reducing our impact
Buy Less
Buy Clothes From Sustainable Brands
Buy Clothes From Sustainable Brands
Even the greenest garment uses resources for production and transport to your home, creating some environmental impact.
A root of the problem lies in our excessive consumerism: we buy 10 while our grandmothers bought 2.
We tend to think that buying new clothes will make us happy. Maybe we should reconsider some foundations of our lifestyle.
Buy Clothes From Sustainable Brands
Buy Clothes From Sustainable Brands
Buy Clothes From Sustainable Brands
More and more fashion brands are taking into account the environmental and social impact of their production.
The more we demand sustainable clothing, the more will be available.
Pricewise, yes, you will pay more for sustainable clothing than in a fast fashion shop, but now we know what lies behind those very low prices.....
Buy Better Quality
Buy Clothes From Sustainable Brands
Think Twice Before Throwing Out Your Clothes
Because clothes have become so cheap, we no longer care as much about quality. We just buy new garments when the ones we have lose their shape or appeal.
If we stop buying poor quality, it will push brands to improve the quality of their garments. It will also allow us to keep our clothes longer, which is good for our wallets and for the environment.
Think Twice Before Throwing Out Your Clothes
Think Twice Before Throwing Out Your Clothes
Think Twice Before Throwing Out Your Clothes
Don't throw your clothes away. Most of them consist of synthetic, non-biodegradable fiber and will just pile up in a landfill.
- Try to repair them
- Donate your clothes to charity
- Sell them on second hand apps
- Put them in a textile recycling bin
Buy Secondhand, Swap, & Rent Clothing
Think Twice Before Throwing Out Your Clothes
Buy Secondhand, Swap, & Rent Clothing
Instead of buying new clothing, have a look at alternative options:
- Second-hand shop
- Swap clothes
- Rent clothes
Keep An Eye On Your Washing
Think Twice Before Throwing Out Your Clothes
Buy Secondhand, Swap, & Rent Clothing
Washing our clothes has a significant environmental impact. The average household does almost 400 loads of laundry every year, consuming about 60,000 liters of water. It also takes a lot of energy to heat the washing water and run the drying cycle. Here are some tips for reducing the impact:
What's wrong with the fashion industry?
The drop in garment prices over the last 20 years has allowed us to buy more and more clothes. We now have 5 times more clothes than our grandparents had. It felt great until we found out what was hiding behind this trend.
In reality, this continuous accumulation of cheap garments is only possible because of a constant reduction in production costs. This, in turn, has had serious consequences on our health, our planet, and on garment workers' lives.
For more information, click on the following:
The True Cost is a brilliant documentary about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and th
FAST FASHION - the monster in our closets
Fast Fashion: Mass-production of cheap, disposable clothing. Countless new collections per year make us feel constantly out of date and encourage us to keep buying more.
- 80 billion garments are produced each year
- 52 micro-collections per year are released by fast-fashion brands instead of the usual 2 seasons
- 400% more clothes are produced now compared to 20 years ago
- 7 times in average, a garment is worn before being thrown away
- 77 pounds of textile waste is generated per person per year in the US on average
- only 20 to 30% of the clothes in most women's wardrobes are being worn
fashion's environmental impacts
The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world just after the oil industry. And the environmental damage is increasing as the industry grows.
Water pollution:
- 22,000 liters of toxic waste is dumped into rivers by tanneries in Bangladesh every day
- 200,000 tons of dyes are lost to effluents every year
- 20% of industrial water pollution comes from textiles treatments and dyes
Water consumption:
- 1.5 trillion liters of water are used by the fashion industry each year
- 2.6% of the global fresh water is used to produce cotton
- 750 million people in the world do not have access to drinking water
Microfibers pollution of the fashion industry:
- 52% of our clothes contain polyester.
- About 700,000 individual microfibers are released into the water every time we wash a synthetic garment, making their way into our oceans.
- 190,000 tons of textile micro plastic fibers are going into the ocean each year
Waste problem of the fashion industry:
- the equivalent of 1 garbage truck of textiles is wasted every second
- 5.2% of the waste in our landfills is textiles
- 3 years is the average lifetime of a garment today
Chemicals in the fashion industry:
- 23% of all chemicals produced worldwide are used for the textile industry
- 20,000 people die of cancer and miscarriages a year as a result of chemicals sprayed on cotton. Cotton production uses 24% of the insecticides and 11% of the pesticides produced globally
Greenhouse gas emissions of the fashion industry:
- 10% of global carbon emissions
- 70 million oil barrels are used every year to produce polyester
- 400% more carbon emissions are produced if we wear a garment 5 times instead of 50 times
Soils degradation caused by the fashion industry
- the fashion industry plays a major part in degrading soil in different ways: overgrazing of pastures; degradation of the soil due to massive use of chemicals to grow cotton; deforestation caused by wood-based fibers like rayon
Rainforest destruction caused by the fashion industry:
- 70 million trees are cut down each year yo make our clothes
- 5% of the global apparel industry uses forest based fabrics
- 30% of rayon and viscose clothing comes from endangered and ancient forests
working conditions
The fast fashion industry takes advantage of poor populations who have no choice but to work for any salary, in any working conditions. If working conditions improve in one country, companies will just move to another.
Wages in the fashion industry
- In most of the manufacturing countries (China, Bangladesh, India...) the minimum wage represents between half to a fifth of the living wage. A living wage represents the bare minimum that a family needs to fulfill its basic needs (food, rent, healthcare, education, etc.).
Working hours
- Garment workers are often forced to work 14 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their basic wages are so low that they cannot refuse overtime - aside from the fact that many would be fired if they refused to work overtime. In some cases, overtime is not paid at all.
Health and safety conditions
- Employees usually work with no ventilation, breathing in toxic substances, inhaling fiber dust or blasted sand in unsafe buildings. Accidents, fires, injuries, and diease are very frequent occurrences on textile production sites.
Child Labor in the fashion industry
- Because the fashion industry requires low-skilled labor, child labor is particularly common. In South India, for example, 120,000 girls work under the Sumangali scheme, a practice which involves sending young girls from poor families to work in a textile factory for 3 or 5 years in exchange for a basic wage and a lump sum payment at the end to pay for their dowry. Girls are overworked and live in appalling conditions that can be classified as modern slavery.
Forced labor in the fashion industry
- Many cases of forced labor have also been reported along the supply chain of the fashion industry.
Unions restrictions
- In most of these factories, garment workers are not allowed to form unions to defend their rights collectively.
- Governments' laws and specific regulations in export zones where factories are established often restrict the creation of unions.
- Some factory owners also threaten or physically attack unions members or fire them with total impunity.
The Clean Clothes Campaign
toxic clothing
Chemicals are used in every part of the textile production for making fibers, bleaching and dyeing fabrics, etc.....When they arrive in the shops, our clothes still contain a lot of chemicals, even clothes made of "100% natural" fiber. Our skin is our body's largest organ and absorbs anything we put on it, including chemicals in our clothes. These can present a real danger to our health.