Fashionista ponderings
Smart stylistas Frances Corner and Tamsin Blanchard have fearlessly thrown fashion into the ring for a healthy environmental debate. Their questions both challenge and inspire, showing how we can change the world with our style choices.
It makes you think
One of the biggest challenges to developing an environmentally friendly garment industry is the ‘end of life’ of clothes, writes Frances Corner, head of London College of Fashion, in her book Why Fashion Matters (Thames & Hudson). We may think that taking our clothes to charity shops or giving them to friends fulfils the mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ but, in reality, passing on our clothes is only one step in a journey that still ultimately ends in landfill. The solutions are known but rarely conveyed in a way that consumers can readily understand and implement. “Manufacturers and retailers can do more and we, as consumers, need to insist that they do,” says Corner. “We should ask for a network of easily accessible collection facilities so that clothes we cannot take elsewhere can be reused and resold in the second-hand or vintage market. We should be able to return our clothes to where we bought them for recycling. Retailers should be required to produce facilities for recycling and other end-of-life solutions. These initiatives could form part of their marketing campaigns. The fabrics and fibres of clothes that are no longer going to be worn could be recycled into alternative products or made into insulation and rags. The fashion industry should be looking at other methods of fibre construction so that even man-made fibre will become biodegradable and therefore part of a closed-loop solution.”
Global fashion brand H&M is one brand that is working on creating a fully circular process (closed-loop) system where nothing is wasted. It has introduced a garment collection service where customers can bring in unwanted clothes to be re-worn, re-used and recycled.
Currently, three groups of fibres are classified as sustainably-sourced materials for the H&M Group: organic materials, recycled materials and other sustainable materials, which represent 20 per cent of the material used in its product.
Water story
It takes 2700 litres of water to produce one cotton T-shirt from crop to shop. It is also estimated that 60 per cent of the carbon emissions generated by a simple cotton T-shirt comes from the 25 washes and machine dryings it will require in its life.
According to Corner, the clothing of the average British household produce carbon emissions equivalent to driving the average modern car 9656km, and have consumed enough water to fill 1000 bathtubs. Yet 30 per cent of these clothes are rarely, if ever, worn. A survey of 15,000 people in 15 countries found water scarcity and water pollution as their top two environmental concerns. “We need to start making the connection between what we value and what we wear sooner rather than later,” says Corner.
Be part of the solution
Caring for your clothes is crucial if you want to reduce the overall carbon emissions in your wardrobe, according to British style director Tamsin Blanchard, author of Green is the New Black (Hachette).
Ditch the dryer in favour of hanging clothes out to dry.
Wash clothes less frequently and at lower temperatures. If clothes need a warm wash, turn the dial down to 30 degrees. Around 1.6 billion kilowatt-hours of energy are wasted annually by washing at 40 degrees. Use eco-friendly detergents like ecostore. Beware of ‘dry clean only’ labels. Often the label is a way for designers to cover up for the fact that an item is such poor quality it won’t survive a vigorous wash. If you dare, do what Blanchard does and give things a gentle wash by hand.