How the Fast Fashion Industry Reduces Waste
- Fast fashion makes shopping for clothes more affordable, but information technology comes at an environmental cost.
- The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity'southward carbon emissions and is the second-largest consumer of the world's water supply.
Some parts of modern life are, at this bespeak, widely known to crusade environmental harm – flying overseas, using dispensable plastic items, and even driving to and from work, for example. Merely when it comes to our wearing apparel, the impacts are less obvious.
As consumers worldwide purchase more clothes, the growing market for cheap items and new styles is taking a toll on the environment. On average, people bought 60% more garments in 2014 than they did in 2000. Mode production makes upwardly 10% of humanity's carbon emissions, dries up water sources, and pollutes rivers and streams.
What'south more, 85% of all textiles go to the dump each yr. And washing some types of clothes sends thousands of bits of plastic into the sea.
Here are the most significant impacts fast fashion has on the planet.
Clothing production has roughly doubled since 2000.
While people bought 60% more garments in 2014 than in 2000, they only kept the apparel for half as long.
In Europe, manner companies went from an average offer of ii collections per year in 2000 to v in 2011.
Some brands offer even more. Zara puts out 24 collections per year, while H&M offers between 12 and 16.
A lot of this clothing ends up in the dump. The equivalent of one garbage truck total of dress is burned or dumped in a landfill every 2nd.
Landfill sights all across the world are filled with clothes.
Epitome: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
In total, upward to 85% of textiles get into landfills each year. That's enough to fill the Sydney harbor annually.
The Sydney Harbour could be filled twice annually with the textiles sent to landfill waste product.
Image: REUTERS/David Gray
Washing clothes, meanwhile, releases 500,000 tons of microfibers into the body of water each year — the equivalent of fifty billion plastic bottles.
Many of those fibers are polyester, a plastic found in an estimated 60% of garments. Producing polyester releases two to three times more carbon emissions than cotton, and polyester does not suspension down in the ocean.
A 2017 written report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that 35% of all microplastics — very small pieces of plastic that never biodegrade — in the bounding main came from the laundering of synthetic textiles similar polyester.
35% of all microplastics come from the laundering of synthetic textiles like polyester.
Image: Cheryl Ravelo/Reuters
Overall, microplastics are estimated to compose upwards to 31% of plastic pollution in the ocean.
Microplastic pollution accounts for nearly a third of all ocean plastics.
Paradigm: Reuters
The style industry is responsible for 10% of humanity's carbon emissions.
The fashion manufacture is responsible for one/x of carbon emissions.
Paradigm: Stringer / Reuters
That'south more emissions than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
If the style sector continues on its electric current trajectory, that share of the carbon upkeep could jump to 26% by 2050, according to a 2017 study from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
The mode industry is also the 2d-largest consumer of water worldwide.
The fashion industry uses vast quantities of water.
Prototype: REUTERS/P. Ravikumar/File Photo
It takes about 700 gallons of water to produce one cotton shirt. That's enough water for one person to drinkable at least viii cups per twenty-four hours for iii-and-a-half years.
It takes near 2,000 gallons of water to produce a pair of jeans. That'south more than enough for 1 person to drink eight cups per solar day for 10 years.
That's because both the jeans and the shirt are made from a highly water-intensive plant: cotton wool.
Cotton fiber is highly h2o intensive.
Image: REUTERS/Luc Gnago
In Uzbekistan, for instance, cotton fiber farming used up so much water from the Aral Sea that information technology dried up after about l years. Once one of the world's iv largest lakes, the Aral Sea is at present petty more desert and a few small-scale ponds.
Cotton farming used up so much water from the Aral Sea that information technology stale upwards afterwards about fifty years
Epitome: NASA
Way causes water-pollution bug, too. 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.
Dying textiles causes lots of water pollution.
Paradigm: REUTERS/Jayanta Dey
The dyeing process uses enough water to fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools each year.
The dying process.
Paradigm: REUTERS/Rafiquar Rahman
All in all, the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of all industrial water pollution worldwide.
A 5th of water pollution comes from the style manufacture.
Image: REUTERS/Andrew Biraj (Bangladesh Environment Gild)
Some apparel companies are starting to cadet these trends by joining initiatives to cutting back on cloth pollution and abound cotton more sustainably. In March, the United nations launched the Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, which will coordinate efforts beyond agencies to make the manufacture less harmful.
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