Last season, there was a lot of talk during Fashion Month about offsetting carbon emissions. This season, we have a sense of how much CO2 is emitted annually by fashion people and clothing collections moving around the planet: about 241,000 tons, or enough to power Times Square for 58 years.
That’s according to a new report, Zero to Market, that was highlighted in the New York Times today. The report was released by the fashion technology company Ordre.com and a climate-change consultancy called the Carbon Trust. Together, they looked at a year’s worth of data from the thousands of retailers and brands that send people to major Fashion Weeks and trade shows. New York Fashion Week, I’m sorry to say, was responsible for a full 37 percent of the emissions.