I’m sure you have all heard the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle”. When looking at this, most people turn to recycling. However, when environmentalists request that we reduce, reuse, and recycle, the order in the words is crucial. Reducing our waste does the most for the environment because it eliminates our consumption that will eventually be waste and it reduces our carbon footprint. Today I am going to talk about an industry that is doing many damages to our environment, damages we may not be fully aware of. I am going to be talking about the clothing industry.
While it may be fun trying on a couple outfits at the mall or browse through your favorite online clothing store, many are unaware of the silent harm that the fashion industry is doing to your clothing. Fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world and contributes to many forms of environmental damage: water, air, and soil pollution. The waste the clothing industry is doing to water is probably the most damaging because in 2015 alone, the fashion industry consumed enough water to fill thirty-two million Olympic-size swimming pools! Why is that? Because it takes over two thousand liters of water to make a single t-shirt. And it takes almost ten thousand liters to make your favorite pair of jeans. This is because they are made from cotton, which is a crop that needs a lot of water. The copious amount of cotton being used also results in damage to our earth’s soil. However, clothing made of cotton is often the cheapest to produce, which is good for clothing brands; especially cheap fast fashion clothing brands that care about quantity over quality. Our air is also affected because of the textile industry from detergent, gases, and other hazardous emissions being released into the atmosphere on a daily basis. And have you ever thought about how clothing stores will change out their clothes with a blink of an eye? Sometimes it is due to an article of clothing being sold out but other times when an article of clothing becomes “out of style” or “not in season”, many clothing companies often toss the clothes away and let them go to waste. In the United States, 10.5 million tons of clothing is sent to landfill every year. It’s mind-boggling to think about how something as simple as what we put on in the beginning of the day can do so much damage to the environment.
Now I am not saying we should discard all clothing and just run around naked. And no it is not a crime to buy an outfit or an accessory when you need it (or as a treat to yourself), but just be mindful about what buying copious amounts of clothing is doing to the environment. It’s about reducing. Next you can try and reuse clothing by buying clothing from a thrift store or maybe just borrow an outfit from a friend. While these environmentally-unfriendly practices need to be fixed by the leaders of major clothing brands, we can still do our part to make the world less full of waste, especially on this earth day.