Ellie’s Climate Conscious Column
By Ellie Bavier, Cover Art by Emma Borrow
As consumers of fashion, it’s vital to understand how our choices effect our planet. Climate change is an undeniable and imminent problem, and our overconsumption, waste, and manufacturing culture has contributed significantly. We destroy forests, pollute rivers, fill our soil with fertilizers, and dump our discarded garments in landfills.
As much as this blame can be placed on the companies themselves, we are all responsible for supporting them through our buying and discarding habits. While we choose to purchase clothes at a rate higher than ever before, we are also throwing out our clothes at an alarming pace. Pollution from the garment industry is the second worst contributor to global warming, following only the oil industry.
The fashion industry affects many different precious resources and directly impacts the environment through water pollution, carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, and landfill waste. According to Sustain Your Style, (SYS), water pollution uses up 1.5 trillion liters of water annually. This water is used for dyes and then polluted by the chemicals it interacts with. Another impact of synthetic fibers is the release of plastic microfibers from clothing. These pollute the air and water. The fashion industry also contributes to greenhouse gasses and is responsible for 10% of all carbon emissions. Although more environmentalists are focusing on the fashion industry to lessen this effect, fast fashion is still surprisingly on the rise, and with that comes an increase in textile waste. SYS also records that fashion has become more disposable, as more than, “1 garbage truck of textile waste is made every second.” And according to Business Insider, “85% of all textiles go to the dump each year.”
These statistics are alarming and scary, as they should be. It’s easy to not know what to do. I’ll be the first to admit I have a bad online shopping habit. As I learn more about the fashion industry’s pollution, I am starting to critically look at my consumption habits. Fortunately, there are a plethora of ways to become a climate conscious consumer and to develop better habits. The mission of this column is to help inform college fashionistas of their shopping habits and the fashion world as a whole, while providing resources and practices to combat the industry’s effects on our planet. It’s a bewildering place to start if you are just beginning to research climate change, but hopefully with these tangible monthly steps, your decision making will be a bit easier.
One easy way to start is with the app, Good on You. Good on You researches and rates fashion companies based on their ethics and policies in regards to the environment, their labor policies, and animal welfare. The rating system is on a 5-point scale from a low score of 1 (“We Avoid...”) to a high score of 5 (“Great!”). Users can look up companies that they are interested in and read about their manufacturing and distribution practices. They also publish articles that recommend brands for each specific item of clothing. Good on You does an exceptional job researching companies and providing honest evaluations of their ethics.
More tips on “How To” will be available monthly!