Why Fashion Needs to Be More Sustainable

The pandemic slowed fast style to a standstill. At present as the world opens upward and we are socializing and going places, we want to dress up once again. But later living a bars and simpler life during COVID, this is a good time to take stock of the implications of how nosotros dress. Mode, and specially fast fashion, has enormous environmental impacts on our planet, as well as social ones.

Since the 2000s, fashion production has doubled and it will likely triple by 2050, according to the American Chemical Society. The production of polyester, used for much cheap fast style, likewise every bit athleisure wear, has increased nine-fold in the last 50 years. Because vesture has gotten so cheap, information technology is hands discarded subsequently being worn but a few times. One survey found that twenty percent of wearable in the Us is never worn; in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, it is 50 percent. Online shopping, available day and night, has made impulse buying and returning items easier.

A Goodwill in Minnesota, where 12 grocery carts of wear and textiles are trashed every minute. Photograph: MPCA Photos

Co-ordinate to McKinsey, average consumers buy 60 percent more they did in 2000, and keep it half as long. And in 2017, it was estimated that 41 per centum of young women felt the demand to wearable something different whenever they left the house. In response, there are companies that ship consumers a box of new clothes every month.

Fashion's environmental impacts

Way is responsible for 10 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and 20 percent of global wastewater, and uses more energy than the aviation and shipping sectors combined.

Impacts on water

Global fashion also consumes 93 billion metric tons of make clean water each twelvemonth, about half of what Americans beverage annually.

Cotton is an especially thirsty crop. For example, one kilogram of cotton used to produce a pair of jeans tin consume 7,500 to 10,000 liters of water—the amount a person would drink over x years. Cotton product also requires pesticides and insecticides, which pollute the soil; runoff from fertilized cotton fields carry the backlog nutrients to h2o bodies, causing eutrophication and algal blooms.

The dyeing process for fabrics, which uses toxic chemicals, is responsible for 17 to 20 percent of global industrial water pollution.

Turag River in Dhaka, polluted past dye factories. Photo: REACH

Seventy-ii toxic chemicals accept been found in the water used in fabric dyeing.

Contributions to climatic change

To feed the fashion industry's need for wood pulp to brand fabrics similar rayon, viscose and other fabrics, 70 million tons of trees are cut down each year. That number is expected to double past 2034, speeding deforestation in some of the world'due south endangered forests.

The style manufacture produces one.2 meg metric tons of CO2 each year, according to a MacArthur Foundation report. In 2018, it resulted in more than greenhouse gas emissions than the carbon produced by France, Frg and the UK all together. Polyester, which is actually plastic made from fossil fuels, is used for nigh 65 pct of all clothing, and consumes 70 million barrels of oil each year. In addition, the fashion industry uses large amounts of fossil fuel-based plastic for packaging and hangers.

Waste material

Less than one percent of clothing is recycled to make new clothes. The fibers in clothing are polymers, long chains of chemically linked molecules. Washing and wearing clothing shorten and weaken these polymers, so by the fourth dimension a garment is discarded, the polymers are too short to turn into a stiff new material. In addition, most of today'southward textile-to-fabric recycling technologies cannot divide out dyes, contaminants, or even a combination of fabrics such as polyester and cotton.

Equally a issue, 53 million metric tons of discarded article of clothing are incinerated or go to landfills each twelvemonth. In 2017, Burberry burned $37 million worth of unsold bags, apparel and perfume. If sent to a landfill, clothes made from natural fabrics like cotton fiber and linen may degrade in weeks to months, merely synthetic fabrics can take up to 200 years to pause down. And as they do, they produce methyl hydride, a powerful global warming greenhouse gas.

Microplastic pollution

Many people take lived solely in athleisure wear during the pandemic, simply the problem with this is that the stretch and breathability in well-nigh athleisure comes from the use of constructed plastic fibers like polyester, nylon, acrylic, spandex and others, which are made of plastic.

When clothes made from synthetics are washed, microplastics from their fibers are shed into the wastewater. Some of it is filtered out at wastewater treatment plants forth with human waste product and the resulting sludge is used as fertilizer for agriculture. Microplastics then enter the soil and become part of the food chain. The microplastics that elude the treatment plant cease upward in rivers and oceans, and in the temper when seawater droplets carry them into the air. Information technology's estimated that 35 per centum of the microplastics in the bounding main come from the way manufacture. While some brands apply "recycled polyester" from PET bottles, which emits 50 to 25 per centum fewer emissions than virgin polyester, effective polyester recycling is express, and then after use, these garments notwithstanding usually end up in the landfill where they tin shed microfibers.

