Proceedings of a Suzuki Elder salon, April 5, 2018, Vancouver, B.C. 
Researched and written by Erlene Woollard, Patricia Plackett, Julie Zhu, Erzsi Institorisz, Allison Penko, Jennifer Sharp, and David Plackett

Edited by Stan Hirst

 

 

THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL IMPACTS OF WHAT WE WEAR

The apparel industry is the second most polluting industry on Earth today, exceeded in impact only by the oil industry. Four main factors account for the perilous position in which the apparel industry finds itself today.

Increased production & consumption of textiles

The multi-trillion dollar apparel industry has been dramatically changed over the past few decades by the arrival of by “fast fashion”, a contemporary term used by clothing retailers to describe designs that move quickly from catwalk to retail outlets to capture current fashion trends. Fast fashion collections are based on the most recent fashion trends presented at Fashion Week in both the spring and the autumn of every year. Emphasis is given to optimizing supply chain designs so that the latest clothing styles can be designed and manufactured quickly and inexpensively to make large volumes available to mainstream consumers at current and relatively low prices.

Environmental & social impacts

Mass consumption of fast fashion has two very serious hidden costs:

• severe environmental pollution
• poor working conditions for the workers, most of them in the Third World.

The apparel industry has traditionally worked on a linear model often termed a “take-make-waste” model that sees raw material taken to make garments that then go to waste at the end of their (often very short) lives with adverse impacts for the environment. Today circular models are favoured over linear models because of their emphasis on reusing as much as possible of a garment at the end of its life so that as little waste as possible is produced.

Increased water use & pollution

Very large amounts of water are used in the manufacturing of textiles from all natural fibers and especially in the case of cotton production. Pollution results from several components of the life-cycle of every garment, including large amounts of waste clothing either going to landfills or being burned at the end of its useful life because most textiles are not recycled at present.

Distribution/logistics

Distribution covers the transport of a garment from the manufacturer to the retailer consumers. The channels of distribution include wholesalers, distributors, agents, and retailers.

The advent of ‘fast fashion’ has greatly increased the amount of clothing distributed. With traditional fashion models, there were two cycles of clothes production per year (a spring show and a fall show). With ‘fast fashion’ there are 50 cycles. To compound this increase, 60% more clothing was purchased in 2014 than in 2000, but kept for half as long. The resulting greater amount of volume of apparel from the fast fashion industry has resulted in increasing demand for transportation, which in turn creates more air pollution, energy consumption, and traffic congestion.

Garments transported by truck, ship, airplane, or a combination of these methods, each burns up precious fossil fuels and emit harmful toxins into the atmosphere. A single cargo ship can produce as many pollutants as 50 million cars in just one year. The low-grade bunker fuel burned by ships is 1000 times dirtier than highway diesel.

Increasing air freight transportation allows brands to renew their collections almost every week, but air freight is the worst transport method regarding sustainability. Aircraft engines emit heat, noise, particulates, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, all of which contribute to climate change and global warming.

Climate change

The carbon footprint of a garment largely depends on the material used to make it. Although the manufacture of synthetic fibers like polyester have less impact on water and land than grown materials like cotton, they emit more greenhouse gasses per mass, e.g., a polyester shirt has more than double the carbon footprint of a cotton shirt (5.5kg compared to 2.1kg) because of the energy requirements of the production process.

Insufficient resource supplies to meet future projected clothing demands

Apparel spending is projected to grow tremendously. This is particularly true in Asia, as hundreds of millions of people in China and India enter the global middle class. By 2030 there will be 5.4 billion people in the global middle class, up from 3 billion in 2015. We can expect increased demand for clothes and other goods that define middle-income lifestyles. If consumption continues at its current rate, we’ll need three times as many natural resources by 2050 compared to what we used in 2000.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FASHION INDUSTRY

To understand the issues facing the textiles industry today it is helpful to look back at the evolution of the industry.

Before the transformation initiated by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of machines, clothing was produced by hand. Couture houses and local dressmaking assumed responsibility for making clothing until after WW2 when mass-produced clothing came onto the scene. Demand for clothes increased dramatically in the 1960s. At about this time some of the top fast fashion brands such as Zara, H&M, Primark and TopShop got their start in Europe with low costs largely based on sweatshop labour.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a small movement that started with the founders of Patagonia and Esprit to introduce what was termed eco-fashion or sustainable fashion, but this development has not had a really significant impact on the mainstream fashion industry to date.

The first use of the term ‘fast fashion’ came in a New York Times article about the opening of the first Zara store in New York City in 1990. It described the 15-day turnaround time from designer idea to product availability on store racks. Today fast fashion can be found all around the globe.

THE APPAREL CYCLE

Raw materials

Garments are manufactured from two basic categories of fibers – natural and man-made. Natural fibers come from two sources – plants and animals.

The globally dominant plant fiber is cotton; other important plant-based fibers include flax and bamboo. The most common animal-sourced fibers are wool and silk. Polyester, a fabric made from petroleum, accounts for over 50% of available synthetic fabrics. Other important synthetic fabrics are made also from petroleum, a few from plant materials, from recycled fibers and some from what are termed upcycled fibers, meaning higher value fibers made from recycled wastes, e.g. leather from old fish scales.

Production

Plastic clothing (made from recycled plastic) leads to problems with microplastics, while synthetic fibers such as polyester and acrylic comprise about 55% of the global fiber market and are difficult to recycle.

Dyes and finishing processes – chemical coatings, dyes, softeners, and additives – are not only toxic to consumers but also reduce the recyclability of apparel as they are a significant percent of a garment’s weight (5—15%).

