The Environmental Impact of Fashion

The environmental impact of the fashion industry

We applaud all of you that came up with creative ways to reduce your plastic usage in July.  Keep it up!  This month, we thought we would start discussing something many of us don’t think about when it comes to plastic waste reduction (climate change and greenhouse gases too)…FASHION.

All of us, approximately 8 billion people globally, need fabrics.  After water and food it is a top necessity but did you know that approximately 64% of our clothes are made from plastics (polyester, acrylic and nylon)?  Plastics are byproducts of fossil fuel and to convert fossil fuel into fabrics, significant amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) are released. By sharing some facts about plastics in our clothing and best practices, we hope to encourage a discussion that helps reduce our carbon footprints.

What can we do?

• discourage production of new synthetic fabrics by reusing, repurposing and redesigning what we already have and introducing the concept of circular economy in fashion.
• up-cycling — instead of only re-cycling.  By mixing old synthetic fabrics with other old fabrics embellishes the new product and creates new markets for beautiful clothing, hand-woven floor mats, bathroom mats, house shoes, ribbons and more. Luckily, there are fashion designers out  there using their creativity to repurpose the plastics we already have created, instead of sending old clothes to landfills and oceans. For example, leading fashion brands and manufacturers are working to transform the way they produce jeans, tackling waste, pollution, and the use of harmful practices.  Consider buying these types of products instead of brand new items.  By doing this, we can create a circular economy and produce sustainable fashion. Learn more about it here and watch the video here.
  
• consignment shop here in Wellesley and many in neighboring towns such as this one in Natick and few in Needham and Newton too where you can find pre-loved fashion and reduce the amount of plastic created.  There are many children and men’s consignment shops as well. 

We welcome your creative ideas and suggestions. Email us with your suggestions

Big thanks to Enku for inspiring this blog post and bringing this important topic to light with research, as well as Kelly for some good tips!