Now that we've talked about all the specific pollutions that fashion emits all through its production process, in this post we'll finally be talking about a type of pollution that has wide recognition, which is – drumroll please – carbon dioxide! Yayyy, fun right? Not only does fashion cause detrimental effects to both human health and the environment, but it is also one of the drivers of climate change, which brings in more negative impacts AND could potentially exacerbate the aforementioned effects of pollution.
Did you know that the fashion industry emits 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, contributing to approximately 10% of the global carbon emissions? That's more than emissions from international flights and global maritime shipping combined (1)! Though the sources of this emission vary, in this post we'll be focusing on textile production. This post mainly refers to the work of Yan et al. (2016) who investigated the carbon footprint of wool-based and cotton-based textile production in China (2).
Textile production and carbon emissions
Figure 1. The production process of the two textiles. Source: Yan et al. (2016)
The authors found that most of textile's carbon footprint comes from its indirect emissions, which include industrial raw materials (carbon embedded in raw materials required to produce textiles, such as the growing of cotton crop), auxiliary materials (accessories needed to produce textiles), and secondary energy (electricity for processes outside of the main production process, such as transportation. Meanwhile, direct emissions refer to things like fossil fuel combustion from machinery and emissions from chemical reactions. The graph below summarizes the carbon footprint of the different textiles studied.
Figure 2. Carbon footprint of wool- and cotton-based textiles. Numbers are in kilograms of CO2 emitted per kilogram of fabric. Fabric from left to right: 1) pure wool fabric, 2) wool-polyester blend, 3) yarn-dyed fabric in pure cotton, 4) yarn-dyed fabric in polyester-cotton, 5) bleached fabric made by plain weave process, 6) bleached fabric made by rib process, 6) dyed fabric in pure cotton in dark, 8) medium, and 9) light colors, 10) dyed fabric in polyester-cotton in dark, 11) medium, and 12) light colors. Carbon footprint of greige/grey fabric not shown.
Generally, it is widely known that the production of synthetic materials for garments emits more carbon than natural ones. For example, a single polyester t-shirt emits 3.4kg more carbon than its cotton counterpart as it is made from fossil fuels (1). However, this is not always the case – Yan et al. found that pure wool, a natural fiber, has the largest amount of carbon footprint as compared to the other fabric studied, with almost 14kg of CO2 emitted per 1kg of fabric produced. The bulk of this carbon emission likely comes from its raw material production, as evident in Figure 2. – livestock is a big emitter of not only carbon, but also other greenhouse gases.
On the other hand, grey/greige fabric is found to be the lowest emitter of carbon with 1.5kg of CO2 emitted per 1kg of fabric. This is probably because the fabric is untreated, meaning that it is not bleached nor dyed, thus requiring less energy to produce.
Greige/grey fabric – the name does not refer to the color of the fabric, but it refers to how the fabric is treated. The fabric is usually used for upholstery.
Furthermore, it is found that fabric dyed in dark colors emit more carbon than lighter ones – this is because darker-dyed fabric needs more than six washings to get it treated, while lighter fabric only needs three. The more intensive the washing process, the more carbon it emits. Moreover, yarn-dyed fabric is more carbon-intensive than regular dyed fabric.
So should we just follow the graph (fig. 2) to decide which textile is better for the environment?
The simple answer is no. This is because there are other factors that determine the environmentally-friendliness of a type of fabric as compared to another. For example, the study found that wool has the highest amount of carbon footprint. Yet, wool is often touted as an environmentally-friendly textile for slow fashion, as it is highly durable, thus making it long-lasting and easily recyclable. On the other hand, synthetic fabrics like nylon and viscose are usually short-lived and are virtually impossible to recycle, hence the two are ubiquitous in the fast-fashion world. Another example would be the polyester vs cotton debate – we previously mentioned that a polyester shirt emits 3.4kg more carbon than a cotton one. However, cotton is known to be highly water-intensive, and the cotton plant is often called a "thirsty crop". Hence, when choosing the most "environmentally-friendly" fabric, a lot of variables are present that it is hard to boil it down to a simple answer.
Despite that, our personal recommendation for you if you want to buy clothes that do not hurt the earth that much is to only buy clothes that you would wear multiple times and would last for a long, long time. It is sometimes more expensive to invest in quality products and thus fast fashion can be quite tempting, but you should ask yourself: is it really worth it for me to buy this 20 dollar shirt from h&m that I would only wear thrice then throw away?
To be quite honest, I still buy clothes from fast fashion stores from time to time. But a few years ago, I started to rethink my fashion purchases when my mom handed me down a nice, sturdy pair of loafers that she bought in 1998 – two years before I was born! I'm not saying that we should all spend hundreds of dollars on high-quality products, but in this disposable world, sometimes it is nice to hold on to a piece of clothing or two that can withstand more than one year of wear.
Yours truly,
Katya
References:
The price of fast fashion. (2018). Nature Climate Change, 8(1), 1-1. DOI:10.1038/s41558-017-0058-9
Yan, Y., Wang, C., Ding, D., Zhang, Y., Wu, G., Wang, L., . . . Zhao, C. (2016). Industrial carbon footprint of several typical Chinese textile fabrics. Acta Ecologica Sinica, 36(3), 119-125. DOI:10.1016/j.chnaes.2015.09.002
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