Fashion: Resource Depletion and Mitigation in production and processing
The total amount of textiles and clothing discarded into household and municipal waste varies considerably between countries and communities. In the US, we’re talking about 9.3 million tonnes, 1.9 million in Germany, and 1.1 million in the UK. Even where people are donating to textile banks or thrift stores and charities, only 40% are deemed reusable. People from lower socio-economic groups and poorer communities actually discard more textiles as waste, and some researchers credit this to cheaper and lower quality clothing.
Where clothing and textiles are discarded into landfills, they contribute to the overall impact of landfill sites and produce air and pollution of groundwater through leachate, which is toxic. Clothing made with synthetic materials make these impacts happen over an even longer period of time, and then even non-synthetic materials like wool can produce high levels of ammonia, which pollutes air and water simultaneously.
As I develop the “case studies” function of this site, where I want to highlight how small business owners I’m speaking with are approaching sustainability with me at Ampersand, I wanted to use this blog post as a space to identify a number of resources being depleted or abused by the fashion industry today, and provide a starting point for fashion designers to self-assess how they could re-think their impact.
Fibre processing
To start, not all processes or chemical treatments to clothing specifically, can be avoided altogether. For business owners looking for a quick talking point or PR line to give to consumers, this is arguably the hardest hill to climb (and thus often avoided), but it is also arguably the space where the most work needs to be done. Some designers who are doing the most work in this space are minimizing the number of steps it takes to process certain materials (bleaching, dying, etc), reusing their dye baths as a more effective and minimal production technique, choosing processing chemicals based on their overall lifecycle risk rather than cost or efficiency alone.
Designers should watch out for scouring processes prior to colouring and finishing, which produce hazardous compounds like biocides and can often be hard to decompose. Dying processes that include toxic chemicals, heavy metals, alkali, salt or reducing agents are also often overlooked, but hazardous elements of textile production processes.
Waste
Waste streams from chemicals into water sources is yet another key environmental challenge for fashion’s production sector. While waste management techniques can intervene at the end of an an industrial chain and contain or help remediate the negative environmental effects of waste generation, some waste management techniques employed by small and large corporations alike, can also be problematic.
Reusing products, even for resale is among the best techniques, requiring the least amount of resources to implement (collection and resale). Repair and reconditioning is another technique, but that does involve infrastructure and labour which can present new challenges in the space of social impact. Recycling, where products are recycled into fibre or polymer are perhaps the most challenging as they are resource intensive, require transportation of materials between processing, and additional chemical processing.
Social Challenges
Protecting workers, providing secure employment and living wages that also respect any worker’s right to freedom of association are baseline, non-negotiables. Moreover, initiatives such as the Clean Clothes Campaign have developed model codes based on international standards that additionally state that hours of work are not excessive, working conditions are decent, the right to collective bargaining is established, there is no discrimination in employment and that there is no child labour used.
The more stringent standard raising the bar in the industry is the Social Accountability International’s SA 8000 Standard. These initiatives additionally emphasize worker education and training, the right to form a union and the involvement of NGOs and independent auditors to monitor standards enforcement.
Research and external resources:
Guidelines, like those by independent textile industry standards like Bluesign can help designers navigate safe and healthy supply chains and include efficient consumption of resources.
Prevention of some pollutants can be seen in the GOTS organic textiles standards, which doesn’t allow the use of certain products (aromatic or halogenated solvents, formaldehyde, heavy metals, PCPs, etc), in its products.
The European Commission provides extensive research on supply chain impacts and resource productivity as part of its IPPC regulation, much of which was used to inform this blog post.
