Clothing is a source of human comfort, protection, and expression. But making much of our clothing involves greenhouse gas emissions, pesticides, petrochemical production, soil degradation, landfill waste, microplastics, waterway pollution, animal cruelty, and toxic chemicals.
Fashion accounts for nearly 10% of global carbon emissions — more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. The raw materials for textiles require huge swaths of agricultural land or the production of fossil-fuel-based synthetic fibers. Moving all these materials and products around the globe is energy-intensive.Â
Fast fashion — Inexpensive clothing, marketed as nearly disposable — has warped our understanding of the true cost of textiles for our planet and the people who make them. Accelerating production and disposal lead to another problem: 92 million tons of textile end up as waste every year.
Our access to inexpensive clothing takes a huge toll on workers as well as the environment. Most brands don’t pay workers enough to live on. Besides low wages, wage theft, and even forced labor, many highly skilled garment workers are also disproportionately impacted by floods and heat from climate change.Â
There are better ways to make the clothes we need and want.
Reducing fashion waste
In New York City alone, 200,000 tons of clothing, shoes, accessories, and linens are discarded every year – 6% of the city’s total waste stream. According to FabScrap, https://fabscrap.org/
commercial sources generate 40 times as much textile waste as turns up in residential waste.
FabScrap’s mission is to offer New York designers and producers the opportunity to properly recycle their unused materials and make them available for reuse. The organization works with multiple designers and brands to maximize their fabric’s value. FabScrap gives students, artists, and crafters access to high-quality materials that would otherwise be sent to a landfill.
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Protecting workers
Remake’s https://remake.world/ mission is to connect garment workers, unions, and activists and pressure fashion brands to bring equity and sustainability to the industry. Current campaigns include Stop Union Busting, directed at subcontractors producing for Coach, Fossil, Michael Kors and others, and Make Amazon Pay, demanding that the company safeguard the health and safety of employees working in extreme heat. The group advocates for legislation to protect workers and sponsors a No New Clothes challenge for consumers.
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Consuming and disposing with care
Shopping second-hand reduces global textile demand and all the environmental burdens associated with it. On the other hand, buying online can increase demand because so many online purchases are returned, and as much as 25% of returned items wind up in landfills.Â
When you’re ready to say goodbye, giving clothing to other people who you know can use it should be the priority. That’s because many donations to large thrift-store chains are shipped around the world to secondhand markets in other countries, downcycled into industrial rags, or sent to the landfill. If you can’t swap it, sell it, or repurpose it yourself, donating to a place like Goodwill or the Salvation Army should be the last resort. Or check for textile drop-off locations at New York City farmer’s markets. Another option: NYC’s Sanitation Department will provide a free textile collection to apartment buildings. Check  https://www.nyc.gov/site/dsny/collection/get-rid-of/clothing-household-fabrics-accessories.page for drop-off sites and collection information.
Swapping your clothes
Clothing swaps keep your local community’s clothing in circulation for longer. This can be as simple as getting a few friends together, or it could mean arranging events open to larger groups. Swapping connects unwanted clothing directly with people who will wear it, and it builds community in the process.
Buying secondhand online
There’s more to secondhand clothing than thrift stores or Goodwill. Online options keep expanding. Because kids quickly outgrow their clothes, Left Knee Patch https://leftkneepatch.com/ wants to make it “cool” for parents and kids to keep those items in circulation. Left Knee Patch collects, repairs, and sells children’s clothing and aims to educate parents about the environmental costs of buying new. https://www.trashie.io/how-we-recycle Trashie’s Take Back Bag program goes further: customers can fill a bag with unwanted textile products and get credit toward purchases of pre-owned clothes. ThredUp www.thredup.com offers used clothing on a consignment basis.Â
Love your clothes for longer: Visible mending
Many of us grew up believing that clothing repairs should be as invisible as possible. Visible mending turns patching up fabric into an art form. Here are some resources to learn more about this creative approach to restoration.Â
https://www.beljacobs.com/old-content/the-art-of-visible-mending-a4x5k
https://www.thecommons.earth/blog/6-types-of-visible-mending
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/22/1177552573/extend-the-life-of-your-clothes-with-visible-mending
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