Major textile companies have succeeded in convincing millions of people in Spain (and the rest of the Western world) that they need to change their clothes every few months. This is the foundation of your business. In addition, the idea permeated that it was inappropriate for civilized people to wear a garment from the previous year. This negative trend leads to the obligatory purchase of clothing and, as a result, large emissions into the atmosphere, as well as the generation of large amounts of waste. is it a call fast fashionessentially consists of buy-at-buy-throw. Of course, always under the charm trap low cost.
The numbers are impressive: clothing production saw its real rise between 2000 and 2014 as it doubled directly, according to the United Nations. Consumers began to buy 60% more clothes and wore only half of what they used to be. This trend continues today. Currently, 60% of all clothing produced ends up in landfills or incinerators in less than a year; Every second, a truckload of used clothing is thrown away or incinerated..
Reports on the textile industry revealed the high impact of fast fashion. it also includes the deplorable conditions of labor exploitation in many southern countries. All in order to be able to sell en masse and unnecessarily in rich countries. But most impressive are the devastating figures on its environmental impact comparable to that of the oil industry. According to a 2019 UN study, world clothing production is currently an industry “responsible for 20% of total water wastage globally.”
The same report states: It takes 7,500 liters of water to make a simple pair of jeans, which is roughly the same amount of water a person has been drinking for seven years.. It takes about 2,000 liters of water to make even a cotton T-shirt. It’s only in recent years that techniques have begun to emerge that reduce such impressive amounts, yet the volume of water required for a single garment is huge.
Through the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD),Clothing and footwear manufacturing produces 8% of greenhouse gases. In addition, “the fashion industry produces more carbon emissions than all international flights and ocean shipping together with its consequences on climate change and global warming”.
Giant clothing dump in the Atacama desert
Additionally, it is an incredible waste generator. An example is the remote Atacama desert in Chile. It is a virgin and unspoiled area with magnificent sky. In fact, its mountains are home to some of the most powerful telescopes in the world.
But this place is also home to a large used clothing dump. It is clothing produced or imported from many countries. Because, obviously, this is also a globalized industry making a t-shirt made in China that might end up in Chile. At least 39,000 tons end up as garbage hidden in the desert in the region High Hospice, in the north of the country, one of the final destinations for “second hand” clothing from fast fashion chains or clothing from past seasons.
“These clothes come from all over the world”explained to AFP Alex Carreño, a former worker in the import zone of the port of Iquique, lives next to a clothing dump. “What doesn’t sell to Santiago or go to other countries (like Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay for smuggling) stays here because it’s a free zone,” he said.
“The problem is that clothes are not biodegradable and contain chemical products, so they are not accepted into municipal landfills,” said Franklin Zepeda, founder of circular economy company EcoFibra, which has a manufacturing facility in Alto Hospicio. insulation based on this disposable clothing.
There are more and more clothes buried underground with the help of municipal trucks to prevent highly toxic fires caused by chemicals and the synthetic fabrics that make up it.. But buried or visible clothing also releases pollutants unique to the desert ecosystem into the air and groundwater. Fashion is as toxic as tires or plastics.
50,000 million garments are thrown away one year after they are produced
Fashion brands today produce almost twice as much clothing as in 2000.Most were done in China and other middle-income countries such as Turkey, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. The industry employs 300 million people worldwide. But incredibly According to the report of a specialist workshop, 50,000 million garments are discarded after one year. It was published a little over four years ago from the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Textiles fall into two broad categories: natural and synthetic. Production of products such as cotton and wool from plant and animal sources is largely stable, although slowly increasing. In its place, Fiber production based on polymers, especially polyester, increased from about 25 million tons per year in 2000 to about 65 million in 2018., according to the NIST workshop report. Taken together, these trends have a surprising environmental impact.
According to conservation and consumer organizations, this sector is one that awaits urgent change, but for this The fashion industry will try to embrace more of what is known as the circular economy. This will involve at least two things: refocusing on making things permanent, thereby encouraging reuse; and scale technologies faster for sustainable production processes, especially recycling.
Some of this change has already begun. in SpainGoing no further, more and more companies are using recycled materials to make their clothes and fabrics, starting with plastic as a raw material. The consumer, for his part, has the ability to choose between one production model or the other.
Reference article: https://news.un.org/es/story/2019/04/1454161
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