If sales are increasing, can fashion be green? – DW – 03/10/2023

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When Lars Mortensen tried to figure out how European lifestyles affect the environment, he found three big problems that lawmakers are trying to solve: the houses we live in, the food on our plates, and the cars and planes we use to get around.

But the fourth – the clothes we wear – has escaped attention for decades.

Mortensen’s textile specifications are not audited by the European Environmental Protection Agency, a sustainability expert. “Most textile products are produced outside of Europe, which means most of the impact is outside of Europe.”

Europeans often wear clothes made in one country and then sent to another after wearing themImage: Wu Changwei/Xinhua/Image Combination

The EU is now pushing to clean up the fashion industry – and its requirements will force retailers to fix dirty supply chains in other parts of the world. In the year It wants all clothing sold on the market to be sustainable, repairable and reusable by 2030. Labels should be clearer. Extra clothes should be made from recycled fibers. “Fast fashion is out of fashion,” the EU Commission said in a strategy it announced last year.

But with greenhouse gas emissions increasing and unnecessary clothes being shipped to ships in African and Asian ports, experts say the industry is actually moving in the opposite direction. To stop the planet’s warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) – the level world leaders have said they will work to achieve – the clothing sector in 2016 There will be 45% fewer emissions by 2030, according to the environmental non-profit World Resources Institute. Instead, it is set to release about 55% more.

Recycling is rare.

The global clothing industry emits 2% of the planet’s greenhouse gases each year – much of it from production. It also uses fossil fuels to produce synthetic fibers and less land and water to grow crops like cotton. Many big retailers like H&M and Zara have based their business model on mass-producing cheap clothes and bringing out new styles every week. Newcomers like Shein have stepped that up with new styles coming out every day.

Some companies, under pressure from customers and investors, have set a target to clean up their business by making the collections they market more sustainable. Fast fashion giant H&M, for example, plans to reduce emissions by 56 percent by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2040. Inditex, the owner of Spanish retailer Zara, plans to arrive there the same year.

Activists and consumers protested against the fashion industry, which emits an estimated 2% of greenhouse gases.Image: Little Heart Visual / Greenpeace

But cutting environmental damage while increasing sales is a tall order. After wearing – and sometimes without – most clothes end up in landfills or incinerators. According to data from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity that pushes to cut waste, 13 percent of the material used to make clothing is recycled in some form. Less than 1% is used for new clothes.

Consumption is “the elephant in the room,” says Elliott Metzger, head of sustainable trade at the World Wealth Institute. “A lot of companies aren’t ready to accept that they can’t keep selling a lot of goods to a lot of people forever.”

Garbage pile up

According to a report by the European Environment Agency (EEA), on average, Europeans annually dispose of 15 kg of textiles – including non-clothing items such as curtains and industrial fabrics – and send about a quarter of that abroad, mainly to Africa and Asia. February. Clothes are collected voluntarily, often in charity shops, and then resold.

In the past two decades, Europe’s exports of used textiles have tripled to nearly 1.7 million tons. But their fate is “highly uncertain,” the EA said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Mortenson, who co-authored the report.

Resist the influx of second-hand clothing

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In Africa, where Europe exports 46% of used textiles, there is a market for cheap, second-hand clothing. But a large and unknown fraction ends up in landfills, or pollutes streets and rivers. In Ghana, a major recipient, one study found 40% was wasted. According to traders in the capital Accra, some clothes are too weak to wear again.

In Asia, where Europe exports 41 percent of its waste textiles, exports are more likely to be sorted and processed. Large recipient countries such as Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates serve as shipping hubs for the rest of the world. The fabrics are usually down. This could mean turning waste clothes into industrial fabrics or building insulation. Untreated clothes are often incinerated, sometimes in industry or sent to landfills.

Decrease in demand

With production showing signs of slowing, the volume of clothing exports is set to rise – and efforts to prevent waste are likely to increase even more.

Today, only a third of EU textile waste can be reused and recycled. From 2025, however, member states must collect them all. Retailers will be partially responsible for funding the system.

But Europe will not be able to process all the clothes it collects without a major push to recycle the continent. Neither will the countries you export to, Mortensen said. “The most obvious fate for textiles is combustion,” he said.

A large but unknown fraction of exported textile waste is thought to end up in landfills or incinerators.Image: Juni Kriswanto/AFP/Getty Images

There are some efforts to fix this. The European Union plans to limit shipping to non-OECD countries, a group of mostly developed nations, if they cannot sustainably accommodate them. It wants to force companies that export waste to ensure that the facilities that receive the clothes are treated in an environmentally friendly manner.

The strategy also tries to solve a fundamental problem in the fashion industry: too many clothes are not made to last. The European Union wants to make clothes easier to repair, design for a long life and fight for a better label for green laundry. Campaigners have criticized fashion brands for using unsustainable practices and highlighting minimal efforts to cut their environmental footprint.

If the business model is based on overproduction, “having a line of organic cotton t-shirts doesn’t really work,” said Teresa Morson of the campaign group Zero Waste Europe. “The most permanent thing is not to buy anything.”

Edited by: Tamsin Walker

Fast fashion lie

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