly claims around bamboo rayon. Be aware of potential greenwashing around bamboo rayon!
Sustainability takeaway: Bamboo linen is more sustainable than bamboo rayon, because it can be produced mechanically — in a similar process to hemp or linen — and doesn’t require as many harmful chemicals as bamboo rayon. It’s also worth looking into whether the bamboo was sourced from certified and sustainably managed forests.
Sustainability certifications: Forest Stewardship Council Certified, OEKO-TEX Standard 100, USDA-Certified Organic
Cupro
Cupro is a regenerated cellulose fiber that is part of the rayon family of fabrics — it’s short for cuprammonium rayon. It’s more commonly known as “vegan silk” because of its soft, smooth, and drapey appearance. It’s quick-drying, ultra-soft, and lightweight. It’s considered to be a semi-synthetic fabric, because it’s a plant-based material, but requires chemical treatment to be turned into a functional fabric. Cupro can be derived from a natural byproduct — cotton linter — or from wood pulp.
Linter is cotton waste. It’s the tiny fibers of cotton seeds that are too small to be spun into cotton yarn. The linter or wood pulp is dissolved in cuprammonium hydroxide (a mix of copper and ammonium). The final solution is spun into fibers.
Sustainability takeaway: It reduces waste by using the linter that would otherwise be discarded. It’s a cruelty-free silk option as no silkworms are harmed in the process. But it does involve a chemical-heavy production process that includes toxic substances — including ammonia, sodium hydroxide, and sulfuric acid — which are polluting and harmful to workers. While cupro can be produced in a closed-loop system where all the water is recycled, cupro is still considered unsustainable because of pollution caused by the production. Alternatives include Lyocell or peace silk.
Sustainability certifications: None
Price range: $$
OTHER
Deadstock
Textile waste is one of the biggest challenges facing the fashion industry. Deadstock is a popular choice for sustainably-minded brands who want to find solutions to this waste crisis — especially those practicing upcycling. Deadstock is the fabric that is unsold or unused in the fashion industry and often goes to waste. It often refers to fabric that is left unsold by a fabric mill or leftover from a brand’s production run, damaged or flawed fabric, or fabric from canceled orders.
Because it requires no processing and designers have to work with what they can get, it has a lower manufacturing footprint and keeps valuable materials from landfills.
The overall conversation about the sustainability of deadstock is a nuanced one, because deadstock’s abundance is a symptom of a fashion industry that continuously overproduces. There are concerns that some mills are intentionally overproducing since they know the excess will be purchased anyway. This raises the question: Is deadstock unavoidable waste? Or yet another symptom of a fast fashion system that doesn’t want to change its ways?
Deadstock fabrics come in as many patterns, colors, and types of fabric as you can imagine. What it’s used for depends on how much fabric is supplied and what kind of fabric it is.
Editor’s note: Tune in to our Conscious Style Podcast episode with Natasha Halesworth for more on the pros, cons, and nuances of deadstock.
Sustainability takeaway: While the pros and cons of the specific kind of deadstock fabric depend on the type of fabric, in general deadstock is a low-waste option because it gives new life to fabrics that would otherwise be discarded. While the systemic sustainability of deadstock does raise questions, finding immediate uses for fabrics that would be wasted can generally be seen as a positive effort.
Editor’s note: The onus to reduce waste should be put on the large brands and mills overproducing in the first place, not on small designers sourcing deadstock as a way to source lower impact materials affordably in small quantities.
Sustainability certifications: Depends on the type of deadstock used.
Price range: $-$$
Denim (typically a cotton blend)
Denim is another common fabric in many of our lives and probably conjures up images of your favorite pair of jeans. Denim is a durable, long-lasting fabric made from tightly woven cotton fibers — often dyed using indigo to give it denim’s distinctive blue look — that form a diagonal pattern. This is known as “raw” denim. More recently, “stretch denim” has become popular for garments such as skinny jeans, which are made from a blend of cotton and elastane or spandex.
The indigo-dyed fibers naturally fade over time with wear and washes. But as the look of “worn in” denim has become aspirational, a range of different finishes have been developed for denim — from “distressed” denim to “acid wash” denim and “stonewashed” denim. Each of these finishes gives the final product a slightly distinct look and emulate what denim might end up looking like after years of wear. Processes such as enzyme washes, sandblasting, or bleaching soften the material and create the appearance of worn fabric.
While these processes may create a more aesthetic product, they come at the cost of the health of workers in denim supply chains. For example, sandblasting — as the name suggests — is the process of blasting the fabric with sand to give it a worn-in look. The dust caused by this process causes respiratory issues for workers. The finishing agents used to achieve a certain look or texture in one pair of pants contain hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde, which poses health risks to workers.
From an environmental perspective, stone washing and acid washing require vast water usage and pollution due to toxic discharge. Some strides are being made such as recycling water and laser technology that can achieve the same look as worn in denim without harmful processes. At the Vietnam-based denim factory, Saitex, also known as the cleanest denim factory in the world, 98% of the water is reused with the other 2% lost due to evaporation.
Recycled denim is another sustainable fabric option. Using industrial denim waste avoids the water-intensive process of growing cotton and keeps scraps out of landfills. But recycled denim still relies on virgin denim for continued production.
Sustainability takeaway: While denim is a highly durable fabric that can be used for many years, it’s also highly water-intensive to produce and — traditionally — relies on techniques that release toxic chemicals and place workers at risk. To decrease denim’s impact, hemp blends can be used alongside organic cotton and the use of water-saving techniques. For stretch denim, recycled polyester, man-made cellulosic fibers, and recycled elastane are more sustainable than virgin elastane and spandex.
Sustainability certifications: USDA-Certified Organic, Global Organic Textile Standard, Better Cotton Initiative, Fairtrade, Global Recycled Standard, OEKO-TEX Standard 100, bluesign®
Price range: $-$$
Next-Gen Innovative Materials
In the past few years, we have seen a wave of next-gen innovative materials being introduced to the fashion industry. A few examples of these materials include Galy, Piñatex, Spinnova Fabric, Orange Fiber, Flocus, Samatoa Lotus Textile, Banana Sylk, Mango Materials, Mycoworks, and Mylo.
Each of these material innovations aims to address an existing issue in the fashion industry — whether it be finding a way to make “leather” without deriving it from animals, plant-based alternatives to polyester, lab-grown cotton that reduces the impact of cotton production, or ensuring that a circular economy is prioritized.
Since these are new — often high-tech — innovations, they are often too expensive for small and independent brands. Often, it’s more established brands that make use of these materials, because they have the financial ability to invest in these high-end materials. Enter Stella MaCartney’s mushroom leather bag or Ganni’s banana waste tracksuit.
Sustainability takeaway: Many of these materials are not yet widely used, or accessible, enough to make clear-cut sustainability claims about each. While the intentions behind each one are impressive, we are yet to see whether these niche fabrics have the ability to create lasting change in the fashion industry.
Sustainability certifications: Depends on the next-gen material used
Price range: $$$
About the Author
Stella Hertantyo is a slow fashion and slow living enthusiast based in Cape Town, South Africa. Stella finds solace in words as a medium for sharing ideas and encouraging a cultural shift that welcomes systems change and deepens our collective connection to the world around us. She is passionate about encouraging an approach to sustainability, and social and environmental justice, that is inclusive, intersectional, accessible, and fun.
Stella holds a B.A. Multimedia Journalism from the University of Cape Town, and a PGDip in Sustainable Development from the Sustainability Institute. She currently works as a writer, editor, and social media manager. When she is not in front of her laptop, a dip in the ocean, or a walk in the mountains, are the two things that bring her the most peace.
The post How Sustainable Are Fashion’s Favorite Fibers, Fabrics, and Materials? appeared first on Conscious Life & Style.
How Sustainable Are Fashion’s Favorite Fibers, Fabrics, and Materials?
What’s not to love about a go-to dress in your wardrobe? The right one can be dressed up or down, it can be worn alone, or worn as a skirt with the right top layered on. A dress is arguably the easiest outfit to put together that still looks put together. The right sustainable dress is the kind of closet staple you can reach for on any kind of summer day, even when you have no idea what to wear.
From t-shirt dresses and house dresses to chic midi frocks and fun mini’s for a night out, this roundup of sustainable dresses has just about everything.
So if you’re looking for that perfect eco-friendly dress to complement your wardrobe this year, I’ve got you covered with this guide to sustainably and ethically-made dresses. This guide has brands with both casual and more formal dresses, but if you’re shopping for exclusively special occasion dresses, I’d recommend also browsing my guide to formal dresses.
What Qualifies As (More) Sustainable Dresses?
Wearing what we have in our closets is the most sustainable approach! But if you’re here, you probably already evaluated that option and you’re looking to add something fresh to your closet.
Secondhand Dresses are Sustainable Dresses
The second most sustainable option is to look secondhand. ThredUp can be a versatile option for pieces at any price point and The RealReal is my favorite choice for more premium brands.
Online secondhand marketplaces like Poshmark or Depop are also good options — but something to watch out when it comes to peer-to-peer marketplaces is that they can sometimes contain new fast fashion disguised as “vintage” pieces, so it can require some additional digging.
For more suggestions, find my full guide to secondhand clothing retailers in this post.
If you’re looking for a new sustainably-made dress, here are some considerations:
- Materials: what is it made from? Is it made with a natural fabric like hemp, linen, or organic cotton? Perhaps made from deadstock or upcycled materials?
