Journal
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.
The 21st century’s fashion industry isn’t exactly known for being particularly sustainable, but did you know that one of its biggest issues is the sheer amount of waste it produces?
According to a report released in 2017 by the Ellen McArthur Foundation, the equivalent of one garbage truck full of textiles goes to waste every second. The majority of this textile waste is sent to landfill and the rest is usually incinerated.