Challenges with the implementation of sustainable consumption. A Case Study of the Municipality of Malmö and clothing consumption

Abstract: In the city of Malmö urban sustainability has been a front figure in municipality development strategies. Despite this, large shopping malls are approved by the municipality and sustain patterns of consumerism. This lead into the question of how the municipality is working for sustainability within consumption, and particularly within one of the worlds most polluting industries, the clothing industry with the emerging phenomena of fast fashion. This question has been studied to further bring input to the research question: What challenges are identified in municipality work for achieving sustainable consumption of clothes? In the case study of Malmö qualitative interview and document data, resulted in mapping the municipality work for sustainable consumption of clothes. Further the work was categorized according to the theoretical approaches of the production angle and the consumption angle. These results showed that the strategies applied by the municipality from the production angle are few in number but have a high visibility to the public. The strategies within the consumption angle outnumbered the production angle but these strategies consisted of small-scale trials and temporary efforts. The study concludes that the main challenge met by municipalities is the short-term advantage of the production angle, caused by the factors identified as economic and social reasons, influenced by power. The second major challenge is to reduce consumption levels, which is a key to achieving sustainable consumption of clothes. These two challenges further contribute to the perseverance of environmental challenges, which arise in the production-consumption system sustained by the production angle but with a green label.