Fast vs sustainable fashion: Dealing with mounting clothing waste

The fashion industry is using some 93bn cubic metres of water annually, enough to meet the needs of 5mn people, according to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 2020.
And the production of a single cotton T-shirt requires enough water to sustain a person for three years.
Globally, the business model known as fast fashion has proved wildly successful. Apparel makers churn out new styles on an ever-shorter cycle, offering them at prices so low that consumers buy more and more items, sometimes getting only a few wears out of them.
Here’s a dark side: The boom in the production of garments has increased carbon emissions and other ecological harms, and generated enormous clothing waste.
Some consumers say they would prefer to buy clothing made with less injury to the environment, and brands in the $1.5tn fashion industry are starting to commit to producing so-called sustainable fashion.
In developing nations where most garments are produced, energy is often generated from dirty fuels like coal. Frequently, each step of the assembly process occurs in a different country, adding to emissions from transportation.
Textile production, dominated by apparel, generates as much as 8% of global carbon emissions, according to the UN, exceeding the impact of maritime shipping and international flights combined.
Most used clothing isn’t collected for recycling or reuse, leaving much of it to be sent to landfills or incinerated, which releases carbon. Because clothes are dyed and chemically treated, they account for an estimated 22% of hazardous waste globally.
So sustainable fashion aims at making the fashion industry more environmentally responsible by changing the way clothes are designed, made, transported, used and discarded. Clothing brands are feeling the pressure and have begun citing the budding popularity of sustainable fashion as a risk to their business.
Adidas reported that roughly 96% of the polyester it used in 2022 came from recycled material. Hugo Boss said 93% of its cotton was purchased from “more sustainable” sources in 2022; for Gap Inc that number was 81%. Burberry Group, H&M Hennes & Mauritz and Levi Strauss & Co are moving toward plant-based alternatives to chemical dyes.
Regulators in parts of the US and Europe are considering making fashion companies pay fees based on how much clothing they produce, as makers of batteries and mattresses sometimes do, with the proceeds going to recycling programmes.
Under rules that have been separately proposed in California, New York, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Italy — and are also under discussion in the UK and EU — fashion companies would have to fund textile recycling programmes, in most cases by paying for the volume of clothing they produce.
These “extended producer responsibility” (EPR) schemes, modelled after programmes for other hard-to-recycle goods such as batteries, mattresses and medical sharps, require brands to pay fees based on their product output, or to set up their own recycling programmes.
But some industry solutions raise new problems: Organic cotton farming reduces exposure to toxins, but it uses much more water.
For sure, fashion industry waste is a growing and largely unchecked problem across the world.
In the EU, textile waste totals about 4mn tonnes each year, while in the US it hit 17mn tonnes in 2018, up 80% over 2000.
Garments that don’t end up in local landfills are often shipped in bulk to countries in the Global South.
In Ghana, as many as 15mn discarded garments arrive every week, according to the Or Foundation, which advocates for fashion waste reform.
In a wider sense, seasonal fashion sales promotions need to be a reminder to rethink what is bought, what is thrown away, and what it costs the planet.
Textile production generates as much as 8% of global carbon emissions, according to the UN, exceeding the impact of maritime shipping and international flights combined