Fast Fashion, Slow Waste. The Whole Truth behind Glamorous Looks
What goes around Instagram comes around landfill. All those glamorous looks that you may see on social media are as short-lived as the images and posts that showcase them. And while we are chasing the trends set by we-don’t-even-know-who, the textile industry is wreaking havoc on the planet. On the environmental side, it depletes natural resources and contaminates the environment. On the economic side, the industry produces over the top of pure necessity. There is also the hidden third side: garments are a big part of the general bulk of waste that we produce daily! Altogether, it all results in one big ugly truth that no one is telling you. And the truth is: glam looks and trash have more in common than one might think…
FAST FASHION
In Part 1 of the story, we already told you how the journey of waste starts with individual households and personal disposal habits. Now, let’s see how much of that waste has to do with fashion and clothing…
Modern fashion is becoming more and more short-lived. The latter makes the fashion industry less and less sustainable. Garments have become single-use items. Fashion’s eras have gradually shrunk from a decade to a year, then to a season, to a week, and ultimately a one-time event such as a photo shoot. Don’t be surprised if the new trendy sweater you've just bought stops being trendy before you can make your way back from the store to your apartment. And the color that was ”the new black” last spring will definitely become tacky by summer of the same year. All of the above puts people under the pressure of buying more - more than they need, and just more.
According to Fashion United, the global fashion industry produces 100 to 150 billion items of clothing per year. The number of garments produced annually has doubled since 2000 and exceeded 100 billion for the first time in 2014. Clothing consumption has grown explosively over the past 20 years. Fashion consumers buy over 80 billion new pieces of clothing every year. This is over 400% more than what people consumed just two decades ago. The average wardrobe of a person contains approximately 148 items. Yet, despite owning large quantities of fashion items, people do not wear at least 50 percent of their wardrobes.
In a nutshell, this is how the fashion and clothing industry work: they offer you something new as a replacement for the previous ‘new’ thing you’ve just bought, and way before it has a chance to be worn out, or be worn at least once before it gets... Wait, where does it go?
WORLD WIDE WASTE
As stated in Earth.org, of the 100 billion garments produced each year, 92 million tonnes end up in landfills. To put things in perspective, this means that the equivalent of a rubbish truck full of clothes ends up on landfill sites every second. If the trend continues, the number of fast fashion waste is expected to soar up to 134 million tonnes a year by the end of the decade. The number of times a garment is worn has declined by around 36% in 15 years. The so-called “throwaway culture” has worsened progressively over the years. At present, many items are worn only seven to ten times before being tossed.
And all this textile waste does not go away - it accumulates. How so? The thing is, your briefly fashionable garment will have a much longer life in the landfill than on your body or in your closet… Especially if it is made of plastic!
In essence, synthetic clothes are nothing but the types of plastic. Polyester, nylon, acrylic, PVC - all of these are on our clothes labels, and they are derived from petrochemicals (i.e. crude oil). Synthetic clothes are more durable and have amazing qualities, such as being chameleon (morphing colors), impermeable or waterproof, and have a potentially longer life span. However, hardly anyone is wearing quality synthetic clothes for years or decades before trashing them. The synthetic gaudy podium showcases of high fashion, that often involve synthetic materials, may not be worn at all. As a result, durability that is meant to serve during the wearing stage becomes durability in terms of the fabric’s decomposition capacity. In the natural environment, it takes from 20 years to 200 years for your synthetic clothes to degrade and decompose.
And all this textile waste is hurdling together with other waste, including other types of plastics that people use on a daily basis. All this junk releases toxic chemicals into the environment (especially when the dumpsites are on fire), enters food chains, causes harm to wildlife that gets entangled in it, and due to being non-biodegradable just gets fragmented into ever smaller pieces known as microplastics. All in all, you should see your clothes - in particular, the synthetic ones - not as a picture-worthy purchase but a responsibility that translates into your contribution to the much bigger problem of global waste production and management.
3 THINGS THAT ARE TERRIBLY WRONG WITH THE CURRENT FASHION CYCLE
Mountains of textile waste is the most visible part of the cycle on its ultimate stage. But let’s come back to the bird’s-eye view of the problem.
