One of the most attractive industries with appearance is completely different internally.
Although it is always chic and dreamy in fashion weeks and fashion shows, the industry is one of the most powerful in terms of its impact on the climate. Now, this power is getting worse.
The $2.5 trillion fashion industry accounts for at least 10% of global carbon emissions each year. In addition to carbon emissions, there is also water use: According to World Bank data, the fashion industry uses at least 93 billion cubic meters of water each year and generates at least 20% of global clothing dyes and treatment wastewater.
for fashionable fabrics and textiles form a major part of the industry's environmental impact. Dr. Preeti Arya, assistant professor at the School of Fashion Technology, said fibers, fabrics and textiles account for 70% of the overall impact of the fashion industry on the environment. Whether it is a petroleum synthetic or natural source, raw materials must be converted into fibers, which are either grown or artificially made. These fibers are then turned into fabrics through various other processes, which are sewn into clothes, and then shipped out, sold and taken home by consumers.
The future of fashion and its impact on the climate lies in fibers and fabrics, which occupies an important position in the overall environmental impact of the industry. While suffering may seem endless and daunting, it is human nature to find solutions to our biggest problems—and this requires innovation.
Why fabrics and textiles have such significance in terms of sustainability
Every fabric we have today was considered an amazing innovation at the time.
Polyester made of plastic was an invention in the 1940s. You can wear it, seemingly endless, without ironing or many other maintenance. Nylon is a new product that improves military uniforms. After decades, it was deeply loved in Prada and became popular among consumers.
Nearly a century after that excitement, we now live under the negative effects of these former "miracles". As durable and ductile as polyester, it sheds microplastics that are harmful to our blood and the health of our oceans. We claim that we like fabrics are also fabrics we waste, putting millions of metric tons of textile waste into landfills or sending them to incineration every year. Today’s innovation needs to make up for past neglects—such as reshaping and over-consumption—while illuminating the way forward.
Although plastic has all the disadvantages (and outside fashion considerations), this material has the power that other natural fibers do not have, especially in medicine. Imagine a future without plastics that might be ideal for many people, but what about the amount of plastic we have produced?
Some people believe that the best way forward is to find a way to repurpose existing plastics.
"We still have these technical fabrics and they will need technical solutions to recycle and manage them," said Kathleen Talbot, Chief Sustainability Officer, Reformation. "If we can really snap our fingers, we may be less dependent on plastics...but because they already exist, one of their benefits is that they can be recycled more easily than natural fibers."
According to Dr. Arya, recycling polyester is a intensive process, and synthetic fibers can only be recycled so many times. But it's better than nothing. The problem is: While we can technically recycle plastic, there are actually only a few polyester waste that are recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The problem with the vast majority of polyester ending up in landfills is that it can take hundreds of years or up to a thousand years to break down.
This is where innovations such as CiCLO come into play.
CiCLO is a textile technology designed to enable synthetic plastic fibers to mimic natural fibers at the molecular level to achieve similar biodegradation rates. It is backed by Honours-based Fashion for Good, an incubator dedicated to investing in fashion sustainability concepts, focusing on quality materials, economy, energy, water and livelihoods.(Fashion for Good also supports some of the most popular materials startups in the fashion world, such as Lucro and MYCL.)
CiCLO is an additive that deposits nutrients into polymers of synthetic fibers to promote microbial metabolism, thereby promoting overall decomposition and conversion into naturally occurring nutrients. This creates a process similar to the decomposition of natural fibers. Sportswear range Definite Articles and medical scrub maker Welles are using it with the goal of getting their products recycled. But a question and cautious suspicion looms: as the synthetic fibers treated with CiCLO break down, will they become more microplastic or become natural materials at the molecular level. "There are many different kinds of additive compounds that are promoted as a solution to certain plastic contamination --I'm very cautious about that," said Saskia van Gendt, head of sustainability at --and I'm very cautious about it." "The main role of these chemicals as additives is to [to] make plastic into smaller pieces, rather than really degrading plastic, so it can become invisible to the naked eye, but it doesn't necessarily solve the degradability of plastic. The plastic itself." A third-party study by
CiCLO claims that the decomposition of synthetic fibers becomes completely nutrients--no microplastics involved. But research on plastic biodegradation is still in its early stages, which has concerns some people.
Why compostable fabrics are not a realistic solution
With new words to express sustainability, "compostable" and "biodegradable" will be used more frequently - sometimes, interchangeably.
