Is Recycling the answer to the Textile Climate Catastrophe? Nice, but no.

  

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Is Recycling the answer to the Textile Climate Catastrophe? Nice, but no.

(Mainly Facts and Inescapable Conclusions-Let’s solve the problem together!)

First, the facts:

What is the extent of the problem?

According to businesswaste.co.uk (source):

• 100 billion new garments are produced annually around the world

• The worldwide fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions

• The UN Environment Programme estimates that today people buy 60% more clothes and wear them for half as long

• Around 20% of worldwide industrial wastewater pollution is from the fashion industry

• It takes around 2,700 litres of water to make one cotton shirt

• Of all the clothing thrown away across the world 57% is sent to landfill

• 25% of global clothing waste is incinerated

• Clothes made using synthetic fibres such as polyester and acrylic are responsible for more than 60% of global apparel purchases

• Synthetic fibres take 80 to 800 times longer to decompose than natural fibres like cotton

The solution to the problem, if we want to face it, lies within the above facts.

Not done yet. There’s more:

• About 5% of landfill space is taken up by textile waste

• Textile production releases 2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually

• Producing textiles creates 42 million tonnes of plastic waste each year

• 10% of microplastics that enter the ocean every year are from textiles

• Around 15% of fabric used to manufacture garments is wasted

• Less than 13% of textile waste is recycled in the European Union (EU)

• 72% of bedding ends up in landfill

• Textiles are the third largest category of waste in landfill sites across India

• Natural fibres break down fastest – cotton takes around three months to decompose, linen takes a few weeks, and silk takes one to two years

• Synthetic textile waste takes much longer to decompose – polyester can take between 20 and 200 years to break down, nylon takes anywhere from 30 to 40 years, and rubber takes 50 to 80 years

And how about fast fashion? It is atop the most unwanted list:

• How many times an item of clothing is worn before being discarded has fallen by 36% in the last 15 years

• Fast fashion brands produce 50% more items today compared to the year 2000

• An average American throws out 37kg of clothes every year

• Buying a single white cotton shirt produces the same emissions as driving 35 miles in a car

• Extending clothing life by nine months would reduce carbon, water, and waste footprints by 20 to 30%

• Using clothes for an extra nine months would also save £5 billion in resources used to supply, launder, and dispose of clothes

Now, let’s look at fiber production:

• Global fiber production per person has increased from 8.3 kilograms in 1975 to 14.6 kilograms per person in 2022.

• Polyester production volumes increased from 61 million tonnes in 2021 to 63 million tonnes in 2022. Polyester continues to be the most widely produced fiber, making up 54% of the global market in 2022.

• Recycled textiles’ market share slightly decreased from around 8.5% in 2021 to 7.9% in 2022. Pre- and post-consumer recycled textiles accounted for less than 1% of the total global fiber market in 2022. (source)

So, is recycling the answer? Let’s see. More facts:

“Textiles collected via clothing containers consist of 55% reusable textiles and an average of 37% suitable for recycling (Boer Group figures). But how much of this is actually recycled? In reality, only 1% of all post-consumer textiles are recycled into new clothing. 12% is downcycled into something of lesser value and 87% of textile waste is pure loss. The amount of clothes that is recycled is thus much lower than the marketing campaigns of the big fast fashion chains would suggest.” (source)

Recycling is not the “magic bullet” for textile environmental erosion. Here are some more facts (source):

• Recycled clothes are recycled mechanically and chemically. Those with more than one fiber are recycled chemically, with one of the fibers being lost in the process

• Even clothes that are 100 percent polyester can’t be recycled forever. There are two ways to recycle PET: mechanically and chemically. Mechanical recycling is taking a plastic bottle, washing it, shredding it and then turning it back into a polyester chip, which then goes through the traditional fibre making process. 

• The polyester chips generated by mechanical recycling can vary in colour: some turn out crispy white, while others are creamy yellow, making colour consistency difficult to achieve. Some dyers find it hard to get a white, so they’re using chlorine-based bleaches to whiten the base, inconsistency of dye uptake makes it hard to get good batch-to-batch colour consistency and this can lead to high levels of re-dyeing, which requires high water, energy and chemical use.

• According to a study by a team from Plymouth University, in the UK, each cycle of a washing machine could release more than 700,000 plastic fibres into the environment. To help prevent microplastic pollution when washing items you can place them in a filter washing bag to prevent shedding during the wash.

So it seems that recycling synthetics like polyester, which the above said were 54% of global production, may be causing more harm than good.

How about donating my old clothes? Is that the answer?

Sadly, no. Only a small percentage of those gently used clothes that you donate actually get worn by those who need them. More facts: (source)

• Consider: only between 10 and 30 percent of second-hand donations to charity shops are actually resold in store. The rest disappears into a machine you don’t see: a vast sorting apparatus in which donated goods are graded and then resold on to commercial partners, often for export to the Global South.

• The problem is that, with the onslaught of fast fashion, these donations are too often now another means of trash disposal—and the system can’t cope. Consider: around 62 million tons of clothing is manufactured worldwide every year, amounting to somewhere between 80 and 150 billion garments to clothe 8 billion people.

• The only way that donating is a solution is for you to give unwanted garments DIRECTLY to someone who needs them, or find an organization who does so.

Above I have presented the facts. Now what should we do and not do (my conclusions)?

• DON’T stop recycling your old clothes by sending to a reputable recycler. It is better than throwing them away. BUT it is not the solution to the problem.

• DON’T think that selling your clothes to a secondhand shop or web store is resolving the problem. You may be making money, but in the end you are transferring the problem to someone else.

• DON’T BUY SYNTHETICS- NONE, NEVER, EVER, NO MATTER WHAT THE AD OR THE COMPANY SAYS. They are a ticket to nowhere.

• DON’T be swayed by the promise of discounts and unbelievably cheap prices. Losing your planet will be expensive.

• DO face the facts. You may be only one person, but you ARE part of the problem, unless you:

• DO buy less and buy better- Practice Wabisabi as your lifestyle

• DO Buy only what you need. ONLY buy clothes you can use for many occasions (multifunctional) and that are sustainable once they do die.

• DO stop buying crap because its “cute” or “so cheap” or both.

• DO look at your closet and take a serious inventory of what you can wear where and when. DO stop buying until you’ve figured that out.

One Amsterdam company, Cosh! Has a “Wear for Life” pledge on their website. It  looks like this:

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Will you take this pledge?

OK, here comes the commercial part, stay with me. Rectifying the situation laid out for you above is the founding mission of Lotus & Michael. “People, Planet, Product”—

• We want to make people so happy with their clothes that they want to wear them all the time;

• Nothing we do harms our planet- NO plastic in any phase of our supply chain; Plant dye fabrics to eliminate chemical pollution;

• If we make Product you love, and is of high enough quality to last, we have contributed to a solution for a catastrophic issue.

•

Still have doubts? Google it for yourself. If you find disputing evidence, send it to us. If not, join us—we have a lot of work to do!

Join us at Lotus & Michael. Your purchase is your statement. www.lotusandmichael.com

11/19/2024