- Production Practices: does the brand take efforts to not overproduce? Do they produce in small batches? (No matter how “eco-conscious” the material is, if a brand is throwing away 30% of their stock, that’s not sustainable!)
- Timelessness and Quality: this doesn’t have to mean boring and doesn’t necessarily mean the brand never participates in a trend. But does the brand constantly hop on every single trend and push you to buy more and more? Or do they encourage slow mindful consumption with well-designed dresses? Do they pay attention to construction and details that ensure you’ll be wearing this dress year after year?
- Manufacturing: most brands do not produce their own clothing, but are they sourcing from facilities that pay their workers fairly? Do those facilities minimize waste, use renewable energy, and responsibly manage chemical usage?
- Ethical Production: who made the dress? were they paid fairly and were they working in safe conditions? do they have worker’s rights, such as the right to organize? how does the brand ensure this? Certifications can be helpful here. But sometimes factories cannot afford these, so look for other assurances, such as that the founder personally visits the factories.
- Ownership: is it a small woman-owned business or major fashion brand owned by billionaires? What are your values when it comes to where your money is going?
I know that’s a lot! But these are elements to start looking for as you browse through brands. This isn’t about perfection — it’s just about learning and doing the best we can.
My Top Picks for Ethical and Sustainable Dresses
To help you out (because I get it — it’s complicated!) I’ve curated retailers and brands with sustainable and ethical dresses. These brands aren’t necessarily perfect, but they’re doing things better for people and the planet. I’ve included “Conscious Qualities” by each brand or retailer, so you can get an idea about why the brand is on the list and which sustainability criteria they meet.
I’ve also curated brands at a range of price points, to accommodate for different budgets.
This Guide’s Price Range Key:
- $ = Dresses under $100
- $$ = Dresses $100 – $200
- $$$ = Dresses $200+
Keep in mind that while price and quality aren’t necessarily directly tied to each other, lower prices may sometimes mean a sacrifice on quality and the highest quality picks are often on the higher end of the price spectrum. Better quality fabrics cost more, more skilled seamstresses are typically paid more, and many of the details that take a piece from good to great — such as pockets, well-fastened buttons, and linings — add to the product cost as well.
This article features affiliate links, which means we earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (which helps us fund this website) if you choose to purchase through one of these links. As always, we only feature brands that meet high standards for sustainability that we love and that we think you’ll love too!
1. Christy Dawn
Best for romantic dresses
Crafting “dresses you want to live in”, Christy Dawn’s pieces are a fairytale come true with their romantic silhouettes and dreamy prints. The sustainably-minded brand sources organic cotton as well as regenerative organic cotton grown in India by their partners Oshadi Collective. This “Farm-to-Closet” collection is also vegetable-dyed and block-printed in India using traditional time-honored practices.
Conscious Qualities: Organic & Regenerative Fabrics, Local & Ethical Production
Size Range: XS-3XL
Price Range: $$$
2. Whimsy + Row
Best for cocktail dresses
If you want a sustainable dress that doesn’t scream “sustainable”, Los Angeles-based Whimsy + Row is the brand for you.
The slow fashion label manufacturers their clothing in limited batches just a few miles away from their office and sources repurposed fabrics (i.e. deadstock) and lower-impact natural materials (such as linen and organic cotton) for their unapologetically feminine clothing. And don’t sleep on their bridesmaid dress options!
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Fabrics, Small Batch Production
Size Range: XS-XL
Price Range: $$-$$$
3. Tradlands
Best for work-friendly dresses
Created out of co-founder Sadie’s desire for classic, high-quality pieces, Tradlands is designed with longevity and versatility top of mind. And their effortless dresses are just as simple to care for — Tradlands uses natural — but washable! — fibers like cotton and linen.
The 100% cotton tiered dress I have from Tradlands (this one’s similar) is one of my summer go-to’s — breathable, flattering, and easy to dress up or down. I can wear it as a house dress working from home, or paired with jewelry and elegant sandals to dinner. (Monofiber fabrics — i.e. 100% of one fiber — is also easier to recycle than fabric blends.)
Conscious Qualities: Natural Fibers, Small Batch Production, Extended Sizing
Size Range: XS-4XL
Price Range: $$
4. Magic Linen
Best for 100% linen dresses
Versatile, breezy, and perfect for simmering temps, Magic Linen’s relaxed styles offer everything you need to feel calm and collected all summer long. Crafted from pure linen that has been stone-washed to provide unparalleled softness against your skin, these relaxed fits are the ideal intersection between vacation chic and functional style.
All of Magic Linen’s summer-ready pieces are created on a made-to-order basis, ensuring their garments are not overproduced. The brand also minimizes wastage by repurposing most of its fabric offcuts to create smaller items.
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Natural Materials, Woman-Owned, Made-To-Order
Size Range: US 2–18
Price Range: $$-$$$
5. Rare & Fair
Best for elegant evening dresses
Made thoughtfully with time-honored practices by master artisans and craftspeople in small batches, Rare & Fair has truly exceptional sustainable dresses. Each piece is made in a fully transparent, traceable process from fiber to final stitch.
Conscious Qualities: Sustainable Fabrics & Processes, Artisan Made, Cultural Preservation
Size Range: XXS-XL
Price Range: $$$
6. tentree
Best for casual weekend dresses
When warm weather approaches, all you want is a dress you can breathe easy in. And if your style skews minimalist, all you desire is a dress that has interesting details but doesn’t make too much of a fuss or song and dance about itself. Lucky for you, tentree has an array of simple dresses that fit the bill.
Button-down, wrap, cami, or even hooded, these pieces make everyday dressing feel like a breeze. Made from breathable materials like modal, hemp, TENCEL
Lyocell, linen, and organic cotton, these dresses are an ideal investment for the long haul.
Conscious Qualities: Eco Materials, Supply Chain Transparency, Plants Trees, Circularity Programs
Size Range: XS–XL
Price Range: $$-$$$
7. OMNES
Best for wedding guest dresses
Finding an ethical dress for a wedding, graduation, or black tie event is not easy. Most sustainable brands lean casual! But OMNES is a rare exception. Their occasion wear holds its own against conventional designer options, with elevated silhouettes and polished prints that look nothing like they came with an eco-conscience attached.
OMNES’ dresses are made from responsibly sourced materials including organic cotton, linen, LENZING ECOVERO viscose, and certified recycled polyester (from plastic bottles, which isn’t ideal — but considering 88% of polyester is virgin (fossil fuel-based), we’ll take it as a step in the right direction).
Conscious Qualities: Carbon Offset (125%), Audited Supply Chain, Lower Impact Materials, Living Wage Employer
Size Range: 4–18
Price Range: $$$
8. OhSevenDays
Best for elevated, independent designer dresses
OhSevenDays’ dresses feature feminine silhouettes, muted colors, and unique details to impress. Made from deadstock fabrics sourced from Istanbul, Turkey. The slow fashion brand also offers a transparent behind the scenes look at their production process, all done in-house by a team of four tailors.
With the level of detail on OhSevenDays dresses, all you need is an elevated pair of sustainably-made sandals and you’ve got a complete look.
Conscious Qualities: Reclaimed Fabrics, Transparent Production
Size Range: S-L + custom sizing
Price Range: $
9. No Nasties
Best for vacation dresses with vibrant hues
No Nasties creates 100% organic cotton fair trade dresses perfect for wearing to the beach with flip flops or pairing with heeled sandals for date night. Their versatile sustainable dresses are comfy, organic, and affordable with most pieces priced at under $100.
Conscious Qualities: Organic Fabrics, Traceable Supply Chain, Fair Trade
Size Range: XS-L
Price Range: $
10. MATE
Best for non-toxic dresses
There’s nothing more satisfying than finding summer dresses that make you look instantly put together without much effort – and MATE’s curation checks every box.
From breezy maxi dresses to functional dresses that come with a removable belt bag, their styles are made using GOTS Certified Organic Linen, ideal for keeping the heat at bay when the mercury rises to unbearable temperatures.
What’s more? You can work up a sweat feeling relieved knowing that all of their pieces are made using non-toxic dyes that don’t rely on harmful chemicals like pesticides, BPA, PFAS, and formaldehyde.
Size Range: XS – XL
Price Range: $$
11. Míe
Best for dresses you won’t see anywhere else
Míe is an independent fashion brand prioritizing natural fibers like linen and distinguished design details like tiered puff sleeves and unique necklines. Based in Nigeria and only sold in select global retailers, you’re unlikely to see anyone else wearing something similar.
Each dress is designed and handcrafted responsibly at their atelier in Lagos, Nigeria.
Conscious Qualities: Natural Fibers, Black Woman-Owned
Size Range: XS-3XL
Price Range: $$$
12. Reformation
Best for girls night out dresses
Reformation is one of the more transparent and accountable mainstream sustainable brands. In 2023, Reformation used 97% recycled, regenerative, or renewable materials and nearly 1 in 5 of their sales were resale, vintage, or rental. They also have a number of circularity programs. (Find more details in their sustainability report.)
That said, they’re still a growth-focused brand selling trend-driven clothing, which has inherent sustainability limits.
Conscious Qualities: Responsible Material Sourcing, Circularity Initiatives, Traceability
Size Range: 0 – 12 and 14 – 24 in select styles
Price Range: $$$
13. Toad & Co
Best for casual summer dresses
Crafted from fabrics like hemp, TENCEL, and organic cotton, and designed with easygoing silhouettes, Toad & Co’s has the perfect natural fiber dresses for warm sunny days.
