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 of production costs. This, in turn, has serious consequences on our health, our planet, and on garment workers’ lives.

Fast fashion: the monster in our closets

It has become a challenge to wear a garment more than five times. Why?

1) Garment quality is declining every year. As a result, our clothes immediately look faded, shapeless, or worn out.

2) Trends are changing so quickly that we cannot keep up. We continue to purchase just to stay up to date.

This is 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 Countless new collections per year make us feel constantly out of date and encourage us to keep buying more.

What can we change about it? 

Find out about the available alternatives in the section "How to reduce our impact".

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.

However, there are solutions and alternatives to mitigate these problems. The first step lies in building awareness and willingness to change.

In most of the countries in which garments are produced, untreated toxic wastewaters from textiles factories are dumped directly into the rivers.

Wastewater contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, among others. These are extremely harmful to the aquatic life and the health of millions of people living by those river banks. The contamination also reaches the sea and eventually spreads around the globe. 

Another major source of water contamination is the use of fertilizers for cotton production, which heavily pollutes runoff waters and evaporation waters.

What can we do about it?

• Choose clothes made in countries with stricter environmental regulations for factories (EU, Canada, US...)

• Choose organic fibers and natural fibers that do not require chemicals to be produced

The fashion industry is a major water consumer. 
Huge quantity of freshwater is used for the dyeing and finishing process for all of our clothes.  As reference, it can take up to 200 tons of freshwater per ton of dyed fabric.  

Also, cotton needs A LOT of water to grow (and heat), but is usually cultivated in warm and dry areas. Up to 20,000 liters of water are needed to produce just 1kg of cotton. This generates tremendous pressure on this precious resource, already scarce, and has dramatic ecological consequences such as the desertification of the Aral Sea, where cotton production has entirely drained the water (see pictures above).  

"85 % of the daily needs in water of the entire population of India would be covered by the water used to grow cotton in the country. 100 million people in India do not have access to drinking water." says Stephen Leahy from The Guardian.

Clothing has clearly become disposable. As a result, we generate more and more textile waste. A family in the western world throws away an average of 30 kg of clothing each year. Only 15% is recycled or donated, and the rest goes directly to the landfill or is incinerated. 

Synthetic fibers, such as polyester, are plastic fibers, therefore non-biodegradable and can take up to 200 years to decompose. Synthetic fibers are used in 72% of our clothing.

What can we do about it?

• Choose natural or semi-synthetic fibers

• Buy less, buy better quality and recycle