Reducing our Footprint

Test #1 - Reduce the number of new clothes you buy

Bad news again but nothing we can’t change by our individual choices.

Monash University Sustainable Development Institute report released in 2022 reported that Australians buy almost 15kg of clothes every year and most of it ends up in landfill.  We buy an average of 56 new items every year.  90% of these are thrown out within 12 months.  Australia is the second the highest consumers of textiles per capita in the world. According to the report, fashion consumption is increasing exponentially on a global scale, while the number of times clothes are owned and worn has declined.

Australia manufactures 38 million items of clothing each year, which seems a lot but is only 3% of the fashion that we import.  Fashion is the key word here, it is about trendy clothes, and the status that comes with the latest designs.  Fashion is ephemeral and to be noticed, often rather distinctive, so it becomes out of date very quickly.  We seem to be addictive to fast fashion – to cheap, throw-way, trendy clothes that provide instant self-gratification.  But that feel good feeling that comes from buying the latest thing comes at a very big cost.

Cost of fast fashion

It seems the apparel and textile industry and is responsible for more than 8% of all carbon emissions globally each year and these emissions will continue to increase. 

The production of clothing and accessories is responsible for the considerable water and energy consumption, textile waste, hazardous chemicals and microfibre pollution and very little textiles are recycled.

Consider this, cotton, a seemingly benign fabric, requires up to 3 kilograms of chemicals for 1 kilogram of raw material. Cotton farming consumes 4% of worldwide of nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers, 16% of all insecticides, and 7% of all herbicides and uses almost 100 billion cubic meters of water annually. The alternatives are problematic to; 60% of synthetic fabrics are made of fossil fuels and are cheap to make.

The fashion industry employs 300 million people around the world usually in poor countries. They are often paid very little for their work and often work long hours in unsafe conditions. Their lives are miserable just so we can wear the latest fashions for a few months or so.

Fast fashion is cheap because the fashion industry often uses cheap production methods that don't protect the environment or their workers. The global apparel industry is growing at 6% per annum and in 2020 earned USD 1.5 trillion. But can only continue to grow, exploit workers, ruin the environment if we buy its products.