The airy dresses can be worn as naturally breathable house dresses or with their delicate details and subtle prints, easily worn out with a pair of strappy sandals or slingbacks.
My top picks would be the brands midi dresses, but they also have wrap and tank dresses that hit mid-thigh if you prefer a shorter hemline.
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Fabrics, Resale Program, Factory Transparency
Size Range: XS-XL
Price Range: $$
14. LANIUS
Best for effortless warm-weather dresses
Some fair trade brands make you choose between doing good and looking good. LANIUS, a family-run slow fashion house out of Cologne in Germany, doesn’t ask you to compromise. Founded in 1999, the brand has spent 25 years making feminine, considered designs in certified organic materials under fair conditions.
Their casual dresses are the kind you reach for on repeat. Think organic linen that feels weightless against the skin, relaxed silhouettes that work for a farmers market or the office, and details like a a slightly flared hem that elevate without fuss. And in case you needed more reason to love this brand’s ethos: they only produce two collections per year, prioritizing intentionality over hype.
Conscious Qualities: GOTS Certified, Fair Wear Foundation Audited, Organic & Natural Materials, No Harmful Chemicals, Care & Repair Program
Size Range: 34–44 (German sizing, roughly US 4–14)
Price Range: $$
15. Beaumont Organic
Best for elevated everyday dresses
Beaumont Organic makes the kind of dresses that feel intentional without trying too hard. Rooted in natural materials and quiet craftsmanship, their pieces sit somewhere between elevated basics and timeless wardrobe investments — the sort of thing you reach for because it just feels right.
Their linen dresses are a standout. Take the Ottillie-May: a boxy, sleeveless silhouette that blooms into a shirred waistband and A-line skirt, with pockets. Made entirely in Portugal — from spinning and weaving to dyeing and finishing — the supply chain is fully traceable and listed right on the product page.
The brand offers free repair and resale schemes, visits suppliers regularly, and builds exclusively with living wage factories. Beaumont Organic is fashion with a long view.
Conscious Qualities: Fully Traceable Supply Chain, Living Wage Factories, Natural & Organic Materials, Made in Portugal, Repair & Resale Program
Size Range: XS-L
Price Range: $$$
You Might Also Be Wondering…
Are sustainable dresses worth the higher price tag?
It depends! The key here is to look at cost-per-wear. A $250 organic linen dress you wear 80 times costs $3.12 per wear. A $40 fast fashion dress you wear 5 times costs $8 per wear. More sustainable dresses tend to have timeless design and be made with higher quality materials and construction, meaning they last longer, hold their shape better, and don’t need replacing as often. That said, always look at the care instructions! Natural fibers may require a bit more attention than synthetic fibers (such as air-drying instead of throwing in a machine dryer) but they’re well worth the additional effort.
And there are also genuinely affordable sustainable options (like No Nasties and tentree) that prove sustainability doesn’t always mean expensive. Some brands are priced very competitively with their less sustainably-minded couterparts.
What certifications should I look for when buying a sustainable dress?
The most meaningful certifications for dresses are:
- GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) for organic fibers and other sustainability assurances during production
- OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 for chemical safety in finished garments (note that this is a product certification, not a material certification — and many brands miscommunicate this label)
- Made in Fair Trade Certified factories which ensure that the brand is paying into a premium that goes to a Community Development Fund that workers can vote on to determine how to use those funds
However, many small brands cannot afford to buy certified products, fabrics, or pay into fair trade programs. There are other ways to ensure ethical sourcing as well, so look into a brand’s sustainability or sourcing pages too.
What’s the most sustainable type of fabric for a dress?
This is a nearly impossible question to answer because no single fiber is the “best” by all measures. There are so many considerations (land use, water use, biodegradability, longevity, carbon emissions, and so on) that I cannot tell you the single “best” fiber.
That said, I avoid synthetic materials, which are made from fossil fuels and release microplastics into our environment when washed. Among natural options, different fibers have different use cases, so I recommend looking for the best version of each. This deep dive has much more on fabrics.
But even then there are nuances — is 50% organic cotton blend with hemp or linen better than a 100% conventional cotton fabric considering that monofiber fabrics are much easier to recycle at the end of their life? As you can see, the most sustainable question is complicated.
Should I buy secondhand instead of new sustainable dresses?
From a pure environmental standpoint, secondhand is almost always the better choice — no new resources used, no new manufacturing emissions. Platforms like ThredUp, The RealReal, Poshmark, and Depop are great starting points. That said, buying new from sustainably-minded brands does serve a purpose: it signals market demand for responsible production and can support artisans, ethical manufacturers, and/or women-owned small businesses, depending on the brand. The best approach in my mind? Check secondhand first. If you can’t find what you need, then invest in a quality piece from a trusted more sustainable brand if you can.
What sustainable dresses come in plus sizes or extended sizes?
Size inclusivity is an area where sustainable fashion has historically underperformed — but it’s improving. LOUD BODIES is the standout on this list, offering 15 sizes from XXS to 10XL. Christy Dawn goes up to 3XL in some styles, Míe up to 3XL, and Tradlands to 4XL. When shopping, always check the full size range on the brand’s website, as some brands offer extended sizes only in select styles.
The post 15 Best Sustainable Dresses That Are Anything But Basic (2026) appeared first on Conscious Life & Style.
What’s not to love about a go-to dress in your wardrobe? The right one can be dressed up or down, it can be worn alone, or worn as a skirt with the right top layered on. A dress is arguably the easiest outfit to put together that still looks put together. The right sustainable dress is the kind of closet staple you can reach for on any kind of summer day, even when you have no idea what to wear.
From t-shirt dresses and house dresses to chic midi frocks and fun mini’s for a night out, this roundup of sustainable dresses has just about everything.
So if you’re looking for that perfect eco-friendly dress to complement your wardrobe this year, I’ve got you covered with this guide to sustainably and ethically-made dresses. This guide has brands with both casual and more formal dresses, but if you’re shopping for exclusively special occasion dresses, I’d recommend also browsing my guide to formal dresses.
What Qualifies As (More) Sustainable Dresses?
Wearing what we have in our closets is the most sustainable approach! But if you’re here, you probably already evaluated that option and you’re looking to add something fresh to your closet.
Secondhand Dresses are Sustainable Dresses
The second most sustainable option is to look secondhand. ThredUp can be a versatile option for pieces at any price point and The RealReal is my favorite choice for more premium brands.
Online secondhand marketplaces like Poshmark or Depop are also good options — but something to watch out when it comes to peer-to-peer marketplaces is that they can sometimes contain new fast fashion disguised as “vintage” pieces, so it can require some additional digging.
For more suggestions, find my full guide to secondhand clothing retailers in this post.
If you’re looking for a new sustainably-made dress, here are some considerations:
- Materials: what is it made from? Is it made with a natural fabric like hemp, linen, or organic cotton? Perhaps made from deadstock or upcycled materials?
- Production Practices: does the brand take efforts to not overproduce? Do they produce in small batches? (No matter how “eco-conscious” the material is, if a brand is throwing away 30% of their stock, that’s not sustainable!)
- Timelessness and Quality: this doesn’t have to mean boring and doesn’t necessarily mean the brand never participates in a trend. But does the brand constantly hop on every single trend and push you to buy more and more? Or do they encourage slow mindful consumption with well-designed dresses? Do they pay attention to construction and details that ensure you’ll be wearing this dress year after year?
- Manufacturing: most brands do not produce their own clothing, but are they sourcing from facilities that pay their workers fairly? Do those facilities minimize waste, use renewable energy, and responsibly manage chemical usage?
- Ethical Production: who made the dress? were they paid fairly and were they working in safe conditions? do they have worker’s rights, such as the right to organize? how does the brand ensure this? Certifications can be helpful here. But sometimes factories cannot afford these, so look for other assurances, such as that the founder personally visits the factories.
- Ownership: is it a small woman-owned business or major fashion brand owned by billionaires? What are your values when it comes to where your money is going?
I know that’s a lot! But these are elements to start looking for as you browse through brands. This isn’t about perfection — it’s just about learning and doing the best we can.
My Top Picks for Ethical and Sustainable Dresses
To help you out (because I get it — it’s complicated!) I’ve curated retailers and brands with sustainable and ethical dresses. These brands aren’t necessarily perfect, but they’re doing things better for people and the planet. I’ve included “Conscious Qualities” by each brand or retailer, so you can get an idea about why the brand is on the list and which sustainability criteria they meet.
I’ve also curated brands at a range of price points, to accommodate for different budgets.
This Guide’s Price Range Key:
- $ = Dresses under $100
- $$ = Dresses $100 – $200
- $$$ = Dresses $200+
Keep in mind that while price and quality aren’t necessarily directly tied to each other, lower prices may sometimes mean a sacrifice on quality and the highest quality picks are often on the higher end of the price spectrum. Better quality fabrics cost more, more skilled seamstresses are typically paid more, and many of the details that take a piece from good to great — such as pockets, well-fastened buttons, and linings — add to the product cost as well.
This article features affiliate links, which means we earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (which helps us fund this website) if you choose to purchase through one of these links. As always, we only feature brands that meet high standards for sustainability that we love and that we think you’ll love too!
