The extent to which the fashion industry is harmful to the environment is already widely known. Emissions from clothing production cause more damage to the environment than air travel and sea travel combined; the fashion industry is second only to oil refining in terms of its impact, and the textile industry is responsible for emitting 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, while about 95% of discarded clothing (according to Greenpeace) could have been suitable for further use or recycling.
The problem is primarily in the so-called fast fashion, giants like Swedish H&M and Spanish Inditex, the Primark chain, which have gained wide popularity precisely due to the fact that they offer trendy clothes at low prices. For the last several decades of their existence, mass-market brands have formed a culture of consumption, when people buy clothes without unnecessary thoughts and exaggerated expectations regarding quality. Mass-market offers the widest range, which is updated almost every week, the new thing is as easy to buy as a cup of coffee (and it often does not cost much more). Limitless choice – a key aspect of the strategy of mass-market brands: for example, Zara, produce about 450 million things annually, H&M – about 600 million; statistics for less transparent Primark to find more difficult. Of the hundreds of millions of items, a significant number remain – naturally – unsold. Their fate is simple: since 2013, H&M has burned more than 60 tons of unsold clothing. To be fair, we should add that not only mass-market brands burn brand-new clothing: in 2018, Burberry burned $36.8 million worth; from 2016 to 2018, Richemont (the group includes Cartier, Piaget, Baume & Mercier) destroyed $563 million worth of unsold watches. Louis Vuitton, Nike, Michael Kors and others also destroy excess assortment.
In fact, no one can say for sure what can be considered truly ethical and environmentally friendly production. But it is clear that recycling alone doesn’t make much difference. It often takes just as much energy to process used materials as it does to produce new ones, and not all fabrics can be reused. There are not yet technologies to preserve the quality of cotton and wool: they lose a lot in strength. It is technically impossible to recycle blended fabrics, because we do not yet know how to separate, for example, cotton from polyester. Another slippery slope is that there are not many recycling centers and the energy-consuming logistics chain is detrimental to the environment.
The biggest blow to the environment, as most people are sure, comes from plastic. This is partly true. It destroys the ecosystem, and plastic particles (so-called microplastics) are present in everything: even when washing clothes, threads are separated and end up in the ocean (and then in your body). But it takes much more water and energy to produce natural fabrics than synthetic ones, which is also not environmentally friendly.