naomijmooney
- Oct 22, 2021
- 3 min read

Is your Fashion on-trend?

Learn | Be Inspired | Act | Share

Despite the glamorous image of the fashion industry, which produces an astounding 80 billion pieces of clothing annually, the industry has many not so pretty impacts including:

Being a large emitter of greenhouse gases- fashion is responsible for over 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. (bbc.com)
The fashion industry produces nearly 20% of industrial water pollution. (Take a look at the short video from river blue on the www.greenfridays4future.com website)
Waste – A measly 15% of textiles are collected annually for recycling and of these only 1% are recycled into new clothing.
Plastics in our clothes – Many of our clothes contain plastics like polyester, nylon, acrylic and polyamide. In fact most new fabrics (up to 64% of them), are made of plastic (friends of the earth.uk). And as we wash these clothes they release tiny fibres (microfibres) of plastic into the water, ocean and ultimately into our food chain.
Even natural materials can have serious environmental impacts. For example, cotton requires a huge amount of water during processing and if it’s not organic takes significant amounts of pesticides and fertilizers to grow it.

If you want to learn more about the issues with fast fashion check out this short video from BBC.com at https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-scotland-58216479

What can we do?

Buy Less. Wear what you have. or if you or swap or sell (or donate) the clothes you aren’t using. Most people only wear a fraction of the clothes they own –research by moving company Movinga looked at 18,000 households and found that more than 50% of the clothes in their closets never got worn. (In some countries like the US, Belgium, Canada this figure is over 80% of clothes going unworn. (source fashionunited.com)
Buy Better materials – organic cotton, recycled materials
Check out clothes sharing platforms like thenuwardrobe.com
Buy garments that are made with recycled materials. The good on you eco app lists lots of brands that contain recycled materials.
If you really love fashion, why not indulge in Vintage clothing or pre-loved clothes?
Consider installing a filter on your washing machine if you can’t give up those polyester fleeces.
Avoid dry cleaning your clothes if you can (or choose a green dry cleaner). Most dry cleaners still use perc (perchloroethylene) which is a toxic chemical (Perc is being banned in dry cleaners in California from 2023).
Wash clothes on a lower temperature cycle (30 degrees will work for most items).
Use less energy by washing clothes and dryers (if you can't air dry them) at off peak times - outside the 7-9 am and 5-7 pm times heavy electricity usage times.