Journal
The more clothing we wear, the more it ends up being thrown away. Fast fashion has drastically increased the amount of clothing we buy and wear – and how quickly it ends up in a landfill. We increasingly perceive garments as a disposable resource, one we can throw away and replace whenever we want.
Although the financial cost of a frequent disposal of clothing has gotten much more manageable; the environmental toll of this disposal is only increasing.
Currently, 85% of all rejected clothing ends up in a landfill or being incinerated. Only a small fraction is recycled, repurposed, or repurchased.
Leather is a very controversial material when it comes to the sustainable fashion community. While some praise it as a natural material, others critique the overall environmental impact, carbon footprint of leather production and animal cruelty.
However, what is often forgotten is the sheer amount of fashion waste of leather products and their potential to be turned into recycled materials. Leather can be recycled to produce timeless and durable leather pieces with a much lower environmental footprint. Here's how.
Cotton is one of the most popular fabrics globally and undoubtedly the one with a long history. Despite its versatility, durability and popularity, cotton takes a lot of labour to satisfy the current demand for cotton. Because of that, the production is often outsourced to developing countries, where labour is much cheaper.
Currently, 100 million rural households in developing countries are directly engaged in cotton production. As these people are essentially powerless in the grand scheme of fashion production, they're left to be affected by any price fluctuations, rising costs of production, or the effects of climate change.
The fashion industry largely relies on water for many of its activities. From watering crops to dyeing fabric, it would be near impossible to produce a garment without water.
However, considering how much this industry relies on water, it sure isn’t doing much to protect the water sources. Did you know that the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of all industrial water pollution in the world?
Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental threats of the 21st century. We are only now finding out about the impact of our widespread use of plastic and unsustainable synthetic fibres in nearly every aspect of our lives – and the information is worrying, to say the least.
Besides visible plastic pollution, such as plastic straws, fishing nets or water bottles, our ocean is being contaminated with microscopic plastic pollution too – microplastics – which may be even more dangerous.