Last semester I took a class in which my professor focused a lot on sustainability specifically within the fashion industry. I hadn’t ever heard too much about sustainability, but after taking this course, it suddenly opened my eyes to a part of the fashion industry I had never even thought about. Through the course of 15 weeks, I learned so much that I may have never known about if I weren’t a fashion major, which got me thinking, do other people know the effect their clothing is having on the environment? And not just on the environment, but on people living in third world countries as well. There is so much information out there on why one should choose sustainable clothing, and you could be doing your research for days. This is why I compiled a small list of some of the most striking facts and statistics on how the fashion industry is affecting our environment and our people.
Clothing is ending up in our landfills
Each year Americans are estimated to throw away around 70-80 pounds of clothing per person. The majority of that clothing ends up in landfills where any synthetic fibers could take hundreds of years to decompose. Clothing isn’t the only problem, however. Any sort of textile waste is adding to the nearly 21 billion pounds the United States sends to landfills each year.
Just because it is organic doesn’t mean it isn’t harming the Earth
The amount of water used to make 1 cotton t-shirt is 2,700 liters. Just for ONE shirt. You may be wondering how you can change that, and the answer is to use basic water saving techniques like turning off the faucet when brushing your teeth or taking shorter showers. Every little bit counts.
Know who made your clothes
Across the world, nearly 75 million people are working in factories to produce our clothing. The hours they work are long and grueling and in extremely poor conditions with very little pay. While many may think that making clothing is not a dangerous job, that is just simply not true. The chemicals in the air in these factories are extremely harmful to workers to be breathing in daily, and often times the factories are very hot. The fourth largest industrial tragedy happened in the fashion industry. The collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh happened on April 24, 2013, killing 1,138 people and injuring thousands more. Innocent workers lost their lives that day due to factory owners being more focused on making a profit than on the safety of their employees.Â
Educate yourself on brands
When it comes to buying clothes, it is so easy to want to follow the trends and shop at fast fashion companies such as Forever 21 or H&M, however, once you learn more about sustainability you may change your mind. Yes, the clothing is cheap, but the quality is also not there, and you often only end up wearing the item a few times before having to throw it out. This then adds to the growing pile of textile waste in our landfills. However, if you research your brands and chose ones that practice sustainability and are transparent about the factories in which their items are produced, you will likely end up with better quality that will last you a much longer time. At the end of the day, you have to decide what is important to you when it comes to shopping. Is it cheap trendy clothes or good quality clothing that isn’t harming the Earth or other people?
The fashion industry is one of the largest industries in the world, and it isn’t going away. In order to save it as well as our planet, we need to start focusing on how to better it together. While it may not seem as though one small action by you will make a change, if we all make a conscious decision to try to do better, we just may succeed in saving our world.