Environmentalism is confusing. Some of it checks out—don’t let the faucet run when you brush your teeth, turn off the lights when you’re not in a room, etcetera—but making sense of your place as an individual while the world around you is seemingly deteriorating beyond your sphere isn’t as straightforward.

So for a school like the University of Southern California to set up a preeminent, campus-wide sustainability program marks a step in the right direction. Since her arrival in 2019, USC President Carol Folt has prioritized sustainability with multiple initiatives and community-ran organizations looking to minimize the school’s impact on the environment. Most recently, the school unveiled its new Sustainability Hub, a space for “the USC community to collaborate around sustainability solutions” in September 2023.

“We’re turning our concern into action, starting right here at home,” Folt said at her State of the University Address in 2022. “For this reason, we truly need to embed a sustainability mindset into everything that we do at USC. No effort is too ambitious or too small.”

At the core of these directives are some of the more ambitious collegiate goals towards climate neutrality. Through a plethora of interdisciplinary research opportunities, greater undergraduate education options, and objectives to reach net zero emissions, by 2028, the school is on pace to accomplish new heights in sustainability operations.

Absent from these objectives, however, is anything addressing or even acknowledging the USC Bookstores as a contributor. While most goals are tied to specific USC departments—such the elimination of single-use plastics at on campus food vendors, or waste diversion programs at the LA Coliseum or USC Village—there is virtually no recognition of the products at the campus’ retail center.

Specifically, the void of information about the apparel offered is potentially dubious. The fashion industry, as a whole, is inextricably linked to exploitation of both its workforce and the environment.

The Fashion Industry: At a Glance

“The desire to get people to buy repeatedly is still deeply unsustainable,” said Jessica Hatrick, a graduate student and member of USC’s Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation. “Obviously, this is a kind of broader issue within sustainability fashion conversations. People are making more sustainable clothes, but they're still expecting people to consume a lot of them. And they're not getting at the matter; the actual sustainable thing to do is to not consume.”

For the most part, USC as an entity is not directly producing its own clothes. Various apparel suppliers across the nation and world forge corporate partnerships with the school, through which officially licensed gear is then sold. USC Auxiliary Services—the branch of the university responsible for product procurement, amongst other duties—has addressed some aspects of the fashion industry’s struggles. In 2013, they joined the Workers Rights Consortium to affirm USC’s manufacturers are not engaged in sweatshop labor.

Furthermore, all of the school’s licensees must follow the USC Workplace Code of Conduct, which requires the adoption of “ responsible measures to mitigate negative impacts…on the environment.” These facilities undergo “regular third-party social compliance” as of 2012, and, as of 2013, their information is publicly available.

But unlike peer schools such as UCLA, UCI, Cal, and Stanford, USC has yet to lend their support to the Fair Labor Association University Caucus, a nonprofit organization that affirms a school’s branded merchandise is produced under fair labor standards.

It must be considered that just because the USC Bookstore doesn’t publish information regarding their commitments to sustainability that they engage in deceptive or nefarious practices. It's possible that, in the infancy of the school’s drives to decarbonize the campus, the premier (and only licensed) source of Trojan-themed merchandise slipped through the cracks. Case in point—not only are a number of the school’s licensees listed as members of the aforementioned Fair Labor Association, but the school’s facilities are already monitored by the FLA as of 2004.

One potential source of this discrepancy between USC and its own bookstore website might lie in the convoluted nature of a globalized apparel industry. Darcea West, the director of quality assurance at PVH, explains that while many organizations have been engaged in efforts to move towards responsible clothing production for some time, there are a number of impediments associated with radically changing the existing production infrastructure.

“In order to be sustainable, you would either list that you have some organic fibers in it or it's made of some sort of recycled product, right? It's involved in some sort of circularity process. But the reality that we find is that it's very expensive to do this,” West said. “There's a lot of processes that go into place to break these products back down and turn them back into fibers and then reenter them back into the process of making them back into yarns and, and woven are needed into fabric.”

Another factor West brought up was that consumers have different levels of tolerance for what the acceptable quality of a given item might be. While some recycled fabrics like polyester are mostly on par with their virgin cohorts, fabric recycling technology is still in its infancy.

“You might have a white T-shirt that will have some specs in it here or there. And that's just the recyclable byproduct. It becomes a question of ‘does the customer understand that?’” West said. “So that may also be why it's hard for certain companies to buy into the sustainable product offering.”

