Like many editors working in luxury publishing, Shaway Yeh began to feel disillusioned with the direction the fashion industry was taking. For 12 years, Yeh was the editorial director of Modern Weekly, one of China’s most influential lifestyle magazines.

Her aha moment happened four years ago, when she took part in a panel discussion at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, a sustainability-focused conference in Denmark.

“I saw so many important people talking about sustainability and, like many others who start learning about it, I was quite shocked because there were so many things I didn’t know about fashion and the negative impact it has. So it was like a wake-up call,” says Taiwan-born Yeh when we meet her in Shanghai, where she has lived for almost two decades.

After the summit, Yeh decided to assign an editor a weekly column on fashion and sustainability, back when almost nobody – especially in China – was paying attention to the impact of fashion on the environment.

When Yeh left Modern Weekly two years ago, she realised that if she really wanted to make a difference, she had to learn more about a complex issue like sustainability.

Yeh, whose inquisitive nature and interest in social issues have always guided her career, went to Boston in the United States and enrolled in a course in corporate sustainability and innovation at Harvard Business School, where one of the first things she learned was how difficult it is to reduce one’s environmental footprint.

“I had a very funny teacher at Harvard, and we used to talk about the human footprint and how the only way to drastically reduce your footprint is [to not] exist and basically die,” she says, laughing. “I guess my main contribution to the environment is not producing offspring.”

Yeh, who as an editor was responsible for starting the conversation about sustainability and fashion in China, was impressed by the positive response that the weekly column received.

Still, she is also aware that in a fast-growing economy such as China, sustainability is a fraught topic.

“The US and other developed countries [have been] producing carbon emissions for so long, and now they’re asking countries like China to reduce them,” says Yeh. “China is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions but it’s because it’s rising and growing fast. The Chinese have started to enjoy buying many beautiful things. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years and, in the first 10 years, consumer culture here was very boring.”

Yeh says that the solution is to buy less and buy better, but always with a dose of common sense and pragmatism. “Instead of buying cheap, polluting clothes you buy pieces that are ethically made – but even then, if you want to buy everything that’s high quality and ethically made you won’t have much money left, believe me,” she admits.

It’s no secret that products such as fair-trade coffee or a jumper made with organic wool and in a state-of-the-art factory that treats workers responsibly costs more than one you can find at mass retailers.

Yeh, who commends the efforts that fast-fashion companies such as H&M are making to reduce their impact on the planet, doesn’t buy into the theory that they are “democratising fashion” by giving access to good design to low-income people.

“I don’t believe this. What companies like Zara and H&M do is to make high-end items more accessible and copy big brands. They’re not like the Oxfam Exchange, selling basic items for people who really have no money,” says Yeh. “Fast-fashion companies say they make clothes for people who can’t afford expensive things, but in the end they just make more for greed also, because most people who buy fast fashion are not poor people but people who are addicted to shopping. That’s not a strategy for poor people.”

Yeh doesn’t exonerate luxury labels, either, as they have adopted a similar model to that of fast-fashion brands by increasing the number of collections they release every year, giving rise to short-lived trends that only contribute to the wasteful nature of the industry.

However, simply pointing the finger without finding solutions is not Yeh’s modus operandi.

Her consultancy, YehYehYeh, has already worked with companies like Kering, the luxury group behind labels such as Gucci and Balenciaga, and Chinese brand Erdos, a cashmere supplier and clothing label that she has advised for the last two years.

As Western luxury groups such as LVMH and Kering seek to further reduce the impact they have on the environment, Yeh says that this new-found attention on the topic is a positive thing.

“Many big companies, not just luxury, have been doing sustainability-related things for a very long time but we probably didn’t know, as it was called CSR [corporate social responsibility] or environmental policy and it wasn’t public but more internal. Now it’s become a need because consumers, policymakers and NGOs are demanding this,” says Yeh.

“It’s very hard to judge who has been doing more or less. Kering has been one of the first to be vocal about this. Other brands can say that they’ve been doing as much but perhaps not communicated it, but Kering seems [to be] the leader right now and they have been doing a lot at the corporate level.”

YehYehYeh’s main focus, however, is to help Chinese companies change their practices.

“China is a very good place to work on sustainability,” says Yeh.

“When I started YehYehYeh it was at a time when many Chinese companies were changing from just companies and manufacturers into brands, so they all wanted to be transformed but they didn’t have any guidance.

“They were just hiring supermodels or Western photographers to create an image, so why not spend that money on doing something better and become a sustainable brand? So, instead of just working at a grass roots level, I work with big companies.”

While Yeh believes that changing consumers’ mindsets is paramount, she feels that working directly with fashion brands is the best way to effect meaningful change. “Once you change the minds of consumers and open their eyes to sustainability, what are they going to buy?” she says. “There are not many nice-looking products made sustainably, so why not start working with fashion companies that already make beautiful things and teach them how to make them sustainable?”

This strategy has so far proved successful – especially with clients such as Erdos, which controls its entire supply chain, from the raw material to the product, and therefore could more easily implement those changes.

Yeh, who at the most recent Shanghai Fashion Week hosted talks with global leaders such as Kering’s CEO François Pinault and designer Stella McCartney, is excited about the prospects for sustainability in China.

Whether she’s advising young designers on a WeChat group or studying the way technologies such as AI can help brands produce more efficiently and create less waste, Yeh believes that China is playing a leading role in the conversation about fashion and sustainability.

While Yeh doesn’t have hard data on this, she believes that, just like in the West, young Chinese consumers have become willing to adopt new models of consumption and, unlike the older generation, who may still have second thoughts about renting clothes or buying pre-owned items, they have fewer preconceptions and cultural baggage than their parents.

One thing Yeh won’t do is fall prey to the call-out culture typical of social media and shame those who supposedly don’t do enough.

“I rarely use the word ‘greenwashing’, because then you’re keeping people from doing the right thing and you’re just attacking them,” says Yeh. “This is a problem of social media, like everyone now apologising to China.

“In one way, it’s good that people are more alert and aware because companies have to face the criticism of consumers and have to be more transparent about what they do – but social media tends to simplify things so you only get a simple answer.”

Yeh recognises that she still doesn’t have all the right answers, and that her approach has evolved and become more sophisticated from her days as a journalist eager to learn about the issue. She believes ultimately that trying to come up with thoughtful, and realistic, solutions is the best way to approach such a delicate issue.

“What’s the alternative?” she asks. “You always need to propose an alternative.”