How rapidly changing fashion trends are harming the environment
- Beatrix Nitschke
- Nov 2, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 19, 2021
The dark side of fashion and how our obsession with it is damaging the earth.
Fashion is fun, powerful, and dynamic- a form of art. It allows us to switch up our appearance, express ourselves and feel more confident. Nevertheless, there is a flip side to all the glitz and glam which is the complete opposite- pitch black. Literally, the fashion industry is right after the oil industry one of the largest polluters. It contributes, among others, to the greenhouse gas emissions, increases waste and ruins water sources.
The increasing world population and the globalisation are reinforcing fast fashion and its toxic impacts even further. The demand in clothing items is increasing, fashion trends are changing at a rapid speed and because of the increased connectivity through globalisation, production chains of garments become more international as brands want to shift to the cheapest production facilities available. The current world development, therefore, increases the need for fabrics, the water use for the production of textiles rises and the transportation journey of clothing items gets longer. This has the consequence that the whole textile industry produces annually around 4-5 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions which equals to 10% of the global greenhouse gas emissions.
Also, when it comes to the use of water, the fashion industry has a record position. With 93 billion cubic meters of annual water usage the industry is the second largest user of water and responsible for 20% of the water waste. To give you an example and make these enormous numbers more tangible let’s take a normal cotton t-shirt. Only for the production of this simple shirt 2700 litres of water are needed. This is equivalent to the amount of water one person drinks on average in 2.5 years. In not strictly regulated countries, the used water within the production of textiles is then also sent back directly into the nearby rivers and seas, which contaminates the local groundwater and with that the water sources for the people living in these regions.
Equally, the microfibers in textiles are contributing to polluting the environment. Synthetic micro- and nanofibers for example make up 35% of primary microplastics that can be found in the marine environment. Such fibres could, for example, be nylon or polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is a form of polyester. Those are especially dangerous as they are non-degradable and mostly made out of non-renewable resources such as crude oil. Nylon, for example, takes around 30-40 years to decompose and Polyester even up to 200. In contrast, natural fibres, such as wool, cotton and silk are biodegradable and would in principle be less harmful even though they make up a larger number of microfibers in the environment. Nevertheless, the level of biodegradability of such materials is also dependent on how they have been treated before. Some natural fibres are often dyed and coated to make them more durable, which could decrease their biodegradability and influence their recyclability. The problem is that textiles, especially textiles of loose structures, naturally lose microfibres through using and washing them. For example, when washing 6kg of clothes 700,000 fibres could be released. This is especially problematic, as fibres are extremely tiny and hence difficult to be filtered out of the environmental system. On top of that, microfibres have a low density which makes them easily transportable. That’s how microfibres then further get carried away and enter into the atmosphere, the soil and also the water where they can finally be absorbed by sea animals and later by us.
Learn more about this topic in the following blog posts:
Sources:
Liu, J. et. al., “Microfibre pollution: an ongoing major environmental issue related to the sustainable development of textile and clothing industry.” Environ Dev Sustain 23, January 3, 2021. pp. 11241-11245. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-01173-3, accessed 29 October 2021
Niinimäki, K. et al., “The environmental price of fast fashion.” Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. Vol. 1. April 07, 2020. pp. 190-192. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-0039-9, accessed 29 October 2021
Hugh, "Environmental Impact of Fast Fashion (With Facts and Statistics)," GetGreenNow, March 04, 2020, https://get-green-now.com/environmental-impact-fast-fashion/, accessed 29 October 2021
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