21 ms·

Fashion industry emits more carbon than flights and maritime shipping combined

560 points by hkmaxpro 7y ago

pkaye 7y ago
The quality of clothing has gone downhill over the years. Both the fabric and the stitching. They just fall apart faster.
- etagobla 7y ago
  At least it creates jobs for the younger generation.
- helpPeople 7y ago
  I'm not sure I can agree. I'll give a few examples. "Free clothing" quality has gone up and become more fitted. Instead of 1 gender neutral size, clothes are by gender, and fabric softer. Stitching seems unchanged. I've had to purchase these for groups. High quality clothing has more accents. Quality of fabric is secondary to aesthetics.
  - pkaye 7y ago
    So where is a good place to buy good quality T-shirts for men?
    - helpPeople 7y ago
      I make my own clothes so I haven't been going to retail stores. Try a few places, if they feel good, they are likely good quality.
- petre 7y ago
  It's called planned obsolescence. The plan is to be obsolete by next season, so four to six months. Although I wouldn't count on H&M clothing to last ten washing cycles.
  - drdrey 7y ago
    Is it planned obsolescence or just competing on price? If you try to make something as cheap as possible, you're not optimizing for durability
    - petre 7y ago
      I think it's both. Some brands are marketing crappy disposable clothes (like H&M), other more conservative brands like Adidas for instance, are marketing some longer lasting clothing that one could use for more than one season. Actually the H&M Group has a more "exclusive" brand called COS which is about the same quality as Zara only more expensive - similar average quality synthetic materials but arguably better designs. The funny thing is that under a single company one could have it both ways. Look at Inditex, they're the best example. They include the Pull & Bear, Zara and Massimo Dutti brands under one umbrella company. While one markets disposables, the other markets upscale clothing that can last several seasons and there's also the in-between brand that markets clothes that last aproximately for one season. I guess there are buyers for all of these, depending on age/gender/income demographic.
tito 7y ago
10% of global emissions are for clothing. Wow! And growing..."If the fashion sector continues on its current trajectory, that share of the carbon budget could jump to 26% by 2050" (from the article) Flights: 2.5% of global emissions [1] Maritime shipping: 4.0% of global emissions [2] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/climate/air-travel-emissions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/climate/air-travel-emissi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shipping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...
- pergadad 7y ago
  The shipping numbers are rather dubious. No way it's actually"just" that much. Reporting is lacking and even where it's enforced shippers use defeat devices (that secretly pump pollution into the water rather than spew it in the air) or a second, weaker engine.
  - vkou 7y ago
    The shipping numbers are correct. Shipping is incredibly carbon-efficient at moving large amounts of freight. The pollution problem from shipping is not in the form of carbon emissions. It's in the form of oil spills, NO2, SO2, etc pollution, and it is difficult to accurately estimate. [1] On the other hand, estimating ship carbon emissions is easy - count how much bunker oil gets produced, world-wide, and assume all of it gets burnt in the engines of cargo ships. [1] This is why occasionally, you see anti-environment publications push nonesense like 'Gas taxes are stupid, because one cruise ship produces more pollution then every single car in this city combined.' Yes, in NO2 and SO2. [2] No, not even remotely in terms of CO2. And carbon taxes are intended to... Reduce emissions of CO2, not NO2 or SO2. [2] Those gases are pollutants, they cause health and environmental problems, but they aren't very important in the context of climate change... Which is what carbon taxes try to address.
    - tito 7y ago
      Yeah as my life cycle analysis friend says, "transportation is waste".
amacalac 7y ago
That's interesting. I was thinking about this a lot over the past 2-3 weeks. The sheer amount of clothing lying in all the shops across the world. Talk a walk into any Macy's / Bloomingdales / Hudsons Bay and count the number of items of clothing. Then multiply that across that one store's chain of shops. Then realize there are multiple chains like that. Then realize there are multiple stores not in chains. Then realize that's just the geographic area you're aware of. Then think about other cities, counties, regions, provinces, countries. Then remember all the clothing you have at home already...
- chimi 7y ago
  All the industries are competing to be the one by which you display your worth to society. The order as I see it is: House, Car, Clothes, Phone. Jewelry goes in there somewhere. Each of these products is trying to convince you of their value, excess value really, so you will spend your money on them, yet the expense of the product isn't worth much. You need a house to protect you from the weather and other people. After having done that, the rest is extravagance. Jewelry is absolutely no value. If you can call, text, and browse the internet, you're good. If a car gets you from A to B and doesn't need a lot of maintenance, that's sufficient. I remember a Sex in the City scene where Carrie was talking about her $40,000 worth of shoes. Beyond providing the basics, these products aren't worth more except for their display of wealth. Meanwhile, we destroy the planet a little more each day to prove we are worth mating.
  - rwmurrayVT 7y ago
    Who is to say that $40,000 in shoes is any worse than $100 in shoes constantly used and abused? In that extreme of a case I would say it's most likely worse, but there's something to be said for more expensive and longer-lasting. In Carrie's case I would say it's worse just because she never struck me as the type to wear them for more than a single fashion season. Love the show, hate the movies.
    - baroffoos 7y ago
      I buy $100 shoes. They typically last me about 3 years. $40,000 worth of shoes assuming they last just as long per $ (Wrong but its the only way this comparison works) would last me many lifetimes. There is simply no way that a person could spend that much on shoes in a lifetime and it be a good idea. One thing I am considering is going slightly up and getting a pair of $600 leather boots since I know someone who has been wearing the same pair for 10 years now and just has the sole replaced.
hos234 7y ago
Well I hope the FKK party emerges out of this one.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  Maybe the YKK party
dr_dshiv 7y ago
I don't believe it, actually. Considering how much waste I use wrt food .. clothes seem much less wasteful. But, who is to know?