1. Christy Dawn
Best for flowy, romantic dresses
Crafting “dresses you want to live in”, Christy Dawn’s pieces are a fairytale come true with their romantic silhouettes and dreamy prints. The sustainably-minded brand sources organic cotton as well as regenerative organic cotton grown in India by their partners Oshadi Collective. This “Farm-to-Closet” collection is also vegetable-dyed and block-printed in India using traditional time-honored practices.
Conscious Qualities: Organic & Regenerative Fabrics, Local & Ethical Production
Size Range: XS-3XL
Price Range: $$$
2. Whimsy + Row
Best for flirty and feminine frocks
If you want a sustainable dress that doesn’t scream “sustainable”, Los Angeles-based Whimsy + Row is the brand for you.
The slow fashion label manufacturers their clothing in limited batches just a few miles away from their office and sources repurposed fabrics (i.e. deadstock) and lower-impact natural materials (such as linen and organic cotton) for their unapologetically feminine clothing. And don’t sleep on their bridesmaid dress options!
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Fabrics, Small Batch Production
Size Range: XS-XL
Price Range: $$-$$$
3. Tradlands
Best for effortless house dresses
Created out of co-founder Sadie’s desire for classic, high-quality pieces, Tradlands is designed with longevity and versatility top of mind. And their effortless dresses are just as simple to care for — Tradlands uses natural — but washable! — fibers like cotton and linen.
The 100% cotton tiered dress I have from Tradlands (this one’s similar) is one of my summer go-to’s — breathable, flattering, and easy to dress up or down. I can wear it as a house dress working from home, or paired with jewelry and elegant sandals to dinner. (Monofiber fabrics — i.e. 100% of one fiber — is also easier to recycle than fabric blends.)
Conscious Qualities: Natural Fibers, Small Batch Production, Extended Sizing
Size Range: XS-4XL
Price Range: $$
4. Magic Linen
Best for 100% linen dresses
Versatile, breezy, and perfect for simmering temps, Magic Linen’s relaxed styles offer everything you need to feel calm and collected all summer long. Crafted from pure linen that has been stone-washed to provide unparalleled softness against your skin, these relaxed fits are the ideal intersection between vacation chic and functional style.
All of Magic Linen’s summer-ready pieces are created on a made-to-order basis, ensuring their garments are not overproduced. The brand also minimizes wastage by repurposing most of its fabric offcuts to create smaller items.
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Natural Materials, Woman-Owned, Made-To-Order
Size Range: US 2–18
Price Range: $$-$$$
5. Rare & Fair
Best for special occasionwear
Made thoughtfully with time-honored practices by master artisans and craftspeople in small batches, Rare & Fair has truly exceptional sustainable dresses. Each piece is made in a fully transparent, traceable process from fiber to final stitch.
Conscious Qualities: Sustainable Fabrics & Processes, Artisan Made, Cultural Preservation
Size Range: XXS-XL
Price Range: $$$
6. tentree
Best for casual weekend dresses
When warm weather approaches, all you want is a dress you can throw on. And if your style skews minimalist, all you desire is a dress that has interesting details but doesn’t make too much of a fuss or song and dance about itself. Lucky for you, tentree has an array of simple dresses that fit the bill.
Button-down, wrap, cami, or even hooded, these pieces make everyday dressing feel like a breeze. Made from breathable materials like modal, hemp, TENCEL
Lyocell, linen, and organic cotton, these dresses are an ideal investment for the long haul.
Conscious Qualities: Eco Materials, Supply Chain Transparency, Plants Trees, Circularity Programs
Size Range: XS–XL
Price Range: $$-$$$
7. MATE
Best for non-toxic dresses
There’s nothing more satisfying than finding summer dresses that make you look instantly put together without much effort – and MATE’s curation checks every box.
From breezy maxi dresses to functional dresses that come with a removable belt bag, their styles are made using GOTS Certified Organic Linen, ideal for keeping the heat at bay when the mercury rises to unbearable temperatures.
What’s more? You can work up a sweat feeling relieved knowing that all of their pieces are made using non-toxic dyes that don’t rely on harmful chemicals like pesticides, BPA, PFAS, and formaldehyde.
Size Range: XS – XL
Price Range: $ – $$$
8. OhSevenDays
Best for elevated dresses with a point of view
OhSevenDays’ dresses feature feminine silhouettes, muted colors, and unique details to impress. Made from deadstock fabrics sourced from Istanbul, Turkey. The slow fashion brand also offers a transparent behind the scenes look at their production process, all done in-house by a team of four tailors.
With the level of detail on OhSevenDays dresses, all you need is an elevated pair of sustainably-made sandals and you’ve got a complete look.
Conscious Qualities: Reclaimed Fabrics, Transparent Production
Size Range: S-L + custom sizing
Price Range: $
9. No Nasties
Best for vacation dresses with vibrant hues
No Nasties creates 100% organic cotton fair trade dresses perfect for wearing to the beach with flip flops or pairing with heeled sandals for date night. Their versatile sustainable dresses are comfy, organic, and affordable with most pieces priced at under $100.
Conscious Qualities: Organic Fabrics, Traceable Supply Chain, Fair Trade
Size Range: XS-L
Price Range: $
10. Míe
Best for dresses you won’t see anywhere else
Míe is an independent fashion brand prioritizing natural fibers like linen and distinguished design details like tiered puff sleeves and unique necklines. Based in Nigeria and only sold in select global retailers, you’re unlikely to see anyone else wearing something similar.
Each dress is designed and handcrafted responsibly at their atelier in Lagos, Nigeria.
Conscious Qualities: Natural Fibers, Black Woman-Owned
Size Range: XS-3XL
Price Range: $$$
11. Reformation
Best for going out styles
Reformation is one of the more transparent and accountable mainstream sustainable brands. In 2023, Reformation used 97% recycled, regenerative, or renewable materials and nearly 1 in 5 of their sales were resale, vintage, or rental. They also have a number of circularity programs. (Find more details in their sustainability report.)
That said, they’re still a growth-focused brand selling trend-driven clothing, which has inherent sustainability limits.
Conscious Qualities: Responsible Material Sourcing, Circularity Initiatives, Traceability
Size Range: 0 – 12 and 14 – 24 in select styles
Price Range: $$$
12. Toad & Co
Crafted from fabrics like hemp, TENCEL, and organic cotton, and designed with easygoing silhouettes, Toad & Co’s has the perfect natural fiber dresses for warm sunny days.
The airy dresses can be worn as naturally breathable house dresses or with their delicate details and subtle prints, easily worn out with a pair of strappy sandals or slingbacks.
My top picks would be the brands midi dresses, but they also have wrap and tank dresses that hit mid-thigh if you prefer a shorter hemline.
Conscious Qualities: Lower Impact Fabrics, Resale Program, Factory Transparency
Size Range: XS-XL
Price Range: $$
You Might Also Be Wondering…
Are sustainable dresses worth the higher price tag?
It depends! The key here is to look at cost-per-wear. A $250 organic linen dress you wear 80 times costs $3.12 per wear. A $40 fast fashion dress you wear 5 times costs $8 per wear. More sustainable dresses tend to have timeless design and be made with higher quality materials and construction, meaning they last longer, hold their shape better, and don’t need replacing as often. That said, always look at the care instructions! Natural fibers may require a bit more attention than synthetic fibers (such as air-drying instead of throwing in a machine dryer) but they’re well worth the additional effort.
And there are also genuinely affordable sustainable options (like No Nasties and tentree) that prove sustainability doesn’t always mean expensive. Some brands are priced very competitively with their less sustainably-minded couterparts.
What certifications should I look for when buying a sustainable dress?
The most meaningful certifications for dresses are:
- GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) for organic fibers and other sustainability assurances during production
- OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 for chemical safety in finished garments (note that this is a product certification, not a material certification — and many brands miscommunicate this label)
- Made in Fair Trade Certified factories which ensure that the brand is paying into a premium that goes to a Community Development Fund that workers can vote on to determine how to use those funds
However, many small brands cannot afford to buy certified products, fabrics, or pay into fair trade programs. There are other ways to ensure ethical sourcing as well, so look into a brand’s sustainability or sourcing pages too.
What’s the most sustainable type of fabric for a dress?
This is a nearly impossible question to answer because no single fiber is the “best” by all measures. There are so many considerations (land use, water use, biodegradability, longevity, carbon emissions, and so on) that I cannot tell you the single “best” fiber.
That said, I avoid synthetic materials, which are made from fossil fuels and release microplastics into our environment when washed. Among natural options, different fibers have different use cases, so I recommend looking for the best version of each. This deep dive has much more on fabrics.
But even then there are nuances — is 50% organic cotton blend with hemp or linen better than a 100% conventional cotton fabric considering that monofiber fabrics are much easier to recycle at the end of their life? As you can see, the most sustainable question is complicated.
Should I buy secondhand instead of new sustainable dresses?
From a pure environmental standpoint, secondhand is almost always the better choice — no new resources used, no new manufacturing emissions. Platforms like ThredUp, The RealReal, Poshmark, and Depop are great starting points. That said, buying new from sustainably-minded brands does serve a purpose: it signals market demand for responsible production and can support artisans, ethical manufacturers, and/or women-owned small businesses, depending on the brand. The best approach in my mind? Check secondhand first. If you can’t find what you need, then invest in a quality piece from a trusted more sustainable brand if you can.
What sustainable dresses come in plus sizes or extended sizes?