1. Mostly, clothes production is outsourced to developing economies with low wages and even lower standards of work and manufacturing. Many brand clothes are made in Bangladesh or India, but not many people care to think of how exactly they were made. Most often, it is done in sweatshops, by underpaid employees who are forced to work in unsafe conditions for long hours and get a minimum wage for it. The difference between cheap labor and expensive brandy items you buy is the profit the company collects.
2. Finished clothes enter the big markets in the developed countries, where people pay big money for brandy garments yet treat them like single-use, disposable items. There is not much more to say about this fact, except that it is a fact. When buying and throwing away, most people do not think of the waste of resources, both natural and financial. Buying is a cult, and trashing is a way to free a closet for the newest collection garment.
3. Fast-disposed clothes often come back again to their birth place, i.e. to developing countries, in the form of textile waste. In this chain, your single-use non-biodegradable New Year’s dress is nothing but another contribution to the piles of garbage accumulating either in your own country or, more probably, in a “less” developed one to which waste is exported and from where cheap labor and resources are outsourced. This brings us to the next level of the ugly truth: Only at this point of the cycle can the people who actually made these clothes ‘afford’ to finally wear them! Residents of the low-income communities in developing countries are often seen digging in the piles of imported trashed clothes trying to find something that can be still used…
This cycle does not seem fair - either towards humans or nature!
3 WAYS TO MAKE FASHION SUSTAINABLE AND REDUCE WASTE
1. Sustainability of materials matters. The most evident solution would be to refrain from harmful synthetics and gravitate towards something more sustainable, like bio-grown cotton. Unfortunately, there is a fly in the ointment even here. It takes 20,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton. Thus, even if it is free from pesticides and chemical fertilizers, cotton production can hardly be called truly “eco.” Yet still, among the alternatives available, organic cotton (linen, etc.) should still win over synthetics. In addition, fabric recycling - a process when old clothes are turned into fibers again and/or remade into new clothes or other things of daily use - also has its potential.
2. Manufacturing is yet another fruitful soil for waste. European Parliament News and Earth.org provide some insightful statistics. The fashion industry is responsible for one-fifth of global waste water. Dyeing and finishing of fabrics are responsible for 3% of global CO2 emissions as well as over 20% of global water pollution. Add to it yarn preparation and fiber production, and you will get a formula of extreme resource depletion that includes not only water use but also energy-intensive production processes based on fossil fuel energy. Manufacturing has to become more eco-friendly. The coloring stage is a good example. Natural dyes have been in use for millennia long before chemical ones, and it is time to bring them back. The very concept of a “natural dye” is evolving, and now wonders like bacteria-based dyes are available on the market, not to mention other experimental approaches.
3. Buying, using and disposing responsibly. Every one of us needs to be environmentally conscious and conscientious about something as seemingly simple and innocent as dressing up every day. When buying, we need to be ruled by reason, not fashion magazines or discounts. When choosing among the materials and producers, we should choose the more sustainable, natural, bio ones. The items that are not sold out should be donated instead of being trashed by retailers. The items used but still in good condition should also be donated, but this time by us, the individual consumers.
CONCLUSION
Nullker hopes that after reading this, you will give a second chance to your clothes - and to our relationship with the planet. Let’s not contribute to the global waste problem! Let’s remember that everything in the world is cyclic, even if the anthropogenic part of it is not. Humankind’s linear models that start with depletion of the natural resources, continue with the production of the items of use, and inevitably end in landfill still get integrated into the natural cycles. This way, waste - such as synthetics of all sorts - becomes a non-biodegradable part of the environment. Trash moves geographically with the wind and ocean currents, enters food chains, threatens wildlife, poisons the soils and groundwater.
The natural resources used in anthropogenic production all become trash. What we use every day becomes trash. What we wear every day becomes trash. Please, consume responsibly! Choose eco-friendly items and brands, use your items for as long as possible, and do not forget to eco-invest into environmental cleanups that help free the planet from the omnipresent trash! And the Nullker platform is a good place to start.
Photo Credit: Olga Kornilova for Nullker
