Fashion waste reduction, rental options and consumer awareness are some ways to reduce textile industry’s impact on environment
Photo for representation: iStock
2023 showed a return to ‘normalcy’, including ‘physical’ offices, socialising, travel, shopping and wedding gatherings, as the world gradually rolled back the lifestyle changes that COVID-19 had forced. In fact, many people say that this quick turnaround in behaviour exhibits ‘bingeing’, to make up for lost time!
Shopping for clothes is the best example for this in the digital era, with access to retailers being just a smartphone tap away. Even high-street fashion is becoming increasingly user and budget-friendly.
However, many of us are not really aware of how our smart dressing is inflicting environmental damage on our planet.
Read more: Why we need a circular economy
Worldwide, cloth manufacturing releases 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year, posing severe environmental challenges. Textile industry currently produces 3 per cent of global CO2 emissions, it is predicted to increase to over 10 per cent by 2050.
The volume of textile production by fast fashion brands has doubled since 2000, leading to enormous textile production waste. Some surveys indicate that over 55 per cent of clothing waste ends up in landfills, causing serious hazards to environmental and public wellbeing through greenhouse gas emissions.
Chemicals used during textile manufacturing are not only hazardous to the environment but also to humans. The application of colour and chemicals to fabrics represents one of the most polluting industrial processes. The use of polyester and other synthetic materials to manage costs leads to non-biodegradable wastes pouring into oceans, impacting the marine ecosystem.
In the agriculture value chain, pesticides and herbicides used for fibre production seep into the soil, vitiating the fertility and biodiversity balance, thereby impacting crop productivity.
Read more: Fashion needs to ditch fossil fuels in supply chain. A new report shows the way
The textile and fashion industries also consume a staggering 93 billion cubic metres of water, leading to a nearly 7 per cent decline in drinking water and groundwater globally.
There are two spots on the planet that exemplify the debilitating impact upon the environment of mismanaged fashion production and use. One of them is Atacama Desert in northern Chile, which has ended up becoming the worst symbol of environmental pollution, being the disposal ground for fast fashion discards, referred to as the “Great Fashion Garbage Patch”.
Considering the serious impact this mammoth heap of fashion refuse is causing to the environment, the United Nations has declared it “an environmental and social emergency” for the planet.
Ghana is also facing a full-blown environmental crisis due to fast fashion dumps or the disposal of unused and unwanted apparel. It accounts for nearly 60 per cent of Ghana’s landfills, out of which 40 per cent are clothing bales arriving from fashion hubs across the globe. This has led to tangled webs in beach sands, with methane causing severe air and water pollution.
Read more: Why a tux, rent a wardrobe: The Gen Z play at making fashion sustainable
All is not lost, as many responsible and proactive fashion business-people have begun to adopt sustainable measures and practices that minimise environmental degradation.
It starts with sustainable material sourcing — procurement of materials, products and services needed by fashion businesses from suppliers in ways that are not detrimental to the environment, or society.
Indian garment company Fabindia is one such example. The well-established brand has created employment opportunities for multitude of artisans and vendors across India. Recently, the company launched a new sustainable collection to turn trash into fashion by incorporating indigenous “Gudri” technique to integrate scraps of fabrics from tailors and textile units and recycling them for cloth manufacturing.
The Indian government-sponsored Khadi Gramodyog plays a significant role in promoting sustainable clothing, using ‘khadi’, a hand-spun and hand-woven fabric associated with Mahatma Gandhi. The cloth is typically made from natural fibres such as cotton, silk or wool. As it is biodegradable, the fabric has a lower environmental impact compared to synthetic polyester or nylon.
Two Mexican entrepreneurs have created the first organic leather, ‘Desserto’, out of only prickly-pear cacti without using any toxic chemicals. Desserto is partially biodegradable, ‘breathable’ and lasts for 10 years. Organic leather avoids tanning animal-based leather using 250 chemicals, including hazardous ones that enter waterways, pollute oceans and affect marine life.
Read more: Bleeding blue: Fast fashion is now poisoning African rivers
Further, raising livestock for food or their skins generates enormous emissions (14.5 per cent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions). Plant-based leather could lower water consumption by 20 per cent and help reduce plastic waste by over 32 per cent.
Circular economy-inspired ‘circular fashion’ initiatives that aim to create a more sustainable and regenerative way of production, consumption, and disposal are gradually gaining ground. It starts with public awareness campaigns, where governments and nonprofits hold campaigns to educate people on the environmental and social impact of fashion, promoting sustainable fashion choices.
Circular fashion trend has also promoted innovations that reduce the chemical footprint of dyeing and printing clothes without compromising on quality.
Fashion waste reduction focuses on how a customer can build a versatile wardrobe by mixing and matching. However, the most revolutionary practice is to promote fashion as a service, where companies promote customers to access a wardrobe rotation by paying a monthly fee, thus, avoiding a purchase). Some examples for this are H&M Take Care, Swishlist, Spoyl, Wardrobes On Rent, etc.
The fashion industry could reinforce the circular model of sustainability by adopting the fourth R — rental — in addition to the existing 3Rs of reduce-reuse-recycle.
If the environment is to be protected from the severe impact of the fashion industry across the soil-air-water-landfills chain, then a paradigm shift in consumer attitudes is imperative. The citizen needs to be made aware of ‘conscious shopping’ — the impact upon the environment of not-thought-through impulse buying of cheap fast fashion items and of discarding them recklessly after limited use.
Read more: How do your favourite fashion brands score on climate card? Quite bad
Opting for timeless and / or high-quality clothing items over trendy ones can have a far greater impact than many might realise.
The ultimate success of a behaviour change in the customer mindset will be if the majority of customers could be persuaded to move away from unmindful consumerism to a conservative and minimalist approach, exhibited by
While the fashion industry’s revival post-COVID represents an economic resurgence, it also highlights the environmental hazards that pose a grave threat to life in general. Landfill overflows, well-being negatively impacted by hazardous chemicals, and water overuse all contribute to a global crisis, as is so dramatically evident in Chile and Ghana.
Read more: Moving beyond organics: Understanding the place and space of brown cotton
Sustainable solutions do showcase optimistic alternative models. However, the inculcation of conscious shopping, minimalist approaches and fashion rentals will be pivotal in reducing the environmental impact of fast fashion.
As in life, balancing style with responsibility is the key to ensuring that fashion does not compromise, but enhances the enchantment and order of nature on this, our only Earth!
Prabhat Pani is Executive Director, Centre for Innovation in Sustainable Development and Sunita Chandak, Administrator, Centre for Innovation in Sustainable Development, S P Jain Institute of Management and Research.
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth
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