Choosing what to wear can be a tricky¹ problem, especially if you're a fashion victim. Trying to keep up with the latest styles involves regular visits to the shops and sometimes forking out for expensive designer clothes. But when the fashion changes, these clothes languish² in the back of cupboards gathering³ dust, or just get thrown away.

 

There are many stores that now offer cheap ‘fast fashion' – low-price items that imitate the styles of more expensive designer brands. Environmentalists are angered by the amount of energy involved in making these clothes and that many of them are made from non-recyclable materials. This means that items are just incinerated or go into landfill.

 

Writing about this for the BBC, Eleanor Lawrie says that people in the UK are the worst in Europe for doing this - with a million tonnes of unwanted textiles a year being discarded. And she says "on top of often poor labour conditions for garment workers, the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of the world's waste water, and 10% of carbon emissions⁴."

 

This is something the fashion industry is becoming more aware of and has led to a new crop of biomaterials that replace wasteful⁵ textiles like cotton and leather. Examples include Piñatex, a leather-like substance made from discarded pineapple leaves. It's been used in collections by Hugo Boss and H&M. And there's mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, that's being used to create food, packaging and textiles.

 

Cotton is a very resource-intense crop to grow. Eleanor Lawrie says "about 15,000 litres of water [are] required to make one pair of jeans." So, buying organic cotton is a better choice. And there is also Tencel, also known as Lyocell, a natural product that's now growing in popularity⁶. It's made by extracting⁷ cellulose fibre from trees; its manufacture is thought to use 95% less water than cotton processing.

 

But creating sustainable textiles is only part of the battle – buying ethically⁸, buying second hand and buying fewer clothes are the obvious environmentally friendly choices. Dr Richard Blackburn from Leeds School of Design told the BBC that "I don't think you should consider buying any item of clothing unless you commit to 30 wears. Unless you can do that you're not even starting to be sustainable."

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