CONSUMERS AND CONSUMPTION

Worldometers have estimated that there are more than 7.5 billion people on the planet and within my peer group each person has estimated to have approximately 300 garments in their wardrobe- this means that there is more than two trillion two hundred fifty billion pieces of clothing on the planet.

The Daily mail has reported the nearly every women in the UK buy half of their body weight in clothes each year, and the average woman in England has 22 unworn items in her closet.

My peer group and I found an estimation of buying new clothing every two weeks.

I found that nearly every person in my peer group has agreed on either giving unwanted clothes to charity shops or trashing them in the recycling bin at their supermarket, however there are other ways to how to get rid of unwanted clothing:

The reasons why we are throwing away our clothing more frequently than a few years ago is because of the fit of the garment (we shrink, we grow, the frequent washing shrinks the garment as well as the quality of the fabric); the colour fades (also because of the frequent washing as well as the dye products itself); the style (fashion is a fast paced industry and this affects the style of our garments); faulty (most discover broken zips, loose hems after purchasing a garment).

We can recycle or reuse our clothing in different ways buy transforming it into something else e.g. bag, blanket or you can customize by amending the style/trims or changing the shape.

THE IMPACT OF WASHING OUR CLOTHES.

Washing our clothes is a daily and regular task that we do in our lives. We have discovered that it can shrink our clothes, fade the colour of our clothes and change the textures of our clothes but garment washing has made a major impact on our environment.

Garment washing pollutes our water systems and has a significant contribution to carbon footprint, just a single synthetic garment washed in a domestic washing machine gives off around 1900 individual fibers, which can end up in our oceans and then consumed by fish which is then consumed by us.

These plastic, 85% manmade synthetic fibers have contaminated the shorelines all around the world. The constructions of synthetic fibers have several toxic chemicals and once they have broken down, they make their way to domestic sewage systems and then are introduced into our water systems.

Most of our laundry soaps and detergents are not environmentally friendly Enzymes, bleaches, perfumes and colorants used in chemical detergents are absorbed into our bodies when they come into contact with our skin. Some of these toxic chemicals have even been linked to cancer, allergies and birth defects. Also many laundry detergent ingredients have promoted algal blooms, causing imbalances in the ecosystem, which has really affected the aquatic life.

Human activities have introduced many gases into the atmosphere like methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, which contributes to a long-term impact of climate change and global warming. The name “carbon footprint” refers to the impact that one activity can do and the extent of what it has done to the environment.

Washing clothing is a major contribution to the carbon footprint, washing and drying a 5 kg load of laundry every two days creates nearly 440 kg of carbon dioxide emissions in a year. For a typical wash at 40°C, 75% of the carbon footprint is attributed to the drying phase using a tumble drier.

Because of the new technology, washing machines use twice as much of water than an older machine does and the dryer process creates more than a tone of carbon dioxide per year, if we completely skip the drying process and use clothing lines instead this would significantly help the environment.

MAN-MADE FIBERS AND NATURAL FIBERS

Man-made fibers and synthetic fibers are chemically modified during the manufacturing process. They are ideal for mass-production to create industrial products such as furnishings and garments.

The chemical compounds in the man-made fibers are known as polymers, polymers are similar to compounds to plastics, rubbers, adhesive and surface coatings, the synthetic fibers consist of nylon, polyethylene terephthalate, acrylic, polyurethane and polypropylene.

Natural fibers also have polymers however; these are biologically produced from the compounds of cellulose and protein. The natural fibers we use are cotton, hemp, flax and more structural fibers like wood.

We cant break down man-made fibers and compost them but natural materials can be returned to the earth known as Biodegradation, these biodegradable fibers are cotton, silk, wool, cashmere and hemp.

http://www.innovationintextiles.com/research-shows-merino-fabrics-biodegrade-rapidly/

It seems that mass-production is the main reasons why we use man-made fibers, they can be quick to produce and in large quantities.

THE TREEHUGGER WEBSITE

The tree hugger website gives the mainstream of sustainability from design to business. It is a digital daily update of the ‘green news ’ around the world giving you a variety of information about new sustainable technology from solutions to product information.

http://www.treehugger.com/design/

THE FASHION REVOLUTION

On the 24^th April 2013 the fashion revolution was born after the disaster in Dhaka, Bangladesh where, 1,134 people were killed and over 2,500 were injured when the Rana Plaza complex collapsed. The revolution has grown into a global movement in over 80 countries, comprising designers, ethical brands, retailers, producers, academics and organizations calling for systemic reform of the fashion supply chain.

The fashion revolution wants everyone around the globe to understand the fashion supply chain and with the help of social media this has and can make a better difference to our environment.

“Who made my clothes?” is there well-known logo and wants every stakeholder in the fashion supply chain to be able to answer this question. A report published in April 2015 by ‘Behind the Barcode’ discovered that 91 percent of brands don’t know where the raw materials come from and 49 per cent of the brands do not trace the factories where the garments are made.

Since the birth of this organization our generation are asking brands even greater questions about the fashion supply chain – ‘Who made them?’ ‘Where?’; ‘What are their pay and conditions like?’; ‘What quality of life can garment workers have?’; ‘What are the environmental consequences of clothing’s manufacture?’; ‘Could things be better?’; ‘What can we do if we don’t like what we find?’.

The transparency campaign enables brands to unveil the whole of their supply chain - from farming cotton to the finished product. The focus is on building trust in that brands are not seeking to leapfrog over suppliers to secure better commercial deals with upstream suppliers, but rather, honest attempts at uncovering who made their clothes and how these were made.

They believe that greater supply chain transparency will help to uncover human and environmental abuses, and that these exploitative practices will diminish as a result.
Transparency is the beginning of the process of revolutionizing fashion.