I know what you’re probably thinking… “Alysha, why does this even matter… like, who cares if fashion is
As many of us have heard from some source or another, global warming is happening right now and it’s happening fast. The second worst contributor, only to oil companies, is the fast fashion industry. Yup, it’s true. Our need for the consumption of clothes is
How you may ask? How could clothes possibly be the second-worst offender of contributing to global warming? Easily.
- INTO THE GARBAGE IT GOES— Many of the clothes we donate or toss in the garbage end up filling landfills. According to the EPA, the average American alone throws away 81 lbs. of clothing a year. YES, 81 POUNDS PER PERSON.
- 52 MICRO SEASONS— The fast fashion industry has 52 micro seasons a year. That averages out to 1 season per week. Ridiculous, I know. This encourages us to buy and buy some more when there are new things every week or even every day.
- One word: POLYESTER— Polyester, may quite possibly be one of the worse fabrics ever created. Every time it’s washed it releases 700,000 micro-plastic fibers into our water. 700,000 FLIPPING FIBERS.
- LET IT INTO THE AIR LIKE WE JUST DON’T CARE— It probably comes to no surprise that the fashion industry releases millions of CO2 emissions into the air. 1,715 million tons in 2015 in fact. In simple terms, this damages the air we breathe and causes the earth to warm up (greenhouse effect).
- PARCHED— The amount of water it takes to create just one garment is horrendous. 715 gallons of water, just to make 1 t-shirt. For reference, even if you drank 1 gallon of water a day, it would still take you almost 2 years to drink that much water.
I have attached below the sources where I gathered this information if you would like to continue to read more:
Sources:
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2018/01/ready-waste-americas-clothing-crisis/
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/jun/23/five-ways-fashion-damages-the-planet
