How much waste does fast fashion produce?
Fast fashion emits 1.2 billion tons of CO2 per year, more than air travel and shipping combined. Fast fashion produces 20% of global wastewater, contaminating rivers, oceans, drinking water and soil.
Garments given up early and thrown out instead of recycled combine to produce massive wastage, estimated at around $500 billion every year. A large portion occurs on the consumer's side, but retail stores are just as guilty, often spotted tossing or burning unsold stock.
'Clothing designed to become garbage' — Fashion industry grapples with pollution, waste issues. The $2.5 trillion fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters and the second-biggest consumer of water.
How does it impact the environment? About 53 million tonnes of fibre is produced by the fashion industry every year, of which 70 percent is wasted, IndiaSpend said in a report. According to UK-based charitable organisation Ellen MacArthur Foundation, fibre production will reach 160 million tonnes by 2050.
The number of garments produced annually has doubled since 2000 and exceeded 100 billion for the first time in 2014 and an estimated 92 million tons of textile waste is created annually from the fashion industry. Shockingly, every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned globally.
The volume of clothing Americans throw away each year has doubled in the last 20 years, from 7 million to 14 million tons. In 2018, 17 million tons of textile waste ended up in landfills, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, making up 5.8 percent of the total MSW generation that year.
Between 2000 and 2014, clothing production doubled with the average consumer buying 60 percent more pieces of garment compared to 15 years ago. Yet, each clothing item is now kept half as long. Nearly 20% of global wastewater is produced by the fashion industry.
How much waste does the fashion industry actually produce? An average consumer throws away 70 pounds (31.75 kilograms) of clothing per year. Globally we produce 13 million tons of textile waste each year 95% of which could be reused or recycled.
Textile dyes are the world's second-largest polluter of water, while pesticides, widely used in cotton cultivation, contaminate soil and groundwater. With inadequate environmental safeguards, these chemicals can leak into waterways and pose massive health risks to farmers and workers, and their communities.
Today, in fact, fashion accounts for up to 10% of global carbon dioxide output—more than international flights and shipping combined, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. It also accounts for a fifth of the 300 million tons of plastic produced globally each year.
Why fashion is killing the planet?
According to the Institute of Sustainable Communication, the clothing industry is the world's second-largest clean water polluter. The industry also emits 10 percent of the global carbon emissions, which is more than international flights and maritime shipping and produces 21 billion tons of waste each year.
85% Of Our Clothes End Up In Landfills Or Burned
It might come to a surprise to learn that around 85% of textiles thrown away in the U.S. are dumped into landfills or burned -- including unused textiles and unsold clothes.
Australians discard close to 800,000 tonnes of clothing and textiles each year, a rate of 15 tonnes every 10 minutes, and only around seven per cent is recycled.
This is post-consumer textile waste, which includes products such as clothing, footwear, fashion accessories, towels, bedding, and drapery that have already been purchased. 95% of all textiles have the potential to be reused or recycled, but currently they are recycled at a rate of only 15% .
Fast fashion's negative impact includes its use of cheap, toxic textile dyes—making the fashion industry the one of the largest polluters of clean water globally, right up there with agriculture.
The fast fashion industry is associated with water pollution and consumption, microfibers pollution in the ocean, waste accumulation, chemical usage, greenhouse gas emissions, soil degradation and desertification and rainforest destruction. The speed of fast fashion makes it's negative impacts worse.
According to the UN Environment Program, “the fashion industry is the second-biggest consumer of water and is responsible for 8 - 10% of global carbon emissions.” And according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, these emissions are expected to skyrocket 60% by 2030.
Fashion's Environmental Impacts
The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world just after the oil industry.
- China with 9.9 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions, largely due to the export of consumer goods and its heavy reliance on coal;
- The United States with 4.4 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted;
- India with 2.3 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted.