Finally, one of the keys to achieving a supportable supply chain is in a company’s ability to trace a product from raw materials to final result. This can also be a costly endeavor.

“You've got to have the backup to show anybody, any legal entity that asks about it, that this is where I got it from. I got to know that the fiber that I bought really came from all recycled water bottles or this and that,” West said. “And it makes it difficult for the companies that sell it because they need certifications for that kind of thing. So that might be the other part which makes it more expensive.”

In a statement, the University of Southern California emphasized how the selection process for the school’s auxiliary services value “sustainability efforts among other criteria,” citing the “various sustainability initiatives” that their vendors are engaged in. However, as of December 2023, the USC Bookstore website—the foremost, outward-facing portal for their merchandise—still lists little information on the ways their products might be looking to minimize environmental damage.

Moving Forward

What could a USC Bookstore with a vested interest in progressive apparel production look like? The following is a list that isn’t a comprehensive framework, but can suggest some ways that the school might look to improve their shopping experience—ranging from fixes that could be implemented today to more long-term goals.

1. Transparency

Amanda McCarty, host of “Clotheshorse,” a podcast that “loves clothes but hates capitalism,” feels that greater transparency is nearly a rite of passage for modern fashion production.

“Doing things the right way, the ethical way, is actually a selling point for many consumers. In 2023, there is no reason to omit that kind of information, unless there is no information to provide,” said McCarty.

And yet USC clearly does have some positive information to report on; as shown above, most of their producers are in some ways considering the effects of their clothing production. So at the bare minimum, the staunch silence on USC’s behalf is something that ought to be amended—and perhaps reasonably could in the near future.

“It was never even thought about before. But now it's a mandatory priority in our country, and in other countries,” West said. “I imagine going forward, it's got to get a lot easier. But right now, everybody's being forced to be accountable and trying to come up with ways to keep up with it all.

2. Reusing & Refurbishing

With a legacy of dominant athletics programs and its location in the second largest metropolis in the nation, it seems unlikely the USC media enterprise will slow down its apparel production. Cardinal and gold merchandise is ubiquitous in South Central Los Angeles and beyond—to the point that generations of Trojans have inherited vintage merch. With plenty of apparel already in circulation, is it possible the school’s bookstore uses its resources to support this existing clothing ecosystem?

“They could really easily do some kind of program where when you graduate, you can donate your USC stuff here and they could have it seriously dry cleaned, and then re-sold at discounted prices,” Hatrick said. “Because they know that once people graduate, their USC shirts become pajamas or workout gear.”

Additionally, some of the more environmentally-conscious companies in the 21st century have begun to offer repair programs to customers. While the plethora of independent suppliers might make refurbishing services logistically confusing, perhaps it would be possible to divert unused apparel in other ways—like second-hand facilities.

3. Third-party solutions

Fashion production and waste are intrinsically linked, but there are ways of minimizing one’s carbon footprint. For decades, third-party arbitrating groups have been able to certify the sustainable production of garments. For example, The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) assesses if textiles are made of truly organic materials, the Fairtrade certification ensures workers experience fair labor conditions, and so on.

One group that can make such claims, however, is Etiko, a hyper-responsibly focused organization based in Australia. Aside from being both Fairtrade and GOTS certified, Etiko is also a B Corp certified org, one of the most rigorous standards of social and environmental performance for a for-profit business.

“If a university like the University of Southern California doesn't get this shit together, what chances are of other universities doing it?” said founder and director of Etiko, Nick Savaidis.

These accolades are rare in the industry because of the lofty standards required to achieve them. (Some groups form their own, company-specific pledges instead of going through third-party means.) However, manufacturers with these intense standards do exist—a plethora of universities across the nation are Fair Trade-declared for ensuring the rights of the workers who create their clothes.

By merely selling clothes, The University of Southern California happens to intersect with the systemic and well-documented problems of the fashion industry. But the school is only one one actor out of millions of others who participate in clothing production; in other words, there’s only so much they can do. What is most immediately controllable is an entity’s willingness to accept environmental responsibility and provide as much transparency as possible to inform their customers.

The scope and candor of USC’s current strides towards sustainability are encouraging signs for the future of the USC Bookstores. Now is the time for the school’s administration to assess how their already progressive environmental policy can be reinforced through the clothes that represent the school.

“We have a community that is pushing for change, students who want to turn the tide for the future and faculty and staff who are pursuing cutting-edge research and operational changes to drive sustainability,” President Folt said in 2020. “This is our moment. We would be remiss if we didn’t see that opening and run through that door.”