Just a few facts for you all to think about.......
Seven tablespoons of chemicals are used to grow enough cotton to make just one t-shirt. Conventional cotton represents 3% of the world's crops, yet uses 25% of all insecticides and 10% of all pesticides. The chemical residue can still be present in our clothing so 'pure cotton' clothing is often anything but. And it's not just the environment that suffers, the chemicals poison the farmers and the cost of buying them leads to debt. Pesticide Action Network
Over 14 million tonnes of synthetic fibre are produced each year - a massive increase from almost nothing 50 years' ago. Synthetic clothing is made from oil: an unrenewable resource that pollutes as it is extracted and never rots away. CIRFS [International Rayon and Synthetic Fibres Committee]
Fibre is spun into yarn, yarn woven into fabric and fabric made into clothes in factories spread out across the globe. A garment, in the process of being made, may have been shipped and flown to three, four or even more countries leaving behind a toxic trail of energy consumption and polluting waste.
The dye industry is listed in India's 'hyper red' category reserved for the seventeen most polluting industries in the country where it lies alongside the oil, cement and steel industries.
The 40 million workers, mainly women, in the global garment and textile trade are the ones that pay the price for our love of cheap clothing and fast fashion: long hours, poor wages, unsafe working conditions, no industrial representation, abuse, harassment, discrimination... sweatshop conditions are well documented.
On average garment industry workers receive just 0.5% of the retail cost of clothes sold in the high street. Labour behind the Label
Small scale producers and traditional artisans are also losing out. 12 million people live by handloom weaving in India - the largest industry after farming. But now in many areas three out of four looms stand still, their owners sliding ever deeper into poverty and debt. BBC News Report Sept 05
The problems don't end when a garment has been made. In the UK alone more than one million tonnes of textiles are thrown away every year. Dr. J. Parfitt, WRAP, December 2002
But it doesn't have to be this way:
There are pioneering brands addressing one or more of these issues, showing that ethical fashion is possible.
Brands that use organic cotton - kinder to the environment and the farmer.
Brands that trade fairly with small producers - supporting artisanal production, using the garment trade to overcome, not contribute to, poverty.
Brands that use alternative natural fibres: hemp, silk, nettle, flax - thus reducing the dependence on cotton and synthetics.
Brands that use recycled textiles and clothing - reducing our waste and saving the energy needed to create new materials.
