With all due respects, I’m not sure that I can agree with this. If there is any such thing as human nature, it must surely include a need to both cooperate and compete with others - and fashion is surely one way of doing both. So the only way we can eliminate fashion from our thoughts and behaviours is to cease to be human. And, quite frankly, I think any notion of doing this is one of those things that is most definitely unsustainable.
Now, I am aware that some people choose to opt out of particular fashions (they wear ear-rings when they are unfashionable, or vice versa), but that looks to everybody else as merely plumbing for a different fashion. Likewise, others say that they opt out of being human (Google it, if in doubt), but then they choose this or that fashion to demonstrate their sincerity. Either which way, fashion rules, with the only real debate being ‘which fashion?’.
At this point, the question arises: ‘how or why do people choose which fashion to be slave to?’. Conventional wisdom in the academic disciplines that look at such questions says that fashion choice is, one way or another, to elicit cooperation from others. Choice, by name and nature, is more in the business of ‘pushing out’ services (in the form of information), rather than ‘pulling in’ cooperation… so its ability to either create or imitate fashionable looks or ideas is distinctly limited, probably to the point of zero. (Exception: perhaps readers of this forum might be able to influence each other’s fashion enthusiasms; I doubt, however, this will stretch much further than selection of gorgeous pictures to put next to one’s names.)
All of which leads to the central question: if not fashion, where, if anywhere, does sustainability fit into discussion of Choice’s mission? And here I really have difficulties. If Choice’s mission is to deliver its research findings without fear, favour (or fashion) on consumer goods and services, then, given the enormous range of those products, and the even bigger range of needs that they are designed to meet, Choice must of necessity limit the scope of each of its research projects if it is to cover a vaguely comprehensive range of these products. In so doing, it will have to ignore certain classes of information from its scrutiny, with ‘sustainability’ in almost any sense of the word, being a prime candidate for being ignored. The reason for this is, as has been pointed out, the term implies considerations that are geographically, economically and temporarily global, and hence utterly untestable within Choice’s resources.
Unless ‘sustainability’ is given a ridiculously narrow definition, such as “I can buy the same T-shirt in a given store two days in a row”, the best Choice is probably going to able to do is to provide links to other organisations with missions appropriate to testing the sustainability of particular narrow classes of goods.