GLP-1 drugs are changing American bodies. Fashion researchers are already asking what happens to clothing when millions of people become smaller. But I think there is a much bigger environmental question hiding here. What happens if the physical infrastructure surrounding those bodies gets smaller too?
Smaller clothes require less fabric. People with suppressed appetites may consume less food and be satisfied with smaller portions. Airlines carrying lighter passengers need marginally less fuel, and packaging could get smaller. Cars, chairs, hospital equipment and public transportation have all been engineered around the bodies using them. Could weight loss drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro inadvertently change the material footprint of American life?
Katie Baker Jones, associate professor of Fashion Design and Merchandising at West Virginia University, has been studying how GLP-1 drugs are affecting fashion and body culture.
“There’s been a marked decrease of what the industry calls ‘curve models,’ which could be anything above a size four and talk has circulated about buyers not having to buy as many large and extra-large sizes in size runs because we’re presuming everyone’s going to be on these drugs,” Jones says.
Related: Human cadaver fat plumps up Ozempic face
There is something uncomfortable about that. Fashion spent the last decade talking about body positivity, only for medicine to suddenly offer millions of people a way to dramatically alter those bodies. And both women and men are going for it. Jones calls her research “My Body Has Gone Out of Style.”
“It’s not just the shape of a sleeve or where a hemline falls, it’s that bodies themselves are now subject to fashion,” she says.
But from an environmental perspective, another question emerges. If average clothing sizes decline, does fashion’s physical footprint decline too? Will there be less material making those clothes or will the once body positive folks shift their choices and buy even more clothing now that they are embracing the new skinny version of themselves?
Consider that a smaller shirt contains less textile than a larger version of the same design. Multiply that difference across millions of garments and we’re talking about cotton, polyester, dyes, water, manufacturing energy and shipping.
Related: Europe demands all fashion be made sustainable and circular by 2030
The opposite could initially happen. People who lose significant amounts of weight may want to replace entire wardrobes quickly. The greener solution would be a genuinely circular fashion economy capable of getting those discarded clothes onto other bodies instead of into landfill.
Then there are airplanes. I find this aspect interesting. Aviation engineers obsess over weight and limit carry-ons to 20 pounds, weighing checked baggage to the pound, charging a fist-full of money if you go over. Airlines have spent decades shaving pounds from seats, carts, magazines and aircraft components because moving less mass requires less energy.
Passengers are a part of that payload, especially if you are a bigger body. My husband, for instance, is a full checked suitcase and a carry-on piece heavier than me. He’s worth two checked in pieces (100 pounds) heavier than my daughter yet they pay the same ticket price as adults.
If millions of passengers become lighter, airplanes collectively carry less weight. That’s a fact. On an individual flight the difference may be tiny, but multiplied across thousands of daily flights, it becomes more interesting. I’d love to see some numbers on that in terms of carbon emissions.
Luggage could become marginally lighter too as clothing sizes decline, unless of course being smaller also means newfound vanity and a bigger wardrobe.
The much bigger environmental story may be food and how we consume it. GLP-1 drugs suppress appetite and can profoundly change people’s relationship with eating. If millions of people routinely consume fewer calories, what happens upstream?
Restaurants could offer smaller portions, and supermarkets could sell smaller packages. Households might throw away less uneaten food. Demand for some highly caloric processed snack foods could fall.
Food carries an enormous invisible environmental footprint. Behind an unfinished hamburger are crops, animal feed, farmland, water, fertilizer, refrigeration, processing, packaging, trucking and cooking.
Of course, the food industry will adapt. We are already entering an era of products marketed specifically toward people using GLP-1 medications. If consumers replace ordinary meals with expensive protein products, supplements and individually wrapped “GLP-1 friendly” snacks, some potential environmental gains could disappear beneath another mountain of packaging.
There are other efficiencies worth watching too if you have come here for the environmental benefit of weight loss drugs. Cars expend energy moving passengers, elevators move human mass vertically and hospital beds, wheelchairs, office chairs and public transportation are designed around assumptions about population size and weight.
Shipping could change too as smaller garments occupy less space.
None of this means weight-loss drugs are an environmental policy. They are medications with legitimate medical purposes, costs and risks, and potential environmental efficiencies should never become another argument for pressuring people to take them. There is also the rebound effect.
GLP-1s could produce their own rebound economy. People who spend less on food might spend the savings on travel. Lose 50 pounds and you may buy a completely new wardrobe to show off on an Italian holiday. Food companies losing revenue from giant portions will invent premium products to replace those revenues. We know that capitalism is exceptionally good at filling newly empty space.
Jones, who studies body trends, says GLP-1s differ from previous diet crazes because “it’s not just managing caloric intake in a paleo diet and a workout regimen; it’s a medical intervention.”
When a medical intervention reaches millions of people, it can become an economic intervention too. For more than a century, industrial economies became extraordinarily good at selling us more: more calories, bigger portions, bigger cars and closets overflowing with clothes.
Now a pharmaceutical technology is introducing a strange new possibility. What happens to an economy built around ever-increasing consumption when millions of its consumers suddenly want less? Or will they want more of something else? Could it be new relationships, more travel, more specialized clothing?
What industries can you imagine shrinking, or growing, from the Ozempic phenomenon?
