By Eline Schaart
May 16, 2019
Source: Politico
Photo Source: Unsplash,
Clothes contribute more to climate change than international flights and shipping combined, and the problem is getting worse.
Falling prices and the rise of fast fashion — knock-offs of high-end designs that are produced quickly, cheaply and in large quantities — have led to growing demand and a tendency to see clothing as disposable, rapidly driving up the sector's environmental footprint.
Europeans have almost doubled the size of their wardrobes over the past 15 years, but about a third of those dresses, T-shirts or pants end up sitting in closets largely unused, according to a recent European Parliament report. Industry and civil society, as well as EU policymakers, say the disposable clothes trend could therefore soon become the subject of campaigns similar to those waged against takeaway coffee cups and plastic packaging.
Producing raw materials — from cotton to artificial fibers — as well as spinning, weaving and dyeing require enormous amounts of water and chemicals.
The level of awareness and action is still at a very early stage. Industry schemes are voluntary, and the European Commission hasn't put forward any legislative plans to reduce the fashion industry's environmental impact.
But there is a growing volume of talk. In March, the Commission identified the sector’s “large potential” to become part of the circular economy, naming textiles as a priority for future work.
Frans Timmermans, the center-left candidate for Commission president and an advocate of the EU's plastics strategy, said last month that if he took over the Commission he would champion a European textiles strategy in order to “tackle microplastics and recyclability." NGOs are hoping that actions follow those words. The next European Commission "must prioritize making fairer, greener and longer-lasting clothes the affordable norm," said Macintosh.
She added: "We need policies that reduce demand for fast fashion and waste generation, ban the ... hazardous substances used to process and dye fibres, avoid the release of plastic microfibres into rivers and oceans, and support new business models such as rental."
Because fashion is so closely tied to consumer perceptions, industry is racing to get ahead of the issue, worried about a potential backlash from environmentally conscious shoppers.
Two-thirds of consumers say sustainability is extremely or very important, according to a fashion industry report published this month. About a third say they have switched brands to those with positive environmental and social practices.
This week, leading industry groups, together with global fashion organizations, presented a manifesto at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, calling on policymakers to “co-develop a European vision for textiles in a circular economy.”
In 2017, the industry had already committed to lessening its environmental impact by 2020 by designing for circularity, boosting the volume of used garments collected or resold, and increasing the share of garments made from recycled post-consumer textile fibres.
But NGOs worry that so far these efforts are non-binding.
“As long as acting responsibly remains voluntary, not all textile and retail companies will do so — and given the climate emergency and ecological collapse, environmental goodwill just won’t cut it,” said Macintosh.
A dirty business
Currently, the industry has a significant impact on the environment. Producing raw materials — from cotton to artificial fibers — as well as spinning, weaving and dyeing require enormous amounts of water and chemicals.
According to Greenpeace's DeTox campaign, up to 3,500 chemical substances are used to turn raw materials into textiles, and approximately 10 percent of those are hazardous to human health or the environment.
Once bought, those clothes continue to have an impact due to the water, electricity and chemicals used in washing, as well as the release of plastic microfibers when clothes made from synthetic textiles such as polyester are laundered.
Simply boosting collection rates doesn't solve the problem. There's still the issue of how to reuse old clothes. Clothing production and consumption produces about 6.7 percent of the global climate impact, according to a 2018 study of the environmental impact of the world's fashion industry by Quantis, a climate consultancy. The EU estimates that together, aviation and shipping account for 4.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
What regulation does exist tends to be aimed at boosting recycling rates. Globally, less than 1 percent of garments are recycled into new clothing, according to the European Parliament paper. The EU has a collection rate of 25 percent, although there are large differences between countries.
Over half of discarded garments are not recycled; instead, they end up in mixed household waste and are then sent to incinerators or landfill, the Parliament's report noted. A lot is also sent to poorer countries which don't have the ability to recycle old clothing.
The EU's Waste Framework Directive, adopted in 2018, requires member countries to set up separate collection of textiles, as well as hazardous waste, by 2025.
But simply boosting collection rates doesn't solve the problem. There's still the issue of how to reuse old clothes.
"The recycling industry does not have the same scale as those for virgin materials," said Mauro Scalia, director of sustainable businesses at the European Textile and Apparel Confederation. That makes recycled materials more expensive than newly produced textiles. It's also difficult to recycle clothing as the process shortens the fibers of natural materials such as cotton, making the resulting fabric less durable. Nor is it easy to reuse cloth made out of a blend of natural and synthetic materials.
But industry is under pressure to figure out those problems. Companies that do will have a competitive advantage with increasingly green-minded shoppers, Scalia said.
"You can see in many companies the initiative [to be more sustainable] to differentiate its offer from competitors," he added.
That likely means an end to today's cheap and fast fashions. "Choosing chemicals, eliminating microfibers, that has a cost," Scalia said.
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