Trashy Outfits: Textiles & Solid Waste Pollution

(Source:https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/11/8/chiles-desert-dumping-ground-for-fast-fashion-leftovers)

The textiles we wear are trash, literally.

With the rapid rise in (fast) fashion production, the increase in consumers have resulted in the production of large volumes of textile waste. As a matter of fact, 4% of the global waste production is resulted from the fashion industry as reported by Vox. This amounts to about 92 million tons of solid waste dumped in landfills each year. As illustrated in my previous posts, a large portion of environmental pollution caused by the fashion industry is due textiles. This is especially evident where recent research by the Ellen McArthur Foundation concluded that we produce one garbage truck worth of textiles EVERY SECOND!

Following the relatively short production cycles and affordable rate of new apparel collections, fast fashion products come fast and go fast. This made clothing become highly disposable and generated more and more textile waste (Bick et al., 2018). For example, in a Western context, a family throws away an average of 30 kg of clothing each year. Of which, only about 15% is recycled or donated while the rest are brought to landfills as undifferentiated waste to be incinerated.

What is waste pollution?

The textile industry generates both solid waste that are toxic and non-toxic. Some examples of toxic waste include packaging and parts of machineries such as spools. For the most part, these solid wastes are not dangerous to the environment per se, and are often recycled to prevent ecological damage (Sobhani et al., 2019).

However, on the other hand, we have toxic waste that is highly hazardous. Most of these hazardous waste is produced during processes such as yarn spinning and knitting as well as bleaching. Lye, a solution used for washing, is a good example of the many dangerous pollutants in solid waste produced by the textile industry. As these solid waste come into contact with our water systems and soil, it can lead to further pollution and possibly harmful effects to both our environment and human health. Below, I have listed other examples of waste pollutants released by the textile industry:

• Fibre lint, scraps and trimmings

• Sludge retained in wastewater treatment

• Chemical and dye containers used in finishing woven fabrics

These examples are mainly a result of the production cycles of textile manufacturing. This is also known as pre-consumer textile waste (Dobilaite et al., 2017). It is worth noting though, that textile waste pollution is not only generated during its production stages but also its consumption— the post-consumer textile waste.

The term ‘post-consumer’ is rather literal and self-explanatory. It signifies the end of the textile life cycle, where consumers discard it. This life cycle may start again as these textiles get recycled, however, the percentages of such practises are rather low. For instance, 75% of annual textile waste in Germany has no textile-recycling system at all. Thus, to reduce waste and seal the material loop, not only must the rate of recycling garments be enhanced, but our consumption levels should be curbed as well.

As textiles tend to be bulky as compared to other daily wastes, they take up a large amount of space in our landfills. Materials such as synthetic fibres which are used in 72% of our clothings are commonly non-biodegradable. Consequently, in order to clear space to accommodate for other trash, many turn to burning these textile wastes, releasing large amounts of air pollutants in the form of greenhouse gases (Allwood et al., 2006). If not properly discarded, these textiles could also end up in the ocean and rivers congesting the flow of tides and streams.

A Wider Implication

Most environmental impacts occur in the textile-manufacturing and garment-manufacturing countries, but textile waste is found globally. Unlike air and water pollution that tends to be concentrated in developing countries responsible for producing these textiles, consumers, which come from many developed countries, also cause textile waste pollution to be prominent in their locale. As such, a global waste pollution problem is resulting, and a large-scale effort to reduce both production and consumption is required to curb the issue of textile waste pollution.

COMING UP

So far I have covered two prominent forms of pollution caused by the textile industry. Next week, I will be covering the most prominent pollution problem of them all — water pollution (and we all thought it couldn’t get worse, right?)

See you then,

Hui Jie

References

Allwood, J. M., Laursen, S. E., de Rodriguez, C. M., & Bocken, N. M. (2015). Well dressed?: The present and future sustainability of clothing and textiles in the United Kingdom. Journal of the Home Economics Institute of Australia, 22(1), 42.

Bick, R., Halsey, E., & Ekenga, C. C. (2018). The global environmental injustice of fast fashion. Environmental Health, 17(1), 1-4.

Campione, C. (2017, May 11). Copenhagen Fashion Summit: How NOT to make the fashion industry more sustainable. Greenpeace. Retrieved from https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/7575/copenhagen-fashion-summit-how-not-to-make-the-fashion-industry-more-sustainable/.

Dobilaite, V., Mileriene, G., Juciene, M., & Saceviciene, V. (2017). Investigation of current state of pre-consumer textile waste generated at Lithuanian enterprises. International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology.

Rijkswaterstaat. (2018, March 1). European Clothing Action Plan Used Textile Collection in European Cities. Retrieved from http://www.ecap.eu.com/wp-content/ uploads/2018/07/ECAP-Textile-collection-in-Europeancities_full-report_with-summary.pdf (2018)

Ellen Macarthur Foundation. (2017, December 1). A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning fashion’s future. Retrieved from https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/a-new-textiles-economy

Sobhani, A., Wahab, M. I. M., & Jaber, M. Y. (2019). The effect of working environment aspects on a vendor–buyer inventory model. International Journal of Production Economics, 208, 171-183.

Wicker, A. (2020, January 31). Fashion has a misinformation problem, that’s bad for the environment. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/27/21080107/fashion-environment-facts-statistics-impact.