Size inclusivity is an area where sustainable fashion has historically underperformed — but it’s improving. LOUD BODIES is the standout on this list, offering 15 sizes from XXS to 10XL. Christy Dawn goes up to 3XL in some styles, Míe up to 3XL, and Tradlands to 4XL. When shopping, always check the full size range on the brand’s website, as some brands offer extended sizes only in select styles.
The post The Best Sustainable Dresses — for Any Budget (2026) appeared first on Conscious Life & Style.
Green Living
Sustainability In Your Ear: Kendra MacDonald Steers to the Blue Economy at Canada’s Ocean Supercluster
The ocean produces about half the oxygen we breathe, absorbs roughly 30% of the carbon dioxide we emit, and takes up about 90% of the excess heat those emissions trap, according to the United Nations. It is the planet’s largest life-support system — and also its least-funded one. Of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, the goal for life below water consistently draws the least money. Canada, which has the longest coastline in the world, is trying to flip that equation, and you can watch it happen close to real time.
Our guest this week is Kendra MacDonald, CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, a national, industry-led effort to grow what’s come to be called the blue economy. Under her leadership, the Supercluster has grown into a community of roughly 1,000 members co-investing in more than 150 projects. She came to the role after 25 years at Deloitte, where she served as Chief Audit Executive, and she runs it from St. John’s, Newfoundland. The model is built on co-investment: at least two companies put money in, often alongside Indigenous communities, researchers, and global corporations, so no single player carries the risk alone. The projects range from graphene hull coatings that cut a ship’s fuel use to wave-powered desalination and the $4.4 million Membertou Electric Lobster Boat, billed as Canada’s first zero-emission commercial fishing vessel, led by the Membertou First Nation.
Kendra’s thesis fits in seven words: you can go faster alone, but farther together. In our conversation, she’s candid about where that gets hard — most of these collaborations are small companies that don’t individually hold every capability, and the upfront work of sorting out who owns which piece of intellectual property is what separates the partnerships that succeed from the ones that stall. She’s just as candid about the catch: the Supercluster is funded by the Government of Canada to de-risk small Canadian firms, and when those firms succeed, they’re often acquired by international buyers — the value-capture problem at the heart of every public innovation program. That tension between strong science and thin capital, she says, keeps her up at night, and it points back to the blue-finance gap. It also shapes how she talks about aquaculture, which in 2022 surpassed wild capture as the world’s main source of farmed aquatic animals, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and is now the fastest-growing source of animal protein. Kendra rejects the idea that ocean health and productivity are in trade-off, arguing that a healthier ocean is more productive. And just before we recorded, the Trump administration reopened nearly half a million square miles of the Pacific to commercial fishing, the third such rollback in little more than a year. One model treats the ocean as a commons to protect and co-invest in; the other treats marine protection as an obstacle to clear. She thinks the contrast opens a door for Canada to lead.
To learn more about the Ocean Supercluster, visit oceansupercluster.ca. MacDonald writes about ocean-economy investment on her Substack, Saltwater Signals, and she’s easy to find on LinkedIn.
- Subscribe to Sustainability In Your Ear on iTunes
- Follow Sustainability In Your Ear on Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or YouTube
Interview Transcript
Mitch Ratcliffe 0:10
Hello. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today.
The topic is accelerating innovation. When we talk about the climate fight, we usually picture it on land: forests and wildfires, EVs and the power grid, solar panels on roofs everywhere. But the largest climate system on the planet is the one we understand the least, and it covers more than 70% of the Earth. The ocean absorbs our heat, feeds billions of people, moves nearly everything we buy, and it’s been treated for most of human history as something to extract from rather than invest in. And that’s the starting point to change, and Canada is one of the places where you can watch that happen in real time.
My guest today is at the center of this epochal shift. Kendra MacDonald is the CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, a national, industry-led effort to grow what’s come to be called the blue economy. We’ve talked about it on the show several times. Think of it as a table where startups, century-old fishing and shipping companies, Indigenous partners, researchers, and global corporations all sit down together and co-invest in ideas that no single one of them could pull off alone.
Under Kendra’s leadership, that community now spans roughly 1,000 members working together on over 100 projects — everything from graphene hull coatings that cut a ship’s fuel use by making it easier to go through the waves, to wave-power desalination, and an electric lobster boat built in partnership with the Membertou First Nation.
Kendra came to this from 25 years at Deloitte, the global consulting firm, where she last served as Chief Audit Executive. She’s been named to her region’s Top 50 CEO Hall of Fame, and she leads all of this from St. John’s, Newfoundland — a relatively remote vantage point, she’ll tell you, that is a feature, not a limitation of her job. Her thesis in seven words: you can go faster alone, but farther together.
We’re going to test that idea today — on collaboration, on who actually captures the value when small companies scale up, and whether the blue economy can grow and stay healthy at the same time, as well as what it takes to lead through a decade of constant disruption. We’ll get to the conversation right after this brief commercial break.
Hey, welcome to the show, Kendra. How you doing today?
Kendra MacDonald 2:46
I am doing great. How are you?
Mitch Ratcliffe 2:48
I’m doing well, thanks for joining me. I appreciate it. You live in a remote location in Newfoundland; I live in a remote location in southern Oregon, and we both somehow stay connected to the world. How do you do that? From your perspective, your seat is quite connected. How do you stay in touch with folks?
Kendra MacDonald 3:05
Yeah, so, certainly virtual. I started this role late in 2018, and by 2020 we were in the middle of the pandemic, and so it became very natural to connect virtually. So I think that has helped — it’s helped us connect across the country, and people got more used to virtual platforms.
But I do also spend a lot of time in person. I’m just coming from — I was in Ottawa, and I was in Halifax, and next week I’ll be somewhere else. So I do try to get face to face with our members as well, which, from St. John’s, Newfoundland — we’re a big country, so St. John’s to Victoria is about a nine-hour trip. Sometimes it’s easier to get to Europe than it is to get across the country. But I do spend a lot of time trying to get with our members, all over.
Mitch Ratcliffe 3:49
Your members are all related to the ocean, but why does the ocean belong at the center of the conversation now? For someone who doesn’t live near a coast, what’s the connection they should feel between the ocean, their personal health, and well-being?
Kendra MacDonald 4:01
That’s a great question. I mean, I think, in terms of — let’s talk about us as people first. Why the ocean matters: if you think about where your goods come from, over 80% of the goods that we get, whether we’re ordering from Amazon or ordering from wherever, they’re coming by sea. So there’s a huge amount of shipping that happens on the ocean. You think about the internet — most of our internet, if you’re getting it from some kind of overseas site, 98% of that is subsea cables that are going underneath the ocean.
If you look at then what the ocean means for the planet: 70%, but two-thirds, of the planet is ocean. About 50% of the oxygen comes from the ocean, so no matter where you are on the planet, oxygen matters. That’s really important, whether you’re close to the coast or you are not. It absorbs 90% of our excess heat, so a lot of the heat regulation is happening in the ocean. But 30% of our carbon — I don’t know about you, I learned in school all about the rainforest. I didn’t learn very much about the ocean, but the ocean actually plays a huge role in terms of being a carbon sink and absorbing excess carbon.
And then, I guess the last one, maybe 80% of our biodiversity on the planet — although some would argue there’s a lot of it undiscovered — but about 80% of biodiversity actually sits in the ocean. So when you talk about health, and we think about a lot of the natural solutions that we’re starting to see, whether that is natural fabrics going into fashion or natural ingredients going into beauty — we’re starting to see seaweed coming into both nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals, as well as fertilizers, for example. All of those natural ingredients — increasingly, we’re turning to the ocean.
Mitch Ratcliffe 5:40
How does the Ocean Supercluster function to address all of the different kinds of issues that you just described?
Kendra MacDonald 5:46
So that’s a great question. We don’t equally address all of them. Where we really are focused, in terms of trying to grow the ocean economy for Canada, is acceleration of technology commercialization. So the bulk of our projects are in technology commercialization. About 50% of our projects are what’s called domain awareness, or ocean observation — so, how do we understand things better. That has a different flavor.
We are cross-sectoral, so we touch aquaculture, shipping, offshore energy, and we would see different flavors of those technologies being applied. So if you’re an aquaculture farm, you want to make sure that you’re using an underwater drone, for example, to be able to inspect your nets, to make sure that you don’t have escapes. You might be sitting in the Arctic, and you want to better understand what’s happening with the coastline, or be able to monitor diversity.
Increasingly, we’re seeing this trend toward dual-use technologies in defense, for example — so technologies that you can use to find a whale, you could also use, potentially, to be finding a submarine. And then, if you look at offshore wind: how do you do surveys better? How do you remotely monitor infrastructure in the ocean? So there’s all these flavors of how do we better understand the ocean to make better decisions, and also to be able to operate more sustainably across all of these different sectors.
Mitch Ratcliffe 7:03
Now, of course, you just described systems in which there are many stakeholders. Who’s involved in all of these conversations? What’s the structure of the investments that allows communities to participate?
Kendra MacDonald 7:14
Yeah, so we are a co-investment model, so we need to have at least two companies that are co-investing. In a lot of cases, we would also have broader collaborators. So if you look at, for example, in the aquaculture space — aquaculture touches a number of communities all along our coast. We would have a project, for example, on the West Coast that would include an Indigenous community as the final operator and participant in the project. So you’ll see the technology providers, you will see the users of the technology, and then, depending on where it is, you will also see a community problem that the solution is trying to solve.