Microplastics harm marine life, likewise every bit birds and turtles. They take already been found in our nutrient, water and air—1 study establish that Americans eat 74,000 microplastic particles each year. And while there is growing business concern near this, the risks to human health are still not well understood.

Fashion'due south social impacts

Because it must be cheap, fast style is dependent on the exploited labor force in developing countries where regulations are lax. Workers are underpaid, overworked, and exposed to dangerous weather or health hazards; many are underage.

Of the 75 1000000 factory workers around the earth, information technology'southward estimated that but two percentage earn a living wage. To keep brands from moving to another country or region with lower costs, factories limit wages and are disinclined to spend coin to ameliorate working conditions. Moreover, workers often live in areas with waterways polluted by the chemicals from fabric dyeing.

How can style exist more sustainable?

As opposed to our current linear model of fashion production with environmental impacts at every phase, where resources are consumed, turned into a product, and so discarded, sustainable fashion minimizes its environmental touch, and even aims to benefit the environment. The goal is a circular manner industry where waste and pollution are eliminated, and materials are used for as long every bit possible, so reused for new products to avoid the need to exploit virgin resources.

Many designers, brands, and scientists — including students in Columbia Academy's Ecology Science and Policy program— are exploring ways to brand style more sustainable and circular.

Less waste product

Since fourscore to 90 percent of the sustainability of a clothing detail is adamant by decisions made during its blueprint stage, new strategies tin can do away with waste from the outset.

To eliminate the xv pct of a fabric that ordinarily ends upwards on the cutting room flooring in the making of a garment, zero waste design cutting is used to arrange pattern pieces on cloth like a Tetris puzzle.

Designer YeohLee is known as a zippo waste pioneer, employing geometric concepts in guild to use every inch of fabric; she also creates garments with the leftovers of other pieces. Draping and knitting are also methods of designing without waste matter.

3D virtual sampling tin eliminate the need for physical samples of material. A finished garment can sometimes require up to 20 samples. The Fabricant, a digital fashion house, replaces actual garments with digital samples in the pattern and evolution phase and claims this can reduce a brand'southward carbon footprint by xxx percent.

Some clothing can be designed to be taken apart at the end of its life; designing for disassembly makes it easier for the parts to exist recycled or upcycled into another garment. To be multifunctional, other garments are reversible, or designed so that parts tin can exist subtracted or added. London-based brand Petit Pli makes children'due south clothing from a single recycled fabric, making information technology easier to recycle; and the garments incorporate pleats that stretch so that kids tin continue to wear them every bit they grow.

3D printing can exist used to work out details digitally before product, minimizing trial and mistake; and because it can produce custom-fit garments on demand, it reduces waste. In addition, recycled materials such equally plastic and metal can be 3D printed.

Sustainable designer Iris Ven Herpen is known for her fabled 3D printed creations, some using upcycled marine debris; she is also currently working with scientists to develop sustainable textiles.

DyeCoo, a Dutch visitor, has developed a dyeing technique that uses waste CO2 in place of h2o and chemicals. The technology pressurizes CO2 and so that it becomes supercritical and allows dye to readily deliquesce, and then it tin can enter hands into fabrics. Since the process uses no h2o, it produces no wastewater, and requires no drying time considering the dyed fabric comes out dry out. Ninety-five percentage of the CO2 is recaptured and reused, and then the process is a closed-loop system.

Heuritech, a French startup, is using artificial intelligence to clarify production images from Instagram and Weibo and predict trends. Adidas, Lee, Wrangler and other brands take used it to conceptualize future demand and plan their production appropriately to reduce waste material.

Mobile trunk scanning tin assistance brands produce garments that fit a variety of body types instead of using standard sizes. 3D applied science is also beingness used for virtual dressing, which volition enable consumers to encounter how a garment looks on them earlier they purchase it. These innovations could lead to fewer returns of clothing.

Some other manner to reduce waste is to eliminate inventory. On-demand production fulfillment companies similar Printful enable designers to sync their custom designs to the company'southward article of clothing products. Garments are non created until an order comes in.

For Days, a closed-loop system, gives swap credits for every article of vesture you buy; customers can employ bandy credits to become new article of clothing items, all made from organic cotton fiber or recycled materials. The swap credits encourage consumers to send in unwanted For Days clothes, keep them out of the landfill, and permit them to be made into new materials. Customers tin also earn bandy credits past filling one of the company's Take Back bags with whatever old clothes, in any condition, and sending information technology in; these are then resold if salvageable or recycled as rags.

