With new suistainable fashion alternatives gaining popularity, I investigate how unsustainable has the fashion industry been so far
Life was easy in the Garden of Eden; Adam and Eve didn’t have much choice in their wardrobes, but at least fig leaves were environmentally friendly. Today, with the advent of fast fashion production, choices are unlimited but while one bin lorry of textiles is disposed of every second, more than 99 per cent of materials are not even recycled.
The fashion industry has rocketed up the leader board of the three most polluting industries in the world, after oil and agriculture, and the impact it has on the environment is likely to get worse if measures are not taken.
“We might end up eating our clothes for breakfast if we don’t act quickly,” says Jo Salter, founder of the ethical fashion brand Where Does It Come From? And she is not far from reality.
According to research of Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 22 million tonnes of plastic microfibres are dragged into the ocean at every wash and these are molecules that consequently enter the food chain.
Jo founded Where Does It Come From? in 2013 to provide an ethical alternative to mainstream clothing. Her aim is to label every item she sells with a code that can be entered on a specific website so the customer can easily find the origin of the fabric, the producer and the sustainability of its garments.
“The point is not to encourage people to buy additional items that are ethical, but to replace their current spend,” she says.
Because of the fast fashion production and turnaround, quantity over quality seems to be the slogan and for this reason clothes are likely to be made of toxic materials, such as viscose.
Viscose is often promoted as an eco-friendly fabric but in fact is produced using a harmful chemical-intensive process, as a study of Changing Markets Foundation shows. Moreover, viscose manufacturers are contaminating local water supplies in Indonesia, China and India by dumping waste into them.
As a result, many fish species are dying, and families have to cope with potential birth deformities and higher possibilities of getting cancer due to the contaminated water.
Jo hopes to raise awareness of this huge problem by encouraging her designers to check that clothing materials have been produced with a minimal impact on the environment.
“Fabrics with high processing will have a negative impact, fabrics like traditional silk and leather are more natural but have a negative effect on animals,” she says. “I am in favour of organic crops like cotton and hemp when grown with consideration for the planet, some cotton is purely rain fed, and they can also have positive effects for farmers, plus they decompose.”
The problem of plastic contamination does not affect only the rivers of developing countries though, but it has sadly been a big issue in London for a long time. According to the research
by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany, the River Thames carries 18 million tonnes of plastic per year.
The worst data came from the association Thames21, which last year has collected more than two thousand five hundred plastic bottles along the river in one day.
Paul Hyman, founder of the watersports school Active360, works in partnership with Thames21 and knows the importance of maintaining the water of the Thames clean from plastic pollution: “I have been into paddle-sports for many years and I can say I have spent most of my time paddling into the water than on a solid ground.
"I saw how our river is blighted by plastic bottles, sweet wrappers, shopping bags and I saw the effort many association put to clean it, but it is never enough to get rid of all of it.”
Active360 cares about the health of the aquatic environment and helps to organise as many plastic clean-ups as possible in collaboration with other environmental charities and like-minded watersports groups.
Paul says: “If only people were taken down to the shore of the river more often, they would probably realise by themselves how tragic the situation is.”
Vegan companies are well-aware of the problems water contamination is causing to the environment especially in the fashion industry and many of them are coming up with alternatives to produce zero-waste clothes.
The Dutch company MUD Jeans for example, uses a “circular economy” to produce their vegan trousers. Victor Massonneau, digital marketing officer at MUD jeans, says: “Our idea is to recycle old jeans to make new ones, which means we do not just use something and throw it away, but we use it and then do something else with it.”
The idea sounds brilliant: producing new jeans by recycling old ones in order to reduce both the costs of fabric and the environmental impact. Sustainable, ecological, but, why call them vegan?
“To make the process of recycling easier,” Victor says, “we decided to get rid of the leather label we usually find on jeans, just to avoid an extra step when recycling. After making this decision, which was driven by the circular aspect of our business, we noticed that our jeans could now be called vegan.”
Vegan clothes must all be sign-posted as “PETA-Approved Vegan” (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Foundation) in order to be declared effectively vegan clothing. Almost two hundred European brands have met the requirements so far; these include clothes, shoes and accessories that contain no leather, fur, wool, skin, exotic skins or any other animal-derived fabric.
The biggest clothing brands, such as H&M, ASOS, Adidas and Marks & Spencer, are not excluded.
H&M for example is picking up 35 truckloads of clothes per day as part of its recycling project, and it has signed, together with other 63 companies, the 2020 Circular Fashion System Commitment to reduce the waste of energy in production and increase the number of garments collected and recycled.
Unfortunately, sometimes recycling is not enough; the leather industry is in fact still occupying an important part of fashion and while every year more than a billion of animals are slaughtered, the leather produced from them is never labelled, which makes the tracking of sellers difficult.
PETA investigators have uncovered thousands of cases where animals have been abused and slaughtered and where unsanitary slaughterhouses were illegally operating without following the animal protection laws.
PETA is chasing the Indian government in particular to take measures in terms of slaughter conditions endured by cows but not many improvements have been made yet.
When it comes to use animal-derived materials, Christina DeGaglia makes quite harsh accusations: “Animals are being used, abused, exploited and killed in the production of leather and fur.
Their very bodies are considered property. Animals become silent objects for human pleasure and in the process, we wear and support their fear and suffering.”
Christina is a 32-year-old freelance fashion designer based in New York. She has recently graduated at the Fashion Institute of Technology and since then she has been trying hard to start her own brand of vegan clothes.
“I start freelancing for a variety of clients, including Elegant Baby, during my last year of college," she says. "But I chose to start designing vegan clothing during the tail end of my fourth semester at the Fashion Institute of Technology.”
She also adds she majored in design for women’s sportswear and it was during her journey as a student that she made the transition into veganism.
“Once I went vegan I realised that being vegan is not only about what I eat. Veganism is a social justice movement which is fighting for the rights of all animals to live with the same basic human rights that we enjoy.”
Christina has always been aware of the dangers leather production has caused to the environment. “We contribute to the environmental damage that occurs from the upkeep of livestock,” she says.
“People in other countries are getting sick and dying because of the production of leather and there are so many aspects and levels in which using animals for clothing not only destroys the life of the animals but also negatively impacts our lives and the planet.”
However, a spark of positivity seems to shine through her words: “We have the technology that allows us to create environmentally friendly and sustainable objects where animals are no longer necessary components.”
She is also confident science and fashion will emerge together for a better future: “Innovative vegan leathers, such as animal-free collagen or PU-based microfiber, are fascinating and it seems new ones are invented all the time.”
She explains most of vegan leathers are taken from natural sources, for example Pinatex is made by using pineapple skin, MuSkin is made from mushrooms and Vegea Wine leather from the grape skins and stems used in the wine making process.
Christina positively believes that wearing vegan clothes will be the trend of the future: “In fact I do not even like to attach the word ‘trend’ in future context because it implies that vegan fashion would be temporary,” she says.
“In order to live ethical, sustainable and respectful lives we must stop using animals for food and fashion and stop exploiting them in all forms. Maybe in the future we’ll come up with a fabric made from fig leaves and we’ll actually return to the origins.”