From microplastics to water pollution, the fast fashion industry’s unchecked growth threatens the planet. Industry reform, sustainable innovations, and conscious consumption are crucial to stem the damage.
The fast fashion industry is an environmental horror show. It is all about branding, optics, manipulation of emotions, and nothing transparent about the reality of the destruction that it unleashes.
In 2019, there was a brand, Misguided, which advertised a bikini priced at \$1.30. And the material of the bikini was polyester. Polyester takes 200 years to decompose and releases microplastics throughout its life.
If we see the fashion industry’s clothes, it produces around 35% of the world’s microplastics, emitting around 8–10% of the world’s emissions, greater than the combined emissions of aviation and shipping. At the moment, the world is producing a mind-boggling figure of around 100 billion fashion clothing items every year. Almost all of them are made from plastic in varying degrees. Almost all of them, without exception, see little or no recycling at all, except 1%, which enters back into the system of circularity.
Over the past 15 years, clothing production has doubled, whereas the number of times we utilise a particular clothing item has reduced by around 36%. The number of garments purchased each year by an average consumer has increased by around 60%.
While we all the time try to make a bargain in fairness of social issues like the salaries of garment industry workers having increased, at the same time we must understand that, as per the Fashion Transparency Index, which tracks 250 companies with garment manufacturing valued at more than \$400 million, just one company has actually complied with the requirements of the Fashion Transparency Index. Every other brand has scored less than 70% on transparency, and 20 brands scored flat zero on the index’s parameters.
Fashion Transparency Index focuses on the public disclosures on:
- Human rights issues;
- Environmental costs of fashion;
- Policies and commitments;
- The governance systems;
- The robustness of the regulations;
- The traceability of their supply chains;
- How much do they monitor and assess the suppliers and their practices, and how they manage issues, including the COVID-19 response?
As for the number of chemicals that are utilised by the fashion industry, they are mind-boggling: 15,000. The industry, as a whole, across the world, releases 20% of the wastewater. It has a monopoly over irrigation by utilising 3% of the global fresh water for the growth of cotton.
There is absolutely no attention being paid in order to deconstruct clothes so that they can re-enter the circular economy or embrace recycling.
In the normal course of events, those clothing items either get decomposed into microplastics—released into oceans, rivers, and water bodies—or they are simply discarded as garbage and burnt, as is standard practice in all consuming societies across the world.
At the moment, while there are many brands like Adidas, Nike, H&M, Reebok, C&A, etc., trying to take proactive steps, they can do a lot more than they are currently doing. But there are certain brands which are simply acting like an ostrich in the face of the grave environmental destruction that they are unleashing.
Inconsistencies and gaps are common across the industry. For example:
- More than 60% of the world’s clothes are synthetic in nature—i.e., they contain oil.
- 30% of the world’s garments are produced from cotton.
- 6% from organic or natural fibres, and around 2% from wool.
Because oil powers fashion, the industry is a large contributor to climate change and waste management issues, non-biodegradable, requiring a substantial amount of chemicals to manufacture, emitting toxic pollutants along the way, and releasing tons of microplastics.
If we look at India, towns like Tiruppur, Coimbatore, etc., we find industries releasing dyed water. The local rivers, like the Noyyal, have been reduced to ditches. From the 1990s till the early 2000s, some 87 million litres of wastewater, full of irredeemable reactive dyes, were released into the Noyyal River, making the entire water ecosystem turbid and poisonous.
One t-shirt from GAP takes around 2,700 litres of water to manufacture—i.e., the daily water needs of around 30 people.
One kilogram of textile manufacturing requires 500 litres of water.
Also, only 25% of brands at the moment publish robust targets on cutting the use of textiles from oil.
Certain brands have joined the science-based targets initiative in order to cut down their carbon emissions, such as Lululemon, Adidas, Nike, etc., recognising that it is time to commit to using renewable energy across their entire business, including their supply chains.
Many brands have joined what was initially called the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Waste initiative, now known as the Roadmap to Zero Waste programme, which aims to reduce the industry’s chemical footprint. Good examples are few, while bad examples are rife. Dealing properly with hazardous chemicals should be the rule, not the exception. Approaching cotton sustainably for cutting carbon emissions should similarly be the default position, not merely a goal to strive for.
