We all hear a lot being said about eco clothing, clothes being made out of bamboo, Hemp, cotton, natural dyes and we try and adhere to it because somewhere down inside we all care for our fragile environment.
What is Eco fashion?
Is it wearing clothes made of natural fibers? In that case if a several billion people would ask for natural- fiber blue jeans dyed with natural dyes, humanity will have to dedicate millions of acres to the cultivation of indigo and cotton plants just to satisfy the demand – acres that are needed to produce food.
Eco fashion is not just about wearing clothes made out of organic fibers as most of us might think, it is far beyond it.
Clothes made from pesticide free cotton, re used material such as recycled plastic soda bottles; not only the way clothes are made but eco fashion also concerns whether people making such clothes are working in healthy conditions or getting fair wages. It also raises occupational concerns
Grey Side of Fashion:
There are many sides to fashion about which I’m sure majority of us is unaware.
With changing fashion, each cloth that we buy has its own life cycle and this cycle leaves a pollution footprint, causing concerns for the environment and economics, hundreds of miles away from where we would have bought it. That extra piece of cloth that is filling our already overflowing closets is also burdening our environment for its recycle.
Easy purchasing, easy discarding!
Let me put up a question. What do you do with clothes you no longer wear? Throw them away or discarde them . Where do they go from here? May be to a charity and we think we’ve done our bit to save it from getting incinerated.
It might even reach a small village in Afghanistan or poverty stricken land of Africa.
Remember the way our parents who would wear one pair of pant for ages until it wore off, that way clothes reached landfills or for recycling, as it reaches today, but the number has increased manifoldToday fashion is changing by the hour, and the number of people who purchase clothes also discarded them with great ease.
A cloth’s journey
Experts have found out that there are primarily three ways in which a cloth’s journey from, sales floor to landfill has become shorter.
1. Clothes get resold to other consumers at a lower price
Using Internet, people sell clothes directly on auction websites like eBay
2. Charity
A major portion of people, especially in the US, donate their clothes as the US government gives them considerable tax charity shops is on the rise. According to a research about 12-15% of Americans buy from such shops where used clothes are sold at reasonably lower prices.
3. Recycle
But the bigger truth is that only one fifth of the total is used or sold by charity organizations. So charities sell those clothes to recyclers at as cheap as 5-7 cents per pound. The textilers then recycle these clothes into raw materials which are then used in making apparels or non apparel products
Almost 45% of these clothes are used as clothes. Certain brands and rare items are imported by Japan for people who crave for vintage and American high ended fashion.
Those which don’t belong to this category are packed in a bundle and sent to developing countries where these are sold like hot cakes. The rates are fixed as per fashion; mostly for a T shirt with Logo one pays $5.
Talking Economics
Due to falling prices of new clothing in the US and Europe, the exports of used products into Africa, and other 100s of such developing nations will continue to be on the rise. For a small village in Tanzania, these exports are number one import form US. International Trade Commission indicates that between 1989 and 2003, American exports of used clothing more than tripled, to nearly 7 billion pounds per year
Concerns are being raised over second hand market in Africa as it hampers the growth of local industries even when it creates employment in these countries.
Energy Wasted
The amount of energy that gets wasted in the entire process is beyond question.
In a T-shirt’s life cycle 60% energy is wasted in washing and drying. Recycling it constitutes the rest 40%! Not to mention the energy that goes into recycling using chemicals.
Regulations and Standards
To deal with issues related to toxins and deadly chemicals being used in manufacturing of clothes, EU has come up with an option of REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals). Since 1 June 2007 it requires clothing manufacturers and importers to identify and measure the chemicals used in their products at every stage of production from raw material to finished product.
Consumer is the King
A cloth’s cycle has such a wide impact that just setting regulations and standards won’t work. The attitute of buying more when we already have overflowing closets need to change.It has to be an inner voice, with every consumer, who thinks not only about environment, but is humane enough to give a green, clean environment to the future generation, across the globe.
Some facts that’ll make u think:
1. Did u know what goes behind getting that colour in the new blue Levis’ that u just bought? Thousands of workers in China every day, work around the clock, in the process of sanding the jeans to get that look, inhale blue dust form the jeans, which is an irritant to the lungs!
Traditional dying is chlorine based and emits toxins!
2. Wearing that organic cotton we never realized that it requires, 20,000 liters of water per kilogram, it being a water dependent crop.
3. Polyester, a common fiber used in cloth manufacturing, uses petroleum, and the demand for it has doubled, in the past 15 years. Such synthetic clothes require crude oil and emit dangerous toxins in its manufacturing.
4. Patagonia, a US based company which not only recycles clothes, but also makes clothes form recycled PET bottles. An estimated 86 million bottles were recycled and used into apparels, through 1993 and 2006.
5. Second hand markets in the developing countries, where discarded but usable clothes lay in bulks, are sold either by weight or by price tags and they are bought for further sale in the interiors.
6. One might use detergents at lower temperatures to extend the life of a garment.And instead of drying in the machine, line dry them.
7. Ingeo, a polylactide, is made out of corn by-products. International haute couture firm Versace have used Ingeo in their collections
8. Majority of the clothes that adorn designer outlets are manufactured in developing countries where laborers including child laborers work in inhumane conditions for 10 hrs to get $1.
Via: Offbalance