But perhaps the least wasteful strategy enables consumers non to buy whatsoever dress at all. If they are mainly concerned about their image on social media, they can use digital clothing that is superimposed over their image. The Fabricant, which creates these digital garments,  aims to make "self expression through digital clothing a sustainable way to explore personal identity."

Better materials

Many brands are using textiles made from natural materials such as hemp, ramie or bamboo instead of cotton wool. Bamboo has been touted as a sustainable fabric because it is fast-growing and doesn't crave much water or pesticides; however, some old growth forests are existence cutting down to make way for bamboo plantations. Moreover, to brand nigh bamboo fabrics soft, they are subjected to chemic processing whose toxins tin damage the surroundings and human health.

Considering of this processing, the Global Organic Textile Standard says that virtually all bamboo fiber can "not be considered as natural or even organic fibre, even if the bamboo plant was certified organic on the field."

Some designers are turning to organic cotton, which is grown without toxic chemicals. But considering organic cotton yields are 30 percent less than conventional cotton, they need xxx percent more water and state to produce the same amount as conventional cotton. Other brands, such equally North Confront and Patagonia, are creating clothing made from regenerative cotton wool—cotton grown without pesticides, fertilizers, weed pulling or tilling, and with cover crops and diverse plants to heighten the soil.

Textiles are also being made with fibers from agriculture waste product, such as leaves and rinds. Orangish Fiber, an Italian company, is using nanotechnology to make a sustainable silky material by processing the cellulose of oranges. H&Grand is using cupro, a textile made from cotton waste. Flocus makes fully biodegradable and recyclable yarns and fabrics from the fibers of kapok tree pods through a process that doesn't harm the trees. Kapok copse tin can grow in poor soils without much demand for water or pesticides.

In 2016, Theanne Schiros, a principal investigator at Columbia University'southward Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and banana professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), mentored a group of FIT students who created a bio-design award-winning material from algae. Kelp, its main ingredient, is fast growing, absorbs CO2 and nitrogen from agricultural runoff, and helps increase biodiversity. With the help of Columbia University's Helen Lu, a biomedical engineer, the team created a bio-yarn they called AlgiKnit. Having received over $2 meg in initial seed funding, the outset-up, based in Brooklyn, is scaling up for market entry.

Schiros and Lu likewise developed a microbial bioleather. The compostable material consists of a nanocellulose mesh made through a fermentation process using a culture of bacteria and yeast. Schiros explained that these bacteria produce cellulose nanofibers as part of their metabolism; the bacteria were used in the fermentation of kombucha as early every bit 220 BC in what was Manchuria and in vinegar fermentation as early on as 5,000 BC in Egypt. Biofabrication of the textile is ten,000 times less toxic to humans than chrome-tanned leather, with an 88 to 97 percentage smaller carbon footprint than constructed (polyurethane) leather or other plastic-based leather alternatives. The fabrication process likewise drew on ancient textile techniques for tanning and dyeing. Schiros worked with the designers of Public School NY on Dull Manufactory's One x Ane Witting Design Initiative challenge to create nix-waste, naturally dyed sneakers from the material.

Schiros is also co-founder and CEO of the startup Werewool, another collaboration with Lu, and with Allie Obermeyer of Columbia University Chemical Technology. Werewool, which was recognized by the 2020 Global Modify Award, creates biodegradable textiles with colour and other attributes found in nature using synthetic biology. "Nature has evolved a genetic code to make proteins that practise things like have bright colour, stretch, wet direction, wicking, UV protection—all the things that y'all really want for performance textiles, just that currently come at a really high ecology toll," said Schiros. "But nature accomplishes all this and that'due south attributed to microscopic poly peptide structures."

Werewool engineers proteins inspired past those establish in coral, jellyfish, oysters, and cow milk that upshot in color, wet management or stretch. The DNA code for those proteins is inserted into bacteria, which ferment and mass-produce the protein that then becomes the basis for a fiber. The visitor will somewhen provide its technology and fibers to other companies throughout the supply chain and will likely begin with limited edition designer brands.

Better working atmospheric condition

There are companies now intent on improving working conditions for textile workers. Dorsu in Kingdom of cambodia creates clothing from fabric discarded by garment factories. Workers are paid a living wage, have contracts, are given breaks, and also get bonuses, overtime pay, insurance and paid leave for sickness and holidays.