Companies are feeling the strains of resource and price volatility from the current take-make-waste model that dominates textile production. Some are taking steps to make changes in production processes, e.g., in Canada, Mountain Equipment Co-op is investing in research that will engineer fabrics differently so that fewer fibers are released.

By 2030, if companies across the globe stay on their current production paths, there could be a seven-billion-tonne gap between supply and demand of natural resources.

Distribution

Distribution refers to the transport of a garment from the manufacturer to the consumer. Distribution channels include wholesalers, distributors, agents, and retailers.

The advent of ‘fast fashion’ has increased the amount of clothing being distributed. With traditional fashion models there were two cycles of clothes production per year (a spring show and a fall show); with ‘fast fashion’ there are 50 cycles. It is important to realize that 60% more clothing was purchased world-wide in 2014 than in 2000, but was kept for half as long.

The principal adverse environmental impact of the distribution portion of the value chain is the CO₂ emissions from the increased transportation requirements of the greater volume of apparel, with resulting serious implications for air pollution and traffic congestion.

Cleaning

Machine washing

Machine washing of garments results in the release of thousands of microfibers per gram of clothing and more synthetic fibers than natural fibers, possibly because of greater natural fiber entanglement. Recent findings suggest that handwashing of fabrics containing more than 50% synthetic fiber may result in release of fewer fibers and that a full machine wash will be preferable because of reduced friction between clothing when it is tightly packed. Synthetic clothing materials of concern include polyester, polyolefin, Spandex, and Nylon.

Dry cleaning

Dry cleaning uses a carcinogenic solvent called PERC (perchloroethylene) that presents a hazardous environment for those working in the industry. There may also be health concerns for the consumer exposed to PERC residues on dry cleaned clothes. Dry cleaned clothes are best aired outdoors, if possible, before hanging in a closet. Studies indicate that some 60% of the clothing that is dry cleaned does not need cleaning.

Machine drying

Machine drying uses considerable energy (between 3 and 9 kWh per cycle) and generates fibers, not all of which are caught as lint. Finer fibers may not be trapped on dryer filters.

Ironing

Ironing uses considerable energy – about 0.5 kWh per half-hour.

Reuse/recycling of clothing

As noted by Elizabeth Cline, a fast fashion activist, less than 1% of clothing is recycled to make new clothing. According to H&M about 5-10% of its clothing products are recycled to make new clothing when brought back to its stores.

Many fabrics are made up of fiber blends and cannot be broken down to their constituent parts. Labels are also a problem when the material is different to the fabric itself (e.g., blue jeans and metal buckles or synthetic labels). Recycled cotton and wool are of diminished quality, most probably because of reductions in fiber length during the recycling process. Natural fibers are more vulnerable to damage because of defects introduced in the fibers during growth and processing. About 85% of unwanted textiles in North America end up in landfills, amounting to more than 11 billion kilograms a year.

It is estimated that about 35% of the used clothing that is collected is down-cycled to painters’ cloths, insulation materials, carpet padding, etc. Considerable quantities of used clothing have been shipped to developing countries but much of this ends up burned or dumped in landfills

Reuse/Recycling

Much of the used clothing that is shipped to other countries, like Kenya, is low-quality and ends up burned or dumped into landfills.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

As concerned consumers we need to understand and appreciate current practices, specifically what is working and what is not working, if we wish to successfully change the current outcomes of apparel production, recycling and disposal.

The apparel industry is apparently on a perilous trajectory that is totally unsustainable. The key factors underlying the industry’s predicament are (1) increasing production & consumption of textiles (especially by fast fashion; (2) increasing water use & pollution levels; (3) climate change (4) production levels projected to 2050 demanding more than 3 times the 2000 levels of available input resources.

Despite concerns that current efforts to address the issues created by the apparel industry are a case of “too little too late”, there are three reasons for some optimism about the apparel industry.

Consumer activism

Activist movements are taking hold and providing consumers with direction on bringing meaningful change to the industry. The largest of these is aptly named Fashion Revolution, there are many smaller ones around the world contributing to the momentum for change in the apparel industry.

The Fashion Revolution movement started after the catastrophic fire in the Rana Plaza garment district in Dhaka, Bangladesh where clothing was manufactured for export. The movement aims to radically change how clothes are sourced, produced and purchased so that what we wear is made in safe, clean and fair ways.

This movement focuses on transparency as the first step in transforming the apparel industry in terms of its sustainability and ethics. It advocates that we all ask one simple question: Who made my clothes? This information will reveal the structures that are in place and then we can see more clearly the issues to be addressed. This movement has also developed a Transparency Index 2017 that examines the performance of 100 global brands and reports on their performance. They are seeing some improvements. The wheels are turning and, although not as quickly as we would like, there is movement in the right direction.

Fashion industry response

The fashion industry appears to see the need for change, and this is becoming a feature of major fashion events. For example, the fashion designer Stella McCartney has partnered with the Ellen Macarthur Foundation to bring the principles of the circular economy to the plastics industry, and has produced a report aimed at transforming the way clothes are designed, sold, and used. Another example of the changes that are taking place in the fashion industry itself comes from the Copenhagen Fashion Summit 2018 that has as its overarching theme ‘Making a commitment to change’.

Resources for change

There has been a proliferation of resources, including documentary films, books, reports and blog posts, that showcase the issues for attention and present options for moving us away from fast fashion.

Greenpeace recently released a report entitled Timeout for fast fashion that concludes with the suggestion that we may have reached peak fashion and that consumers may have now become exhausted by all of the cheap clothing.

Online now one can find the 50 most inspirational blogs on sustainable fashion. Huffington Post has reported that “we are now entering an era (fashion insiders would say that it has been going on for a few seasons now) in which trends no longer dominate purchasing in the way that they did in the past – people are able to figure out for themselves what works for them personally rather than slavishly following fashion trends”.