The dark side of fashion, when companies pretend to be green. Meanwhile, 100 billion garments end up in the trash every year (photo)

Everyone's marketing is about sustainability. But fashion consumes ever more oil and fertilizers. And its microfibers are polluting the oceans. As for consumers, $500 billion worth of clothing ends up in the trash every year without ever being worn.

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environmental impact of fashion

FASHION ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Green is in fashion, it's true to say. And not only because it's a much-loved color in autumn-winter wardrobes, but also because more and more frequently large textile companies they hide behind projects 'green' di recycling used clothes, Or of reuse of fabrics otherwise destined for the garbage canundifferentiated some marketing tricks.

Greenwashing, it is called, with a precision and clarity typical of English, which often, less hypocritically than Italian, calls things by their proper name: hiding the misdeeds of a multi-million dollar industry behind a veneer eco-friendly. A beautiful bright green.
But things are very different, behind the beautiful photos of the magazines fashion, there is an entire and complex system of an absolutely unsustainable, wasteful economy, both careless and complicit in the precarious living conditions of its workers and the land that hosts it.

From the beginning of the supply chain, the textile industries.

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WASTE IN THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY

A very recent report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, (at the forefront to support, promote and implement theThe circular economy with all the projects connected to it), entitled A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion's future, he comes to estimate that by 2050 the negative impact on the environment of the entire supply chain will increase, in terms of consumption of non-renewable energy: oil to produce synthetic fibres (98 million tons in 2015 alone) and fertilizers to grow cotton.

Not only that, the production of so-called 'fast' fashion clothes, the ready-to-wear of large clothing chains, has a very negative impact on the marine litter, the amount of marine waste, in terms of 22 million tons of microfibers dumped into the oceans, on the ozone hole and climate change. Emissions of greenhouse gases in the production of clothes are impressive: 1,2 billion tons per yearMuch, much more than, for example, international air and sea shipments do in a twelve-month period. Not to mention the quantity of harmful substances and manufacturing waste that enters the air and water, harming human health and the biosphere.

environmental impact of fashion

There's more: approximately 3% of all clothing produced ends up in the garbage due to manufacturing errors, for impressive figures of 80-100 billion garments every yearIn the suburbs of Asian cities, which have become global textile districts, coats, dresses, jeans, jackets, and more accumulate, ending up directly in landfills or in incinerators as fuel for the factories themselves, with disastrous consequences for the health of those who live in those very areas.

TO KNOW MORE: The Big Lie about Plastic: We're Producing More and More of It. In the ocean, we'll have more plastic than fish. On land, we only recycle 20 percent of it.

RECYCLING AND REUSE CLOTHING

Every second in the world ends up in the garbage. the equivalent of an entire truckload of fabrics. Chilling. About half of fast-fashion products are thrown away within a year of their lifespan, and these figures give us a measure of how the disposable nature of the most popular clothing brands is absolutely unsustainable, polluting, and harmful. Significant environmental impact and economic waste: the dossier of the Mac Arthur Foundation, within the Circular Fibres Initiative, estimates losses of 500 billion dollars a year for companies (considering all the environmental impact and costs incurred) due to clothes that are barely worn and immediately end up in the garbage without being recycled. Only one percent of the tissues used are transformed into new garments.

It is necessary to rethink a new way of producing fashion, and of enjoying it, which starts from the producers and changes the mentality of consumers: stop the emergency projects of clothing recovery which are often more advertising than real change, and make room for a sustainable supply chain, which privileges materials assimilable by the environment, contrasts the disposable concept of the clothing, improve the design processes of the garments to encourage recycling (also through the implementation of the collection of used clothing) and finally use theThe circular economy to optimize the use of resources. The British designer Stella McCartney, daughter of the much more famous Paul, is an enthusiastic and convinced supporter of the project, always committed to designing clothes and accessories with fibres and materials that are as recyclable as possible, such as an entire collection created with a textile fibre obtained from the recycling of plastic bags found in the oceans.

environmental impact of fashion

The ball, however, is now in the hands of consumers, who must start reducing theecological footprint of the global fashion industry. How? We can, for example, try to extend the average lifespan of a garment by using it for a longer period of time than 3 years estimated on average, reducing waste in the closet. Or buy as needed, another common sense tip, as well as starting to support and actively participate in projects recovery/reuse/recycling of used garmentsWelcome to flea markets, startups like the very Italian Armadio Verde that "resell" items in good condition through an exchange mechanism, Facebook groups, and swap parties. In short, every idea is worth exploring to save our clothes, sometimes brand new and still with their tags, from a sure end in the trash. And in any case, it's up to us consumers to understand and decipher the tricks of greenwashing applied to the clothing and accessories sector. Change often starts in our homes. And in our closets.

TRUE STORIES OF SUSTAINABLE FASHION:

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