International Labour Arrangement'south Improve Factories Cambodia projection ensures garment workers get a tiffin interruption. Photo: ILO Pacific Asia

Mayamiko is a 100 percent PETA-certified vegan brand that advocates for labor rights and created the Mayamiko Trust to train disadvantaged women.

Workers who make Ethcs' PETA-certified vegan garments are protected nether the Fair Wear Foundation, which ensures a fair living wage, condom working weather and legal labor contracts for workers. The Fair Wear Foundation website lists 128 brands it works with.

Beyond sustainability

Schiros maintains that making materials in collaboration with traditional artisans and Indigenous communities tin can produce results that address environmental, social and economic facets of sustainability. She led a series of natural dye workshops with women tie dyers in Kindia, Guinea, and artisans in 1000-Bassam, Côte d'Ivoire, and collaborated with New York designers to make a zero-waste drove from the fabrics created. The projectcontinued FIT faculty and students to over 300 artisans in Due west Africa to create models for inclusive, sustainable development through material arts, pedagogy, and entrepreneurship.

Partnering with frontline communities that are protecting, for example, the Amazon rainforest, does more simply sustain—it protects biodiversity and areas that are sequestering carbon. "So with high value products that incorporate fair merchandise and clear partnerships into the supply chain, you not only take natural, biodegradable materials, but you take the added bonus of all that biodiversity that those communities are protecting," she said. "Indigenous communities are 5 pct of the global population, and they're protecting eighty percent of the biodiversity in the globe…Integrating how we make our materials, our systems and the communities that are sequestering carbon while protecting biodiversity is critically important."

The need for transparency

In order to ensure fashion'due south sustainability and achieve a circular style industry, it must exist possible to track all the elements of a product from the materials used, chemicals added, product practices, and product use, to the cease of life, as well equally the social and ecology weather condition nether which it was fabricated.

Blockchain technology tin do this by recording each phase of a garment's life in a decentralized tamper-proof common ledger. Designer Martine Jarlgaard partnered with blockchain tech visitor Provenance to create QR codes that, when scanned, show the garment'southward whole history. The software platform Eon has also developed a fashion to requite each garment its ain digital fingerprint chosen Circular ID. Information technology uses a digital identifier embedded in the vesture that enables it to be traced for its whole lifecycle.

Transparency is also important considering it enables consumers to identify greenwashing when they encounter it. Greenwashing is when companies intentionally deceive consumers or oversell their efforts to exist sustainable.

Amendi, a sustainable manner brand focusing on transparency and traceability, co-founded by Columbia University alumnus Corey Spencer, has begun a campaign to get the Federal Trade Commission to update its Dark-green Guides, which outline the principles for the use of green claims. When the most recent versions of the Green Guides were released in 2012, they did not scrutinize the use of "sustainability" and "organic" in marketing. The utilise of these terms has exploded since then and unless regulated, could become meaningless or misleading.

What consumers can practice

The cardinal to making mode sustainable is the consumer. If we want the fashion industry to adopt more sustainable practices, so as shoppers, we need to care well-nigh how vesture is fabricated and where it comes from, and demonstrate these concerns through what we purchase. The market will then respond.

Nosotros can also reduce waste through how we care for our vesture and how we discard it.

Here are some tips on how to be a responsible consumer:

  • Buy only what you need
  • Purchase from sustainable brands with transparent supply chains
    • Wait for sustainable certification from the Fairtrade Foundation, Global Organic Textiles Standard, Soil Association, and Fair Wearable Foundation
    • Check the Fashion Transparency Index to see how a company ranks in transparency.
  • Learn how to shop for quality and invest in higher-quality clothing
  • Choose natural fibers and single fiber garments
  • Wear wear for longer
  • Accept intendance of vesture: launder items less often, repair them so they last. Patagonia operates Worn Wear, a recycling and repair programme.
  • Upcycle your unwanted apparel into something new
  • Buy secondhand or vintage; sell your sometime apparel at Thred Up, Poshmark, or the Real Real.
  • When discarding, pass clothing on to someone who volition wear it, or to a thrift store
  • Rent habiliment from Rent the Rail, Armoire or Nuuly

"I think the best piece of habiliment is the one that already exists. The best fabric is the cloth that already exists," said Schiros. "Keeping things in the supply chain in equally many loops and cycles as you tin can is really, actually of import."