Fabric waste

I have decided for my theme for my sustainability project i am going to be looking at fabric waste. personally i think this is one of the biggest issues with the fashion industry currently which has been created through our 'throwaway' society that bases their styles off current trends.

I have done some research into fashion waste and here are some of my most significant findings. -

- 85% Of Our Clothes End Up In Landfills Or Burned.

- 200+ years for the materials to decompose in a landfill

- when textiles waste decomposes it releases methane gas which is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gasses speed up the rate of global warming. Toxic chemicals and dyes leak out of fabric which can make soil become infertile meaning plants cannot grow in it, this can also have more consequences such as when plants can grow as the produce becomes poisonous. When chemicals and dyes leak they can run into rivers which lead to water habitats being destroyed.

This image above shows a river is next to a textiles landfill site. it has been extremely polluted by dyes and chemicals from clothes.

- Shoes can take up to 1,000 years to break down.

- 95% of textiles can be recycled, however only only 12% ends up actually being recycled.

- For every 2.3 million tons of clothes which are recycled instead of being thrown into landfill is the same as taking 1.2. Ill ion clothes off the road

- 35% of materials in the supply chain , which never get sold , end up as waste and get thrown into landfill.

- In 2020 it was reported consumers throw away 60% of their clothes in the first year.

- Most of the textiles landfills are located China, India, and Cambodia. Chile has one of the largest textiles land fills on the world. It is located in Chiles Atacama desert. This is because the area contains very little residents nearby and it is classed as a ‘free zone’ meaning the waste and goods can be transported there with very little tax added. Subsequently large containers of the merchandise are brought for very cheap. The garments which can be resold are taken out leaving the rest to create dunes of textiles in the desert.

This image below is of the landfill site in Chile.

- soot from open waste burning had a global warming impact equivalent to between 2% and 10% of the global emissions of carbon dioxide. Unless addressed, this problem is set to worsen as the amount that we throw away is expected to increase by 70% by 2050

This image above shows the unsafe conditions which textile's are burnt and how they are burnt in a very large scale.