This Faculty Spotlight is on Susanna Monseau, Professor, Marketing & Interdisciplinary Business. In addition to being a Professor at TCNJ, Susanna is an attorney (NY & England) and has published in several law & business journals and published two books. During the 2022-2023 academic year, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to work in Finland on “Sustainability and the Role of Law in the Fashion and Textile Industries“.
She is currently researching “Sustainability & Laws in the Fashion Industry”. We recently caught up with Susanna to learn more about this research topic.
Can you tell us a little about this topic?
“The fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to climate-changing greenhouse gasses. It also uses a lot of natural resources. Despite its major environmental impacts, it is one of the least regulated industries. At the moment I am interested in understanding how the European Union’s proposed Strategy for Sustainable Textiles is likely to change climate-changing the industry and whether it will be able to stem the fashion industry’s environmental pollution.”
What drew you to this topic?
“I am a lawyer by training and I have practiced law in the US, the UK, and Europe. I have done research on intellectual property laws and the future of business for a long time. In 2012, I started to look at the fashion industry because it is such a big and polluting industry. Its environmental impact has been growing steadily worse since 2000 due mainly to fast fashion. There have been various voluntary attempts by the industry to reduce its carbon footprint but none have been even minimally successful so regulation makes sense. First, I focused on how the protection of creativity through copyrights and trademarks is stronger in Europe than in the US. I thought maybe the strong European trademark and copyright laws protecting creative design would work to limit fast fashion because they should make it more difficult for fast fashion companies to copy original designs. Although the rules are different there is still a lot of fast fashion created and sold in Europe so it appears that although the law is different the actions of the global industry are not. Now, I am looking at how the EU (and some states like New York) are trying to limit fast fashion by laws requiring supply chain due diligence, eco-labels, and giving consumers information about green claims. In 2022, I received a Fulbright Award to collaborate with a group of academics in Finland who were trying to understand the obstacles to the fashion industry becoming more sustainable. My group worked on how new laws impact smaller companies in the industry.”
Have you encountered any challenges in conducting this research?
“Lots! Very few academics are looking at how laws affect smaller companies and we have the same problems those companies have, a lack of resources and information. We do not have the resources to go out and interview lots of companies and do this analysis. There is also generally less data and other information on smaller corporations. Our resources are small and stretched thin and the information is hard to find.”
What have you found the most interesting that has come out of this research so far?
“Corporate sustainability is very much affected by the law but often laws have unintended consequences. They tend to work better for big companies who lobby to create laws that suit their method of operations. Small companies (which are often more socially and environmentally sustainable than larger ones) have fewer resources to find out about the laws they have to comply with or to apply for the numerous private certifications or eco-labels that consumers increasingly use to seek out sustainable products so often they lose out on attracting customers even though they are sustainable in a way that larger companies often are not.”
Any other information you would like to share about your research?
“If you care about the environment avoid fast fashion. The most sustainable thing you can do with your clothing is to buy durable clothes and keep them. The amount of clothing that is bought, barely worn, and then thrown into landfills is astonishing.”