Mitch Ratcliffe 7:55
When you joined this industry, were you surprised by the way it actually operates? Is it different than land-centered business?
Kendra MacDonald 8:05
Yes. And no. So, my background — I worked with a large consulting firm, was part of Deloitte. I’m an auditor by background, so I spent a lot of time looking at systems, and I was actually a systems auditor — so, on the information technology side of how information is produced to get to the financial statements. And so I had spent a lot of time looking at digitalization of industries. You’re seeing increasingly digital, whether it’s media or transportation — these trends — and so that same trend is coming into ocean, where you’re seeing more and more instrumentation to be able to get more information, make better decisions, all the same things that we are trying to do in a number of sectors.
Where it gets more complicated is the environment that you’re operating in. So we don’t have a data network now the way that we would — I know there are still remote parts on land, so we don’t have as good a bandwidth — but they get much more remote when you start going on the ocean. You’re trying to now put technologies into salty water, high pressure, low visibility, and so the operating conditions become much more difficult for the types of problems that you’re trying to solve.
Mitch Ratcliffe 9:14
This is a national sovereign wealth fund, or a variation thereon. Sovereignty is playing a greater and greater role in geopolitics right now, and you’ve said you can go faster alone but farther together. How does Canada need to work with the rest of the world in order to really leverage the investments that you’re making?
Kendra MacDonald 9:33
So, great question. We are part of what’s called the Blue Tech Cluster Alliance, and Canada right now is chairing that. That includes a number of clusters around the world — so right now it’s Canada, the US, Japan, Ireland, the UK, France, Norway, Portugal, and Spain. I think I got all nine; hopefully I didn’t miss anybody. And so we are constantly looking at how do we create conditions so that the companies can engage with each other and work together to be able to solve global problems, because if you look at the ocean, it’s all interconnected. Decisions that you’re making in one country do eventually work through, around the entire world.
And so, for these big challenges that we’re trying to solve for — can we work together to be able to move faster? Can we bring more breadth of thinking to a problem? I was somewhere the other day, and I said, you know, in some cases we’re competing, in some cases we’re cooperating. And so we’re trying to do that at a national scale, and we are also trying to do that at a global scale. So you are seeing more and more focus on what we call, in our defense industrial strategy, sovereign capabilities — so how do you build the sovereign capabilities, but how do you also work with your partners to be able to learn from each other and be able to go further together.
Mitch Ratcliffe 10:53
Collaboration like that isn’t easy. Where do you find that it becomes more difficult? What are the big challenges you’re facing right now?
Kendra MacDonald 11:00
Yes. So collaboration is, I would say, like any other relationship, right? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And I would say the devil is in the details. If you think about your personal relationships — or for me, with my husband — did we spend enough time in advance talking about how we wanted to raise our kids, or where we wanted to live, or whose career was the priority? All of those things. So that plays in. Now, you’re probably not signing on for life when you’re collaborating at a business level, but you need to spend the time really looking at: is what we’re trying to achieve consistent? How do we incent the teams? Are we going to get to a common outcome?
When we collaborate with other governments, for example, you look at political cycles, and at IP sharing — so are we very clear on background IP that we’re bringing, foreground IP, how that IP is being shared or held going forward? We are co-funding, so we fund a portion, the companies fund a portion. Are we clear on who is funding what? What happens if it starts going over budget? What happens if we’re not achieving the outcomes on the timelines that we intended? What happens if one company is achieving their outcomes, but the other one’s not?
And so it really does require a lot of discussion. We now have over 150 projects. You’ve got those that come to the table, I would say, with a light-touch thinking on their collaboration; you’ve got others that spend a lot more time thinking through it. And those ones that spend a lot more time thinking through it — not only do they have a better chance of success, we will often see them recognize the benefits. Because I think one of the key benefits of collaboration: we have a lot of small companies working together, and they don’t have all the capabilities to do everything. We are in a world where getting some of these capabilities is challenging, especially technical expertise. And so now, if you can work with a partner, you can deliver a bigger solution to a broader problem, and that helps you be able to get further than you would be able to get on your own.
Mitch Ratcliffe 13:04
97% or so of your projects are actually led by smaller startup businesses. How do you keep those small firms from getting swallowed when they sit down at the table with a multinational who might be a partner?
Kendra MacDonald 13:15
Yeah. So I would say, when we first created the Supercluster, that was one of the big concerns — that you would have these collaborations between small and large, and so the small would be at high risk of losing their IP. I would say we haven’t seen that, partially because we don’t have a lot of large companies; we have a lot of small working with small, so they are more hyper-aware of this challenge. But also, the model was really designed to allow the companies to choose how they bring their IP in, and then how it’s shared going forward. A lot of our larger companies — and maybe it’s just the nature of the companies that we work with — they’re really interested in being first customer or having early access to the data, but they’re not necessarily trying to take over the IP of the company in terms of how it’s designed.
We also do actually have an IP director and some pretty strong guidelines within the program, so that IP director is someone that companies can consult. To make sure that — smaller companies don’t necessarily have the IP expertise — so, how do we help them in thinking through the types of questions they want to be asking? How do we make sure we have an IP chart in every one of our agreements that lays out the background IP and the foreground IP, and then someone that helps the companies to be able to work through that? So it’s not perfect, but we haven’t actually seen, knock on wood, at this point, a lot of concerns around IP going to the larger companies. What we do see is we shine a light on these companies, and then they get internationally acquired. So that is the actual question: how do you maintain the benefits to Canada, in a program that is Government of Canada–funded, in a situation where you’re seeing them scale with funding that comes from somewhere else?
Mitch Ratcliffe 15:00
So would you describe that governance model as templated, applied across all deals, or are each of them negotiated? Is the governance negotiated individually?
Kendra MacDonald 15:09
So I would say there is flexibility within a frame. You have flexibility in terms of how you do the sharing, but everyone has to think through the sharing. Same thing with governance — so we have a steering committee model, and you can think about who’s on that steering committee, and you have some flexibility. And then there is some common reporting. So there is definitely a common structure, and then you have some flexibility within your particular project on how you want to operate with your partners.
Mitch Ratcliffe 15:38
Earlier, you mentioned that sometimes collaboration doesn’t work, and that learning is really important to the progress that the industry can make, even though the individual entity didn’t make the success expected. How do you integrate that kind of learning, and what’s your tolerance for risk in the context of the lessons you need to learn about such a big topic that we understand so little about?
Kendra MacDonald 16:02
Yeah, so that’s a great question. We do a number of member education sessions, and talking about experience with collaboration is one of those things. Certainly we spend more time, for example, on collaboration with Indigenous communities, because speed — and speed of trust, and how you engage — is very important for the success of the project. It’s important always, but when you get into more complexity around different cultures, we try to do some education and some help and some learnings there.
And then I would say our evaluators, now that we’re 150-plus projects in, they are getting better at the types of questions to ask. There is a presentation that is done by the various participants, and so you can ask very pointed questions and get a sense of: are these three individual companies that are giving you a presentation, or are they companies that have actually thought this through together — are they synchronized in terms of their responses? You can tell that there is sort of some magical sauce that is already being demonstrated, in how they work together in that presentation.
Mitch Ratcliffe 17:10
I think we have the lay of the land — or maybe the better way to put it is the contour of the shore. I want to take a quick commercial break, folks. We’re going to be right back to continue the conversation.
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s continue my conversation with Kendra MacDonald. She’s CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster program, and it’s a national, industry-led innovation cluster focused on transforming Canada’s ocean economy through collaboration, technology, and, importantly, sustainability. Kendra, let’s talk about some phrases that listeners should understand, and the first one is sustainable aquaculture, which makes some environmentalists nervous, given the history of the industry. What does getting sustainable aquaculture right look like, and how do you hold the line on that?
Kendra MacDonald 17:58
Yeah, so I think a couple of things are important to understand around aquaculture. The first is that it is already one of the most sustainable sources of animal protein in the world, when you compare it to land-based agriculture, for example. The second is that it has already tipped — so if you look at since 2022, we actually get more of our fish coming out of aquaculture than coming out of wild fishery. So we are predominantly aquaculture around the world. And then the third one, and the World Bank, I think, just came out with this recently: we’re expecting to see possibly up to 22 million new jobs by 2050 in aquaculture. So it continues to be the fastest-growing source of protein.
Now, having said that, agriculture has been around much longer, and so has developed maybe more sustainability practices. Aquaculture is trying really hard to catch up really quickly. And so we need to make sure — and any of the aquaculture farmers I talk to recognize they want to make sure — that it is sustainable. So you are seeing a lot of technology solutions that are being brought to make sure that it is doing more good than harm, whether that is genomics, for example. We have a project on the West Coast that is looking at how do you look at genomics data to be able to improve animal health. We have a project that is looking at alternative sources of food — so how do you create a different food out of methanol as an input — because fish feed is part of the big footprint of aquaculture.
How do you reduce the die-offs, which is another big risk? That’s tied to environment, so now you’re seeing a change — the heating of waters that happens really quickly, and then you end up with a die-off. So how do you manage the cages? How do you manage the environmental monitoring and tracking to be able to reduce that risk? So it is already a sustainable source of food; we need to do much better, or continue on that journey as fast as we can, to make sure that the aquaculture farms are minimizing their input. So it is definitely a concern to continue to monitor, but I think there’s been a lot of progress made and will continue to be made.