Compost involves mixing ingredients to allow fertilization of plants and improve soil health. Biodegradable refers to being able to be naturally decomposed by bacteria and other organisms. Both approaches sound like possible solutions to fashionable junk in theory – but even if the fabric claims to be compostable, we know that most adults won’t composted anyway.
"The challenge of ‘compostable’ is that it requires some level of effort and initiative from consumers, which I hope is easy, but it is not realistic," said Aaron Sanandres, founder of Definite Articles.
biodegradable is also a good word and a good idea, but some people think that this is not all the clothing and accessories we ultimately want.
"We don't want our materials to be biodegradable because we want our materials to be used for years, decades, generations," said Greg Stillman, general manager of Natural Fiber Welding, a company in Materials Science .
Natural Fiber Welding Creates fabric alternatives with natural ingredients—for example, leather made partially from coconut shell and rice husks, called Mirum. Its work is based on “the nutritional cycle of Mother Nature that has been around for thousands of years, meaning that one manifestation of a set of molecules and materials is another entity’s breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Stillman said. Rather than breaking down and falling apart quickly, our goal is to make these materials a product that can be used for centuries.
Waste can be a powerful resource
All these sources agree with one thing: the future of fashion is looping. "To talk about what the future looks like, I will start from where we are today - mainly petrochemicals, original investments, a lot of leather, and the manufacturing industry where brands can outsource all production and process responsibilities," said van Gendt of
Rothy. “Unfortunately, the product is still designed for the short season and will fall apart, and the entire supply chain and business model are creating products that are destined to be landfilled. The vision of the cycle is: How can we start creating a cycle?” The circulation system between natural and synthetic materials looks different. Using synthetic materials requires a lot of effort and may involve retrieving the product (Rothy's did through its recycling program, starting a chemical process to separate the synthetic materials and then adding them to the new mixture to use as fabrics.Using natural materials such as Mirum welded with hemp, cotton or natural fibers, roundness is already part of the process.
"Nature has no dead ends," Stillman said. “In nature, there is no inventory, landfills and incinerator to handle plastics.” Instead, he continues, “There is a very elegant solution.”
is like the minefield of fashion solutions, and the efforts to use natural materials and fibers are easily subverted when you reach the finished product: dyes, chemical treatments and synthetic lines can remove them from the natural nutrient cycle, affecting their cyclicity.
Overconsumption of
The current fashion industry model is built on accelerated consumption, urging you to buy more and spend more while workers’ wages are lowered and the earth becomes less healthy. It is designed to be as fast and cheap as possible, as endless as the screen you scroll, as addictive and desirable as the time spent on TikTok .
The decline of fashion trends and the growing awareness of its dangers have just begun. Most of the previous "warning bells" to the industry left a short-term impact. Despite the collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013 – killing thousands of garment workers and seriously injuring thousands – labor practices remain largely dark and unregulated. A recent exposure on Channel 4 called “Untold: Inside the Shein Machine” shows the durability and severity of the problem, as workers at ultrafast fashion brands are expected to produce 500 pieces of clothing a day, with far less wages than livable.
The ever-increasing consumer awareness is crucial, not only to slow down consumption, but also to make better demands for players trapped in a fixed way of profits. However, personal decisions are not the culprit – it is the fact that these big companies get profit , put their funds into "green" marketing and maintain the status quo to do better. Nevertheless, Dr. Arya acknowledges how difficult it is to navigate greenness, economic pressures and other factors that affect how we shop. Her advice is: Don’t be “brand loyalty”, but “earth loyalty.”
Roundabout of endless problems – but the road ahead is a lot of
When discussing innovative solutions to fashion sustainability issues, everyone seems to solve another problem in a daunting way.
still has the problem of microplastics falling off, it can contaminate our water bodies and our own bodies, and the chemicals in the dyes can also cause health problems. While it may sound more environmentally friendly to switch to natural fibers, some crops like cotton require a lot of water and pesticides, which can make the landscape fascinating.
With technologies such as CiCLO that claim to decompose plastic fibers, people question whether the decomposed product is something we even want in the environment. But at least this research and innovation are happening.
"Technology and innovation in this field will only grow at an exponential rate [this], and within 10 years we may have real round yarns," Sanandres said. "I think the future will look very different from what we see today. But that doesn't mean we can ignore and wait."
While this is a delicate conversation that will drive us to the most thoughtful innovation, the future of fashion is closely related to environmental awareness. Because of this, it will be deeply influenced by its fabrics, fibers and game-changing geniuses.