Researching the environmental footprint of a brand might be quite helpful, but at the moment, that takes a backseat while we select any kind of brand for wearing or any other use.
We need to take the example of Lenzing AG, an Austria-based company, which has produced the fibre Modal—a semi-synthetic fibre made from the pulp of beech trees. It was created in Japan in 1951 as an alternative to silk that is vegan, strong, breathable, and luxurious. The company uses certified sustainable wood, recycles its water, reuses almost all of its solvents, discloses the entire carbon footprint of its supply chain, and is one of the fashion world’s rarest breeds—a company with a circular business model that wastes almost nothing and recycles almost everything. It is easily biodegradable and compostable, uses 20 times less water than cotton, and its yield can be 10 times higher. It does not release microplastics and does not require whitening agents or fabric softeners.
But when we factor in such costs, fashion items become extraordinarily expensive—because plastics, chemical dyes, inefficient processes, bottomless opacity, etc., are so hard-wired that they cannot be separated at all.
According to McKinsey’s analysis, 80% of the carbon emissions the industry needs to eliminate can be cut down by initiatives requiring top-down leadership—switching to renewable energy, energy efficiency, operational improvements, etc.
It is really unclear what causes the industry to wait so long, when at least 55% of measures would lead to net cost savings. Some large global brands are showing the way now, shepherded by RE100, a UK-based initiative launched by Climate Action, aiming to ensure 100% renewable energy use in the garment industry. It organises them, provides a framework, validates, and showcases their progress. Medium-sized and smaller fashion and apparel brands around the world can follow their lead.
Barriers to accessing renewable energy—such as regulations favouring fossil fuels and quasi-monopolies controlling a country’s electricity market—still exist in many markets, but are gradually being lifted, thanks in part to RE100 companies’ projects.
The RE100 effort is an offspring of the Climate Action Climate Group, an NGO that, in 2011, decided to change the way people talked about climate change—from a narrative emphasising disasters to one highlighting opportunities. In 2012, they launched the Climate Revolution Campaign, aiming for a dozen very large companies to commit to a high-ambition pathway, enabling businesses to positively influence the UN climate talks and demonstrate the difference that leading corporations can make.
At the time of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Talks, the Climate Group debuted its Clean Revolution Campaign and positioned itself at the forefront of fighting climate change. In 2014, this inspired them to launch RE100 during Climate Week, an annual event in New York City showcasing global climate action from governments, industry, and the private sector.
The United Nations is also using its convening power to push the fashion industry to decarbonise. Fashion, textile, and clothing stakeholders worked during 2018 to identify ways to move forward on climate action and issued the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action to guide themselves and others. The Charter was launched at the UN Climate Talks in Katowice in 2018. It was renewed at the Glasgow meeting in 2021.
Its signatory brands prominently include:
- Adidas
- Burberry
- Chanel
- Decathlon
- H\&M
- Nike
- Puma
While the UN initiative is laudable, more needs to be done to include a broader universe of brands from around the world and to represent many more small- and medium-sized enterprises. Besides reducing the carbon footprint, they need to be more transparent. Given their dismal record so far, only country-level, industry-wide legislation can do the job. This should include minimum design standards to ensure that garments can be easily reused or recycled, and a prohibition on burning unwanted clothes—a technique used to fake scarcity.
At the moment, it is practically impossible to recycle clothes because of the way plastic is combined with other fibres inside them. We need to stop microplastics from polluting rivers and seas by going to the source. Most importantly, the plastic paradigm must change. Plastic simply cannot continue to be so cheap.
At the same time, consumers need to make purchasing choices that are intelligent. We need to signal our displeasure by buying less. The fashion industry has a strong track record of failing to enact any kind of self-regulation or reform. It must be sent a much louder message—because, in the end, the most efficient and effective way to root out any kind of tyrant behaviour is through legislation.
Also, buy clothes—but not too many. Preferably with natural fibres.
References:
- Watershed: How We Destroyed India’s Water and How We Can Save It – Mridula Ramesh
- Our Fragile Moment – Michael E. Mann
- [The Environmental Impact of Fast Fashion, Explained](https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/)
- [Trendy fashion is not always great for the planet, but circular fashion choices can help](https://www.downtoearth.org.in/waste/trendy-fashion-is-not-always-great-for-the-planet-but-circular-fashion-choices-can-help-94990)Uzair Qadri
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