Vegan Food & Living - October 2017

VEGAN FOOD & LIVING OCTOBER 111

T

he environment is at risk from an epidemic.

A fashion epidemic. Trends change, seasonal

colours, trims and accessories – they come

and they go. But what’s left behind, besides the

photographs and industry profi ts, is the impact

upon the world around us. Could our obsession with

clothing be leaving a lasting imprint upon our earth,

more vivid than a tropical, neon Hawaiian shirt?

I suppose it’s a secondary eff ect of today’s

throwaway society. A recent poll in the Guardian

revealed that the majority of us will spend on

average £1,042 per year on our desire to follow

trends, revamp our wardrobes and accessorise

with the change of the seasons. I, like most of my

friends, enjoy a shopping day or two. I fi nd myself

scrolling through ASOS on my phone during a lunch

break, and I live in a vibrant, bustling city centre –

surrounded by shop windows attempting to entice

and attract my spending power on a daily basis. But

not once have I stopped and thought, just how or

where do these clothes all come from?

Make do and mend? More

like buy and replace

Broken zip on your jeans,

loose thread, slight tear, or

a hem coming undone: as a

nation, we are more likely to

simply throw away broken or

imperfect garments than we are

to attempt repairs. Lack of time

or skill? Perhaps. Not everyone

has room for a sewing machine

in a one bed apartment share.

According to WRAP UK, an organisation devoted

to economic and environmental sustainability,

the UK throws away an estimated £140 million of

clothes each year to landfi ll. Another staggering fact

from Oxfam UK tells us we are throwing away 9, 513

garments every fi ve minutes, roughly one in four

purchases. It seems our clothing waste is slipping

under the radar, with nearly every other form of

household waste reducing over the past 5 years, the

amount of clothing ending up in our bins has risen.

Fast fashion

I like the way Caroline Lucas summarised our

throwaway society: “the cost of things do not refl ect

the labour, or the true costs that have gone into

producing them.” I couldn’t agree more. Modern

retailing practices mean that new, aff ordable

garments can be yours within 24 hours of ordering

online. Often, items will be at such remarkably cheap

prices, that the average consumer wouldn’t see the

point in making do and mending.

The fashion industry is at risk of becoming similar

in practice to that of its equally profi table partner in

crime, the fast food industry. As clothing becomes

increasingly cheap, the quality of the garment

often suff ers, meaning pieces last a shorter amount

of time. As a result, we consume more and more

clothes, wasting the unwanted items along the way.

This phenomenon is referred to as ‘Fast Fashion’.

Cambridge University’s study, entitled Well

Dressed (Allwood. J. M. et al, 2006), reports that

while average per capita spending on clothing over

the past decade has increased, the cost of clothing

has decreased by 14%. As a result, we are purchasing

on average a third more clothing items than before,

but for lower individual prices. And as the price

decreases, so too does the lifespan of the clothes.

Embellished truth

The growth in demand is forcing additional strain

upon our environment. It has widely been claimed

that the fashion industry is the second most

polluting industry in the world today, second only

to that of crude oil production. When we think of

the leading causes of climate

change and pollution, we

almost always look to energy

production, animal agriculture

and transportation, while

the clothes we sit in while

typing up our reports on said

environmental off enders,

they fl oat over our heads like

a silk blouse. When we break

down the methodology of the

fashion industry, it plays a key role in driving almost

every ecologically destructive process that occurs on

a global scale. Let’s think about it for a second...

Firstly, there’s the land used for growing raw

materials for goods, including cotton, hemp and fl ax,

and this inevitably involves the use of pesticides that

are then polluted into the environment to protect

said crops, and energy to harvest and process them

down into materials for garments. Next up, the use

of animal products in goods such as leather, glues,

feathers and fur. Not to mention the inclusion of

man-made materials sourced from crude oil or

plastic manufacturing. Finally comes the pollution

from washing, processing, dyeing and bleaching.

All this before we even mention the emissions from

shipping the fi nished items to customers, often done

so on a global scale. Put this all together, and the trail

of destruction that’s left behind after you purchase

that new shirt, well, it’s kind of depressing.

TDF (To dye for)

One of the most polluting processes is the colouring,

bleaching and laundering of garments. For some

One of the most

polluting processes is

colouring, bleaching and

laundering garments

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