Bloom
Yael Bloom
Jessica Conrad
November 13, 2012
Is Your Favorite T-Shirt Actually A Danger To The Eco-System?
Fashion is a constantly growing market. Whether you see it on a highway
billboard, being worn by your favorite movie star, or people watching on the street,
fashion is everywhere. Many of us are guilty of consistently finding a new trend that we
have to try and spending an embarrassing amount of money. Fashion magazines come out
monthly. Designers are creating new fashions daily. The fashion “seasons” keep getting
shorter and every department store is always looking for another reason to have a sale. I
have always found it normal that every time I go shopping, the floor plan in every store is
completely rearranged, all the mannequins’ outfits have been replaced, and all the apparel
the store was selling before seems to have magically disappeared to make room for new
clothes. If the styles change so fast, and each individual store has to provide to thousands
of other customers like me, what quantity of materials are we consuming? I began to
wonder where all these materials come from and how they are affecting our environment.
We need to be conscious of what types of fabrics we are buying to and limit the amount
of shopping done because most clothing is unsustainable and is creating immense
amounts of waste that is deteriorating our environment.
The industrial revolution engendered the modern textile industry during the
1700’s. Machines were invented during this time period in order to to be able to mass-
produce materials to make cloth, dramatically changing the clothing industry forever.
Previously, clothing was handmade by an individual seamstress in people’ homes and it
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was not as easy or cheap to come by. The spinning jenny and the spinning mule were the
first inventions of the revolution that made cotton spinning much quicker and efficient
(Industrial Revolution). When the development of steam power and iron making came
into play, factories were built and the textile industry began. Now, the fashion industry
has only grown in size and immeasurable amounts of material can be created due to
modern machinery. Due to increases in modern technology in social media, fashion
trends can change quickly and be demonstrated to the public instantaneously. “The
breakdown of the traditional fashion “seasons” into a greater number of shorter cycles
has reached its physical production limits and represents an unsustainable model for the
long term (Black).
A large problem with the fashion industry is the mere amount of clothes being
fabricated daily. Fashion has also become cheaper due to foreign factories for Western
companies, resulting in an increase in supply. Nowadays, just one country’s textile
industry can produce 3.1 million tons of CO2, 2 million tons of waste, and 70 million
tons of water squandered each year (Safia, 20). This is a growing problem because we are
using natural materials from the earth and “More than anything, the sheer amount of
production is a problem – it has been calculated for example that the Earth could not
produce enough natural fibers to provide for the present-day demand for new clothes”
(How Many Do We Need?). This demonstrates that the textile industry could easily come
to a crash at the rate it is going. The groundbreaking transformation of the fashion
industry from an individual’s market to mass manufacturing is an important reason for
why the consumer and the textile industry needs to be more conscientious of the impacts
the production is having on the earth.
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Bloom
The fashion industry uses many different kinds of fabric to create the clothing we
wear. Yet tons of the fabrics that are used regularly are not decomposable and are
destructive to the ecosystem. Nylon is a silky fabric that is cheap, manmade and
commonly used for clothing. Nylon is created from petrochemicals (chemicals derived
from petroleum), which is crucial source for our modern day world (Environmental
Impacts). When nylon is being contrived it creates a gas called nitrous oxide, “a
greenhouse gas 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide” (Environmental Impacts).
Nylon is also not biodegradable and uses large amounts of energy. Another manmade,
non-recyclable fabric is polyester. It is mostly used for apparel and although it is more
durable than most materials, it feels much less natural. Manufacturing polyester wastes
large amounts of water and is also created from petrochemicals (Environmental Impacts).
Rayon is an alternative synthetic fabric that works as an artificial silk. Rayon is not only
made from dangerous chemicals, but also the wood pulp of trees. This means that forest
areas are cleared to create plantations to provide the wood pulp (Environmental Impacts).
This material is extremely wasteful in the loss of natural trees and forests for these
chemically engineered trees that will be cut down as well. A natural fiber that is
surprisingly harmful to the environment is cotton. “Cotton is the most pesticide intensive
crop in the world” (Environmental Impacts). The pesticides used in cotton are actually
extremely dangerous to humans and people die every year from them. On top of this, the
pests that are being warded of by the pesticides grow immune to them every year, require
the farmers to put even more chemicals on the cotton (Minney, 22). Cotton fields take up
immense amounts of land and the cotton itself is often genetically modified (Problems
With Conventional Cotton Production). All these fabrics are evidence of the hazard they
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are on the environment, and the more they are produced, the bigger danger it is to our
earth.
Although it is scary to think of all these materials that are constantly damaging the
atmosphere, there many fabrics that can offer a solution. Organic cotton is probably the
most commonly known fabric that is 100 percent natural and good for the environment.
“Organic cotton is 90% less toxic than conventional cotton” (More Sustainable
Fabrics). Threads for Thought© is an example of a company that uses all natural organic
cotton for their apparel. They have managed to become extremely popular in the fashion
world, proving that sustainable fabrics can still be trendy. Another material Threads for
Thought© uses is recycled polyester. Recycled polyester is polyester created from
recycled water bottles. This is a great resource because it reusing something that would
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