The Cycle
Excessive fresh water consumption, CO2 emissions, chemical waste, and textile waste are all involved in our clothings' life cycle. Developing countries involved with agriculture and manufacturing are left with toxic waters and high CO2 emissions, which have detrimental effects on people's and the environment's health. The international fragmentation of production and manufacturing has made it extremely difficult to regulate the environmental impact of each step of the process. The countries involved in the pre-retail distribution phase may include a combination of: China, USA, Brazil, Turkey, Bangladesh, Russia, Sweden, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, India, South Korea, and other countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Fiber Production
Each fiber type has some environmental tradeoff between energy consumption, water consumption, and CO2 emissions. As seen in the figure above, polyester is a more popular choice than cotton, which is due to its cost-efficiency. Untreated chemicals, pathogens, heavy metals, antibiotics, and hormones used for fiber production pose serious health and environmental concerns when they leach out into soil or water sources. Even in the parts per billion scale (micrograms/liter of water), unnatural substances can lead to neurologic and reproductive problems, birth defects, cancers, and respiratory problems. These substances additionally pollute fresh water irrigation necessary for vegetable and fruit crops, and can decrease animal, plant, insect, and other microorganism biodiversity.
Manufacturing
The majority of chemicals in the manufacturing process are used in the looming and weaving (lubricants, accelerators, and solvents) and wet processing (bleaches, surfactants, softeners, dyestuffs, antifoaming agents and durable water repellents) steps. Large quantities of textiles (woven fabrics) are wasted in the garment cutting phase and the fabric-design phase.
Consumer
You will inevitably do laundry and notice how much fiber was lost after throwing your load in the dryer. An individual strand may seem harmless, but collectively they can build up when they are released into the environment.
Washing 1 kg of synthetic clothing can release 640,000-1,500,000 micro and nanofibers. When added up across the globe, the cumulative effect of doing laundry causes 500,000 tons of fibers released annually.
Even natural fibers such as cotton and hemp can be harmful because of how they may be coated in chemicals that runoff into the environment.
Post-Consumer (disposal)
Maybe you finally grew out of your middle school t-shirt or you just got bored of your old style. For one reason or another, clothing leaves the closet to be tossed somewhere else.
An annual report from the sustainability consulting group Quantis stated that 70.4 million tons of textiles were disposed in 2020. Of those textiles, 80% went to landfills, while the other 20% went to incinerators. The waste sent to landfills continue to leave environmental footprints when the dyes, chemicals, and microfibers leach out from them into soil and water sources and into the air.
Post-consumer (reused & recycled)
The most popular way this happens is with secondhand clothing. Thrifting and clothing exchanges encourage people to extend the lives of clothes, which in turn promotes less textile and chemical waste. If you always find yourself racking up items to your wardrobe collection, why not go for reusing styles at a cheaper price? Someone else's trash is your gold, am I right 😏✨?
As for the clothes that are neither wasted nor reused, their materials can be re-entered into the cycle for any pre-consumer stage. Undesired items are broken apart for reusable fibers, components (zippers, buttons, etc.), or textiles.
What if…
What if people could safely drink water that don't have lingering carcinogens? What if the cotton farmers and factory workers weren't subject to toxic work environments? What if there was honest transparency behind the companies we buy from?
Try to look out for companies that state where they source their materials and where they complete the design process. Companies that are transparent are far more reliable. I don't automatically believe that these companies are perfect, rather, I feel more comfortable trusting them because of their willingness to be open.