Sustainable fashion- fast fashion be gone!
If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you ‘ll know that we are passionate about slow fashion.
Clothing retailers make cheap and fashionable clothing to satisfy the needs of young consumers. Yet, fast fashion has a significant environmental impact. According to the UN Environment Programme, the fashion industry is one of the world’s greatest polluters- not something to be proud of you can imagine. The aim of the fast fashion industry is to get consumers to buy endless clothes.
However, no one really provides the information on the extent of the damage fast fashion does to our planet. Advertising the effects of their practices are bound to have an adverse effect on their bottom line- so it’s kept like a dirty secret. The fashion industry is the second-biggest consumer of water and is responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Let’s just look at some facts to start off with:
Fact #1: Our landfills are full of textile waste
According to the European Fashion Waste Index commissioned by Labfresh in 2020, the UK is the fourth largest textile waste producer in Europe. We produce 206.456 tonnes of textile waste in a year. Out of the 3.1kg of textile waste each Briton produces every year, only 0.3kg are recycled and 0.4 kg are reused. However, 0.8kg are incinerated yearly per person and 1.7kg are disposed of in landfills.
While food waste can take a few hours or days to decompose, clothing can sit in landfills for years. Synthetic fabrics like polyester, lycra, and nylon can take 30 to 40 years to break down fully. A 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that 35% of all microplastics – tiny pieces of non-biodegradable plastic – in the ocean come from the laundering of synthetic textiles like polyester- not cool.
And whilst we’re on the subject of plastic, it would be remiss not to mention that the production of making plastic fibres into textiles is an energy-intensive process requiring large amounts of petroleum and releases volatile particulate matter and acids like hydrogen chloride. Most cotton, which is in a large amount of fast fashion products, is not environmentally friendly to manufacture. Pesticides deemed necessary for the growth of cotton presents health risks to farmers.
To counter this waste caused by fast fashion, more sustainable fabrics that can be used in clothing include wild silk, organic cotton, linen, hemp and lyocell.
Fact #2: It can take more than 3000 litres of water to make a single t-shirt
It takes a lot of water to grow, manufacture, transport, and wash cotton, which is one of the most popular fabrics used in today’s clothing. It’s estimated that producing one t shirt and one pair of jeans uses approximately 20,000 litres of water.
The Guardian reported in March 2015 that the water consumed to grow India’s cotton exports in 2013 would be enough to supply 85% of the country’s 1.24 billion people with 100 litres of water every day for a year. Meanwhile, more than 100 million people in India do not have access to safe water.
Business Insider also cautions that textile dyeing is the world’s second-largest polluter of water, since the water leftover from the dyeing process is often dumped into ditches, streams or rivers.
Manufacturing everyday materials like paper, plastic, metal and fabric takes water – a lot of it. Knowing how much water it takes to make the raw materials and products we all use and consume is an important first step towards water conservation and using water more productively. Extending the lifecycle of clothing, especially cotton clothing, can reduce your total water footprint and help protect the environment.
Fact #3: The average lifetime of a clothing item is about three years
Fast fashion is a term used to describe new styles of clothing that are manufactured quickly and sold at very low prices in response to trends and demand. While fast fashion makes clothing affordable for consumers, it comes at a big cost to the environment. Trendy and inexpensively made clothing has a short lifespan in people’s wardrobes, often leading to more clothes ending up in landfills.
Fact #4: Clothing and textiles are mostly 100% recyclable
Clothing and other textiles can be recycled. They can be used for a variety of other purposes, from carpet to home insulation to “new” fabric made from the clothing’s fibres. It doesn’t even matter if it is damaged with has rips or tears — almost all fabrics can be transformed into something else.
Fact #5: It’s becoming easier to shop more sustainably
The harmful cycle of clothing waste can be broken. We can all work to reduce textile waste and lower the impact the fashion industry has on our planet by shopping sustainably and recycling clothing responsibly.
One of the best ways to buy more sustainably is by choosing to shop at second-hand stores, or thrift stores, over traditional retailers.
If you have clothes you don’t want or need anymore, give them a new life and donate to charity. Your donations cane be sold for affordable prices, and anything that cannot be resold is recycled responsibly.
Our list of sustainable fashion stores:
UK Based
Cossac
Elvis and Kresse
Switzerland
France
Veja
Hoopaal
