Many brands are now working towards being more sustainable, thinking about how they make and recycle their clothes
...and we salute that!
But the 2024 statistics available here from TheRoundup.org show we have a long way to go
How can clothes be so environmentally destructive?
It boils down to five key reasons:
Cheap materials - Fast fashion uses cheap materials and toxic dyes to create its clothes, making it one of the largest polluters of clean water. Polyester is also one of the most popular fabrics in this industry, which is created with fossil fuels and can shed microplastics into the water system when washed.
Manufacturing locations - To keep manufacturing costs down, fast fashion brands tend to make their clothes in factories located in Asian countries, which often run on coal and gas.
Water consumption - It's estimated that the Fashion industry uses 93 billion cubic metres of water per year. Even natural fabrics can be a problem in the fast fashion industry. For example, to create a single cotton shirt, you'd need roughly 3,000 litres of water. Using this much water can increase the risk of drought, causing extreme stress on local communities.
Transportation - Many fast fashion brands operate online, which means we have to take the delivery into account as well. For example, the combined annual emissions of postal services in the US, such as FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service are roughly equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 7 million cars. Some estimates show that shipping accounts for 2.5% of the world's total CO2e, which is estimated to rise to as high as 17% by 2050!
Waste - Fast fashion has led to a rise in the high turnover of clothes. Keeping up with fashion trends means that 85% of textiles go to the dump each year. Once people are done with the season's best clothes, they're onto the next.
Take all the water you would be able to drink in the next 13 years, you would have the amount that it takes to make one T-shirt and a pair of jeans. (The Guardian 2019)
The fashion industry emits about the same amount of greenhouse gases per year as the entire economies of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. ( Consultancy firm McKinsey & Company.)
As clothing joins the rest of the garbage in landfills, it breaks down and releases toxic greenhouse gases. Landfills are the third-largest source of atmospheric methane into the environment.
Every second a truckload of garments goes into either landfill or incineration, while tons of waste clothing also ends up dumped in countries like Ghana, Pakistan and Kenya, where they constitute an environmental hazard. (an article in Reuters by Amy Brown)
Emissions from one months worth of new clothing purchased is equivalent to flying a plane around the world 900 times (Oxfam 2019)
Textile production has doubled over last 15 years but the time clothing is worn has dropped 40%.
We buy 3 times as many clothes as we did in 1980 and wear them for half as long. (Fashion Reimagined (2022)
3 out of 5 garments go to landfill within one year of purchase.
“Boosting recycling is key to reduce the impact of our raw materials on nature,” an Inditex spokesman.
Only 1% of clothes will get recycled into new garments. (2024 TheRoundup.org)
Information and statistics are constantly changing so if you are aware of any significant changes or have information you think we should add or change on this page, please let us know.
