July 01, 2021 0 comments

Polluting industry: textiles

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Clothing recycling is a real issue. Rarely addressed, it is nonetheless a serious problem. Indeed, the textile industry is highly polluting. Throughout this series of articles, we will establish several observations. On the one hand, the impact of the textile industry on the environment, and subsequently, the various solutions and avenues available to us! As we have written several times in this blog, the textile industry has a major impact on the environment. It is reportedly the third most polluting industry globally. Every year, it produces billions of tons of textile waste dumped into nature. The overconsumption of fashion products pushes us to constantly renew our wardrobes, to buy more and naturally to throw away more. Fortunately, there is growing awareness among consumers who are now exploring methods to repair, reuse, and recycle their end-of-life clothes. Here, we give you the reasons why it is vital for the environment to embrace recycling and upcycling.

A real ecological disaster

The textile industry accounts for 2% of greenhouse gas emissions, or approximately 1.7 billion tons of CO2 per year today. By 2050, it will represent a quarter of the planet's carbon budget, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. And the harmful aspects of this industry don't stop there. From production with the use of chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, or dyes... to distribution with products subcontracted in Asia that travel halfway around the globe to end up in our stores in Europe. For example, a pair of jeans travels an average of 65,000 km from the cotton field to the retail store, which is 1.5 times around the planet. It pollutes more than global air and sea traffic combined, and it will cause more damage if the current rate of consumption continues.

The textile industry and environmental pollution

Textile waste, as we mentioned, amounts to nearly 4 million tons dumped annually in Europe. This is enormous. Other interesting facts: 100 billion tons of clothing are sold on the continent, and only 20% of these clothes are recycled, with the remaining 80% ending up in landfills or being incinerated. Most of the clothes we have in our wardrobes are not worn. However, the purchase of new clothes never stops. Brands release ever more collections, and ever more textile waste is dumped into nature. To give you an idea, a dumpster full of clothes is thrown away every second worldwide. And this has a strong impact on our environment. Learn more about Peau-Ethique

Textiles - the third largest water consumer in the world

This is also what the textile industry is: the 3rd largest water-consuming sector in the world, after wheat and rice cultivation. Cotton cultivation requires a significant amount of water. Thus, to manufacture a cotton T-shirt, approximately 2720 liters of fresh water are needed. And it takes 3 times more, or 7500 liters of water, to produce a pair of jeans. I don't know if you can grasp the scale, but that represents nearly 10 times the 730 liters of fresh water a human needs to live, and 285 showers. Textiles still account for 20% of global water pollution. And the disaster goes further. For the care and washing of clothes after purchase, millions of tons of chemical residues and plastic microfibers (the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles) are discharged into groundwater, streams, rivers, and oceans.

A social, economic, and human toll

The textile sector employs 75 million people worldwide. It generates a lot of money, to be sure, but it is unevenly distributed among the various stakeholders. In many countries where multinationals (for profitability reasons) subcontract the production of clothing, the social and human consequences are sometimes terrible: exploitation of children and women, precarious wages, and indecent working conditions. Exposed to the toxicity of fabrics, accidents in factories, and lack of protection, hundreds of workers lose their lives. We all remember the Rana Plaza tragedy in 2013, with more than 1200 deaths. Women represent 80% of workers in the global textile industry. With a daily working volume of 12 hours, they earn about 1.5 cents per piece. That's 0.6% of the price of the finished product. To help you visualize this: for a T-shirt sold at €29, the female worker in Asia who makes it earns 18 cents. All these reasons mean that many consumers are becoming aware of the impact of this pollution on the environment. Thus, several actions are being implemented to make the industry more ecological and fair for everyone. This primarily means buying better and less. In our article here (fair price), we already talked about fair price. This is the price that guarantees fair remuneration for workers and producers. But it is also the price needed for a quality garment that will stay in your life for a very long time. And another tip: opt for second-hand. Many solutions exist for recovering and reusing old clothes, such as thrift stores, Vinted, and others. And there's our solution of the day: the recovery and repair of end-of-life clothes: upcycling. We'll explain all of this in our next article.