I spent many broke years in my past writing and speaking about sustainable and ethical fashion, when this didn’t pay your salary and it certainly didn’t make you any friends. Even now, in a time when sustainability seems to be one of the most commonly used words throughout the fashion industry, it still isn’t as lucrative as many other occupations. Like me, most people do a variety of things to match our dreams with our pay. But I love what I do and genuinely believe that in the future there will be budgets and there will be more money. We’re going forward not backwards and sustainability is our future.

One of my friends recently expressed how disappointed they were that they had to turn down a client who would have increased their yearly salary by 25% (they don’t make that much annually to begin with) because the brand was participating in a fair amount of greenwashing and they couldn’t in good character take the work. It’s a story I know all too well, as I sit here wondering why I can’t just look the other way and take money from every business that comes my way. I can’t – because that’s not how any of this works.

I received a message as I write this from a company that wanted to give me an affiliate link to use. I said no. I don’t want to sell people products they may not need because the process simply isn’t sustainable. I have turned down more work than I care to remember because pushing daily consumption through social media is the opposite of sustainable, even though the money would have been nice.

Of course, it’s okay to have made mistakes in the past. I know plenty of people who have worked with brands in the past they now regret. Sometimes you think a brand is better than it truly is and then you find out unsavoury details and feel ashamed of your previous support. And this happens to all of us – before we truly realized fast fashion was a huge problem, I wouldn’t fault anyone for receiving sponsorship money from any brand because at the end of the day, getting paid is a part of survival.