Mitch Ratcliffe 20:16
We’ve had a few folks who work in the area on the show, and of course it remains controversial as to whether or not we’re recreating the concentrated animal feeding operations that we have on land in the sea. The next phrase that I want to ask you about is the blue economy, and that can sound to a lot of people like a license to industrialize the ocean. How do you think in terms of keeping growth and protection from becoming a zero-sum trade-off in the projects that you fund?
Kendra MacDonald 20:42
Well, that’s a great question. So, just as we launched in 2018, the High Level Panel on Sustainability for the Ocean at that time had 18 countries — it continues to increase in terms of the number of countries that are involved — and they really talked about protection, production, and prosperity as interlinked. And so that is one of the things that we really focus on. It’s not always that we have our environmental objectives and our economic objectives linking, but actually, a healthier ocean is also a more productive ocean. So that’s one of the things that we focus on: if we can improve the health of our ocean, that actually also improves the economic output of the ocean, which is really important.
I think the other piece that is really important is — and the High Level Panel came out with a report that said about a third to half of the solutions around improving the overall sustainability and health of the planet come from ocean solutions, whether that is offshore energy or more sustainable protein or carbon dioxide removal. So we need ocean to be a really important part of the overall health-of-the-planet conversation. So what excites me is, because they come together, a lot of the solutions that we see are, as a minimum, trying not to cause harm, and in a lot of cases trying to leave the ocean better than they found it, in terms of the solutions they’re developing.
Mitch Ratcliffe 22:05
We touched on sovereignty in the first segment, and I want to ask about this in the context of the fact that most of the ocean is not owned by anybody — it isn’t claimed by anybody. How do we avoid a tragedy of the commons as we move toward a more comprehensive aquacultural solution to humanity’s food and protein needs? In particular, are there treaties? Are there agreements that we need to have in place, or are we setting the stage already with the legislation and agreements that are in place now?
Kendra MacDonald 22:38
Yeah, so there are a number of agreements that are in place, and this is not my area of expertise, but, for example, I just completed my master’s, and I did one of my courses on maritime law. So you look at hundreds and hundreds of years of law trying to govern international shipping, which is very international in terms of moving through international waters as well as moving through international ports. You are seeing it now — so in January, they approved, through the United Nations … a lot of the agreements need to be agreed to, obviously, by multiple countries, and so the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction agreement was approved. So, how do we manage and protect biodiversity in our common waters?
You’re also seeing the conversation play out in the Arctic, as more waters are becoming more accessible — and so what does that mean in terms of rights and access? I haven’t seen it play out as much in terms of food, particularly; I see it much more in terms of things like carbon dioxide removal solutions and protection of biodiversity. But how we use those waters as they become more accessible, as we have more technology, as we have more instrumentation, and how we work together, is really important, and it does require international agreement. And so, how do we get — especially in this moment in time that we’re in — how do we get the international alignment that we need to protect our ocean and manage what happens in the deep ocean, at the same time as we have a shift in the geopolitical environment?
Mitch Ratcliffe 24:07
The times we’re in are challenging. The Trump administration, the week that we’re speaking, removed fishing protections in three protected marine areas, with — for lack of a better word — a rogue regime stirring up the entire sustainability conversation globally. Is this an opportunity for Canada to step forward, in Mark Carney’s terms, for a middle power to consolidate a bloc and really begin to lead the world in a different direction?
Kendra MacDonald 24:35
So, I think so. I think that Canada was working hard to step forward already, and this allows us to provide additional leadership in this space. We have seen, with the Ocean Supercluster and just the growth in the blue economy overall, that Canada has some really strong capabilities. You talk about marine protected areas as a perfect example — so we have worked hard in terms of increasing our marine protected areas. Now, looking at how do you monitor and actually ensure the effectiveness of those areas — I think that’s really important as well.
But yes, I think we are seeing more interest in working with Canada, and interest in Canadian technologies. I used to say, you know, internationally, no one’s really paying attention to what’s going on in Canada. I think that has changed in terms of what we are seeing, and so there is an interest. I think the US is still an important part of the Canadian conversation — they are important neighbors, they are an important market — but I do think that Canada has a strong … we’re seeing the whole climate conversation moving, but we have a strong reputation for clean tech, and I think clean tech and ocean tech very much align, and so there’s an opportunity to lead a broader conversation around the world.
Mitch Ratcliffe 25:49
Is more capital flowing to Canada now that the United States is a place where international investors are treading more carefully?
Kendra MacDonald 25:57
That’s a great question. Certainly, the flow of capital is a huge focus for us, and continues to be a challenge for our companies. So I think, on the one hand, there is more interest. On the other hand, you are seeing a slowdown in access to capital overall, you’re seeing a change in some of those models, and you’re seeing — certainly in sustainable solutions, in some of these big areas — the whole blue finance conversation is really accelerating. So Sustainable Development Goal 14, which is life below water, is the least funded of the Sustainable Development Goals. And so there is a tremendous focus on being able to increase the creativity of financial models — it hurts my accountant heart to say “creativity” — but trying to find better ways to bring philanthropic dollars and the capital markets together to be able to fund some of these solutions.
So that is a beyond-Canada challenge. Capital continues to be a challenge. How do we help our companies scale in Canada? We don’t have the funds focused on the blue economy the way that you are seeing them now emerge in a number of countries, certainly in Europe, for example. But more broadly, there’s a bigger push to be able to get more investors to be focused on the blue economy — opportunities, but also challenges.
Mitch Ratcliffe 27:16
When I was doing some of the reading to get ready for this conversation, I noticed that you said the shipping sector’s decarbonization efforts are not as slow as they used to be, which is sort of faint praise. What’s actually changed, and how do you see Canada leading that movement versus being one of the followers — or is being an important follower more important?
Kendra MacDonald 27:36
Yeah, so I think we are not as big a player in the international shipping space, but what is driving that is international regulations. You have seen a bit of a slowdown in terms of the push to decarbonization, but the International Maritime Organization is really pushing for decarbonization. You are also seeing the bigger companies, as they’re focused on their supply chain and decarbonizing throughout their supply chain, that that also puts a push on the shipping companies in terms of dealing with decarbonization.
You are also seeing an acceleration of some of the solutions that are being developed to help, because it’s considered a hard-to-abate industry. The alternative fuels conversation continues to move forward, so you are seeing this focus in the short term on how do you improve operational effectiveness — so something like better prediction of weather. If you can change the route just a little bit, you can actually save on diesel, and that obviously helps with emissions. We have a project in ports that is actually looking at how do you park the boats more effectively in the ports to be able to reduce emissions, how do you move the cargo around more efficiently to be able to reduce emissions. So there’s an operational effectiveness piece, but then there is this broader agenda of how do you get alternative fuels that are significantly less emissions.
Mitch Ratcliffe 28:55
We’ve been talking in various ways about systems throughout this conversation, and you’ve made a lot of comments about women’s leadership and also the AI readiness gap, which, if we can solve it, will allow us to see into those systems much more deeply than we do now. What are you seeing in those areas, and what would you say to a female leader who is hesitating at the edge of a hard decision right now — where they don’t necessarily feel like they have the data, or they feel like they have the data, but not the commitment of a group of stakeholders? What’s your advice?
Kendra MacDonald 29:26
Yeah, so I would say dig in and try it. I wouldn’t necessarily say that for the big-ticket item to start with — so ideally you are doing some testing and things before you get to that item — but adoption is a huge challenge when it comes to AI. And I can speak to that, certainly, from a Canadian perspective, because Canada are leaders in AI research, and yet we are much slower to adopt the technology. And that’s not just an AI problem; we see that in a lot of technologies that Canada has developed, that they’re slow to adopt. But we know that AI is fundamentally changing, or going to fundamentally change, the way that businesses operate.
I think we’re in an interesting moment in time where companies are looking and saying, well, I’m not sure I’m getting the value of the spend, I’m not sure that we’re actually measuring the productivity savings, I’m doing pilots, but I don’t necessarily have enterprise-wide impact. And so if you, as a female leader, can really cut through the noise, continue to experiment, and really try to reinvent — I heard a futurist speak the other day, and they said, you know, use a comic strip to reinvent what the world could look like. So how do you fundamentally reinvent what the world could look like, and then start experimenting to be able to get there?
But I think the key thing is, nobody should say — no one is an expert. We don’t have a lot of experts; we’re all learning through this journey together. So make sure that you stay on the learning journey, and don’t just stay on the side waiting for it to all play itself out, because then you will be too far behind.
Mitch Ratcliffe 30:59
Do you feel like AI is a key to unlocking the major challenges that we face, or is the jury still out?
Kendra MacDonald 31:07
I think, in my experience — you talked about the internet — in my experience with technology, it is less about the technology, and it’s more about being able to articulate the challenges. I think what AI allows is a very powerful technology that can tackle these challenges, maybe in a way that other technologies previously couldn’t. I went through the blockchain and cryptocurrency, when that was happening; the internet, when it came in — it was going to fundamentally change businesses. I think the hard part is actually defining the problem. And so I think if you can better define the problem — I don’t think it’s just about the technology, I actually think it’s about the business models. It is about the overall systems and processes that surround it.
If we focus only on the technology — and I think that’s the moment that we’re in, as companies are trying to find their AI strategy — well, it’s not. It’s a business strategy that’s enabled by AI. You might not need an agentic AI; you might just need a much more powerful database and analytics tool that doesn’t take you right out on the edge of the technology, but would be much more efficient in solving your problem. And so that’s the trick: stepping back and saying, what is the problem we’re trying to solve? Globally, what are the problems that we’re trying to solve? And then how do we bring these much more powerful tools to be able to solve that problem in a different way?
