The talk by Heather Kaye was a very honest and informative overview on the fast fashion industry and how unsustainable it is. Prior to her presentation and my research I was aware that we had plastic in our clothes but I did not think it was this extreme. I would assume a garment was made of mostly cotton and just a small amount would be plastic. I was very wrong ..
We think consuming plastic bottles is bad enough. Well, it gets worse. A surprising fact that I learnt was that only 30% of PET goes into plastic and 60 % goes to making those garments. The substance is derived from petroleum. Additionally, the process requires large energy and spills CO2, acids, and ammonia into the water supply. Polyester created from recycled materials consumes up to 60% less energy than virgin polyester and can be created from textile scraps or plastic waste.
According to Zara, the cotton is grown using natural fertilizers and pesticides and is certified by the organic content standard and the global organic textile standard, which regulate chemical and water use throughout the manufacturing process. Although terms such as conscious and ecologically cultivated are difficult to verify and might be confusing for consumers.
What does the term “sustainable” REALLY mean? There is no universally accepted definition, and it does not equate to organic cotton. According to H&M, sustainable cotton can also refer to recycled cotton or cotton grown with fewer chemicals and genetically modified organisms. Zara claims that its cotton is sustainable because it is grown ecologically rather than organically.
On the subject of misleading, the Zara Join Life clothing tag has a stamp from the Forest Stewardship council, which is a nonprofit organization that promotes responsible management of the world’s forests. That stamp is only meant for the tag itself, not the entire garment.
Both h&m and Zara have recycling campaigns where you can donate your old clothes from them so it can be resold or reused as other textiles or even be recycled. Even with these campaigns, there’s a catch, and a hidden agenda behind what is said. Recycling clothes and reusing textiles in them is not as easy as it sounds. A single item of clothing is made from many different materials, and to extract each and every individual material is a very costly and time consuming process, and also the technology is not quite there yet in terms of efficiency of this process.
What actually happens is that they resell, reuse and recycle the donated clothing items, but not in the proportions that you might imagine. Over 50% of the items are donated overseas, and the rest are mostly turned into industrial material, burned, or just gets thrown into landfills.
Only 1% of materials, at best, is actually recycled into new clothing, and the biggest reason for that is the lack of technology as I mentioned. Clothing items that are made from one material, or that have multiple materials that can be easily separated, can be recycled in bigger portions.
These fashion giants are investing in recycling research, but according to their annual reports, h&m only spends 0.5% of their profits into it, and Zara spends 0.2%.
There is so much we can do as individual’s to change this model into a circular economy model as mentioned by Heather today such as ensuring that the clothing we buy is durable not disposable, as well as renting the clothes and not owning them which makes the garment last longer and allow it to be used more than a few times. This concept of renting clothes was very helpful for brides here in the UAE. Not only is it cheaper but also it is a garment that is worn once in a lifetime, it has been a recurring theme since 2010 here. Ever since then it has been growing in popularity especially for events where you know that the garment will only be worn once and thrown away. Here is a link of a few of the rising rental companies here in the UAE.
https://www.cosmopolitanme.com/content/26123-rent-designer-wear-for-an-affordable-price-in-dubai
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