Mitch Ratcliffe 32:24
What does Canada’s ocean economy look like in 2035 if things go the way that you would like them to go? And what’s different? What does it mean for the rest of the world, not just for Canada?
Kendra MacDonald 32:37
That’s a great question. So we’ve actually set ourselves an ambition, 2035, which is five times growth. Canada has the longest coastline in the world, and we have the fourth-largest ocean territory, but we don’t even contribute world-average percentage to our GDP. So we are definitely under scale, and so we’re working very, very hard to be able to grow our ocean economy. And so I think, if we do that — although if we grow by five times, it’s still a relatively small percentage of the $3 trillion US dollar economy that’s expected by 2030, and in fact even bigger; they’ve got now projections out to 2050.
And so I think, in that situation, Canada is — certainly in terms of the Arctic conversation, half of our coastline is in the Arctic, and the Arctic will continue … I mean, imagine what the Arctic looks like in 2035. So industry is different, community is different, and I think we can be a big part of the leadership in that conversation, but also with the capabilities that we have around ocean technology, and making sure that we are relevant to industries all around the world. So it means a lot more domestic activity in Canada. It means using our own waters to be able to have aquaculture — aquaculture is a very small percentage of our overall coastline — so stronger domestic, but also stronger leadership in terms of exporting those capabilities to the rest of the world, and being a key player in the Arctic conversation.
Mitch Ratcliffe 34:02
What keeps you up at night when you’re thinking about Ambition 2035? What are the things that need to go right that are absolutely critical to the success — not just of that plan, but of our transition to a more sustainable economy overall?
Kendra MacDonald 34:16
Yeah, so our ability to scale solutions is maybe the number one thing that keeps me up at night, in terms of how do we ensure that we are not just bringing solutions to a certain size and then they’re going somewhere else to scale, or they’re not scaling at all. So we have — I talked about this challenge — how do we get enough blue financing to be able to scale the solutions that we need, whether that’s food, whether that’s energy, etc., across the sectors? I think it’s quite lumpy in terms of which ocean sectors get funding and which ones do not. And so, you know, there’s lots of great ideas out there, but can we scale the ones that we need for the planet that we want, fast enough?
Mitch Ratcliffe 35:04
How do we scale while also recognizing that local ecosystems are unique? In other words, how do we avoid turning the ocean into the monoculture environment that land-based agriculture is?
Kendra MacDonald 35:17
Yeah, so that’s a great question. I think community. So I had the opportunity to spend some time in South Africa, with Ocean Innovation Africa, and the number of things that they are doing in the ocean economy — and I spent some time in Northern Canada, and it was surprising, the parallels in the community conversation. And so, how do you make sure — the ocean touches so many communities, it is rural and urban, it is all along our coasts — how do you make sure that how you do that is inclusive of those communities, and the needs of those communities, and is right-sized for the needs of those communities?
So if you look at here, we have Fogo Island and the Fogo Island Inn and the Shorefast Foundation, and one of the things that they’re focused on, in working with communities, is there’s not a same-size-fits-all in terms of meeting community needs, economic development, inclusion, and capacity building — but that we need to be thinking that through as we build out these solutions. I think communities is a key part of this, but I think ocean is a key part of the solutions for sustainable, prosperous communities.
Mitch Ratcliffe 36:29
The Ocean Supercluster does a lot of work. It’s really interesting. How can people follow along as you continue to move this rock up the hill?
Kendra MacDonald 36:36
Absolutely. So you can certainly find us easily on oceansupercluster.ca, and we have a newsletter that you can sign up for to get more information. I also personally write on some of the opportunities — certainly investment opportunities — in the ocean economy. I have Saltwater Signals, which is my Substack that I write, and so between those two, you should be able to find lots of information. If, for whatever reason, you can’t, I’m also very easy to find on LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out to me and get more information.
Mitch Ratcliffe 37:08
Kendra, thanks so much. It’s been a fascinating conversation. Really appreciate the time today.
Kendra MacDonald 37:12
Thank you.
Mitch Ratcliffe 37:19
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Kendra MacDonald, CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, a national, industry-led effort to grow the blue economy by getting startups, century-old fishing and shipping firms, Indigenous partners, researchers, and global corporations to co-invest in projects. You can learn more about the Supercluster’s roughly 1,000 members and 150-plus projects at oceansupercluster.ca — Ocean Supercluster is all one word, no space, no dash. And Kendra writes about ocean economy investments on her Substack, which is called Saltwater Signals.
The ocean covers more than 70% of the planet, produces about half the oxygen we breathe, and absorbs something like 90% of the excess heat and a third of the carbon that we put into the atmosphere. We’ve spent most of human history treating the ocean as a place to extract from rather than to invest in or to preserve, and frankly, it was a pretty big thing, and we were overawed by it. But now we have a better understanding of how the systems work. Kendra’s model is a wager that the way to change that is structural, not inspirational. You can go faster alone, she says, but farther together. And the interesting part is what “together” actually requires, and that’s where I want to spend these few minutes.
First, she said, the devil’s in the details. Collaboration in the blue economy doesn’t succeed because everyone loves the ocean; it succeeds because partners do the unglamorous upfront work of establishing who owns background IP, who owns foreground IP, who funds what, and what happens when a project runs over budget — as well as what happens when one company hits its milestones and the other doesn’t. These are the kinds of rules of the game that make it feasible to play for small and large companies, communities, and investors. Kendra said her Ocean Supercluster evaluators have gotten good enough, 150 projects in, that they can sit through a pitch and tell whether three companies actually planned together or just showed up in the same room and tried to make a sale. The ones who did the hard prenuptial work aren’t only more likely to succeed, they are more likely to capture a larger share of the benefit.
That’s a lesson that travels well beyond saltwater. It’s the same discipline that Kevin Shaffer of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District described when we talked in January about how wastewater utilities build successful cross-sector partnerships. The value is real, but only if the governance is there first.
Then there’s the limits of any early-stage accelerator. The capital can only go so far, and Kendra gets points for raising that issue before I did. The Supercluster is funded by the Government of Canada to de-risk small Canadian companies, and it works. In her words, the program shines a light on those companies, and they get acquired internationally, scaling on capital from foreign investors. That’s the value-capture problem at the heart of every public innovation program: the country that pays to nurture a technology isn’t guaranteed to be the country that profits when it scales.
It connects to the bigger gap that she flagged: blue finance. Sustainable Development Goal 14 — that’s life below water — is the least funded of all the SDGs, and the funds dedicated to the ocean economy that are emerging in Europe haven’t really emerged in Canada yet. You can build the best pipeline of companies in the world and still watch the returns sail off into another harbor, or have no financing show up in the first place, so that things don’t get off the ground. That tension between strong science and thin capital is the thing that she says keeps her up at night, and it should keep policymakers up at night as well.
Finally, the reframe I want all of us to think about is that health and productivity are not a trade-off. In fact, they cannot be if we’re going to survive as a species. The fear baked into the phrase “blue economy” is that it’s a license to industrialize the ocean, and Kendra’s answer is that a healthier ocean is a more productive ocean, and she frames protection and prosperity as interlinked rather than opposed. And I don’t think that’s rhetoric.
Mitch Ratcliffe 41:17
Aquaculture quietly passed a milestone in 2022: for the first time, farmed aquatic animals outproduced wild-caught fish — that is, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization — and the sector is now the fastest-growing source of animal protein on the planet. Whether that growth recreates the worst of factory farming or leaves the water better than it found it depends entirely on whether we accept her premise that the two goals pull in the same direction. And that’s also the circular economy logic that Elizabeth Blankenship Singh of Overlay Capital described during another interview earlier this year. She said the system only works long-term when doing the right thing and making money are united in a clear mission.
There’s a sharp edge under all of this, and it’s why the timing of this conversation matters. The week that we recorded, the Trump administration in Washington signed a proclamation reopening nearly half a million square miles of Pacific Ocean to commercial fishing, and that was the third such rollback in 16 months. So you have one model that treats the ocean as a commons to protect and co-invest in, and another that treats marine protection as an obstacle that must be cleared out of the way. Kendra thinks this opens a door for Canada — with its longest coastline in the world and a credible clean-tech reputation — to lead a different conversation than the one that’s starting in Washington. And perhaps so, but leadership in the blue economy will be measured the same way Milwaukee’s Kevin Shaffer measures a utility’s value to the community: not by what you announced, but by what’s still standing two or three decades from now. Canada has set itself a 2035 goal to grow its blue economy fivefold, and we’ll be watching to find out whether the capital shows up to match that amazing coastline.
Hey folks, if this conversation gave you something to think about, please share it with one person who would find it useful, because you folks are the amplifiers that spread more ideas to create less waste, and word of mouth is how this show reaches its next listener. You’ll find more than 500 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear waiting for you in our archives on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness you prefer. Please subscribe and leave a review, and pass an episode along. Thanks for your support. I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day
The post Sustainability In Your Ear: Kendra MacDonald Steers to the Blue Economy at Canada’s Ocean Supercluster appeared first on Earth911.
https://earth911.com/podcast/sustainability-in-your-ear-kendra-macdonald-steers-to-the-blue-economy-at-canadas-ocean-supercluster/
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy8 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测