- EpicEng 7y ago
  I don't see a comparison to food here... just flying and shipping via boat.
- TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
  “Who is to know?” That’s what the report linked in the article is for. To provide evidence for the claim stated in the title of this post.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    You mean the UNEP report? It provides the fact, but no source. I trust the UN, but I would appreciate knowing how the number is bigger than flying and shipping. That's pretty remarkable, no?
slowmovintarget 7y ago
Seems like we need to bring back "Make Do and Mend": https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large106365.html https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large106365.html
- colechristensen 7y ago
  It's hard for people to find high quality clothing because evaluating quality is hard and "quality" is sold by many places and it ends up being only an impression. It comes back to a thought I've had in mind for a while about margins. Margins are often set as a multiple of material cost. 10x, 100x, something like that. That rather large multiple handles the materials obviously, but also manufacturing, shipping, QA, marketing, overhead, etc. To make a price competitive product, you minimize your material cost and then use that multiple to set price. The problems lies in that if you use 2 cent nails instead of 1 cent nails, everything upstream does not double in price. There would be a small increase in cost-of-capital, and other losses related directly to the merchandise, but many many things aren't related at all. When your product is all the way at the bottom of the quality,price bracket, doubling your materials cost doesn't double your actual marginal cost and shouldn't double your price, but so often it does and stupid quality decisions are made which results in it being very difficult to find decent products. You end up having to pay super premium quality prices to get things designed and built as they reasonably should be. Or you end up paying hundreds of dollars so the one part that matters is up to spec when the actual difference in cost of that one part was maybe two or three dollars.
- globular-toast 7y ago
  Who has time to mend clothes now that everybody goes to work?
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    And yet the average person somehow has hours per day to spend on TV/Social Media/Video Games
    - globular-toast 7y ago
DoreenMichele 7y ago
In Europe, fashion companies went from an average offering of two collections per year in 2000 to five in 2011. And a lot of it is zany garbage. Plus, fashion helps promote a lot of warped body image issues.
seltzered_ 7y ago
The article references this report from a year ago: https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/putting-brakes-fast-fashion https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/putting... (2018) “ The fashion industry produces 20 per cent of global wastewater and 10 per cent of global carbon emissions - more than all international flights and maritime shipping. Textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of water globally and it takes around 2,000 gallons of water to make a typical pair of jeans. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned. If nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. ”
- paulcole 7y ago
  By comparison, a pound of beef is around 1,800 pounds. Average American eats like 200 pounds of meat per year. How many pairs of jeans do you think a person buys each year? I buy 1 pair of Levis and just wear them about once or twice a week (never washing them) and throw them out after 2 or 3 years. https://foodtank.com/news/2013/12/why-meat-eats-resources/ https://foodtank.com/news/2013/12/why-meat-eats-resources/ https://www.globalagriculture.org/whats-new/news/en/32921.html https://www.globalagriculture.org/whats-new/news/en/32921.ht...
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Are you talking about cow farts? When cows eat grass, the carbon they emit was already in the system. It's just like any other organism staying alive. This is different than burning fossil fuels, the carbon of which until they are extracted hasn't been in the system for millions of years. To the extent that the beef industry burns fossil fuels, that's something you could criticize, but it's hardly unique to the beef industry. Cattle would eat less intensively-cultivated corn and more grass if the corn farmers weren't subsidized so much. If no corn was cultivated at all, cattle would still be a pretty efficient way of sustainably extracting food from marginal grassland.
    - seltzered_ 7y ago
      Hum, I'm not familiar with ruminant (i.e. cow) digestion but I think you're right in suggesting there's greater complexity here when associating cattle with the use of modern agriculture practices (haber-bosch process). Regarding the parent's comment, the 1800 pounds-of-water-for-pound-of-beef figure seems to be sourced from https://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report-48-WaterFootprint-AnimalProducts-Vol1.pdf https://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report-48-WaterFo... (which won't say 1799 because it's metric) https://www.watercalculator.org/footprints/beef-king-big-water-footprints/ https://www.watercalculator.org/footprints/beef-king-big-wat... seems to aggregate various estimates. To direct the conversation towards solutions, Project drawdown (https://www.drawdown.org https://www.drawdown.org) mentions Silvopasture practices (closely related to Joel Salatin style farming). That said, reducing the amount of intensively-cultivated corn grown ultimately still means reducing the number of cattle (we're ~80-90% more than 100yrs ago) and seemingly less meat consumption per capita.
SapporoChris 7y ago
First I was shamed for driving a car, then flying, now wearing clothes. Fine, I'm a terrible person. I'm going to stop trying now. sarcasm
- toss1 7y ago
  Not clothes, artificial clothes. From TFA: "Many of those fibers are polyester, a plastic found in an estimated 60% of garments. Producing polyester releases two to three times more carbon emissions than cotton, and polyester does not break down in the ocean." I'm not sure if it is more the consumers or the producers driving it, but it's almost impossible now to find actual 100% cotton clothing., at least in the US. It seems that an entire generation or mor literally does not know what genuine cotton jeans feel like.
  - itronitron 7y ago
    either Patagonia or The Gap (maybe both) did an environmental impact analysis in the late '90's and were surprised to discover that cotton had the biggest negative impact. I don't recall the exact reason or numbers but it sounds like someone needs to do another analysis on total cost of production for each material.
  - SapporoChris 7y ago
    Article shames cotton also. "It takes about 700 gallons of water to produce one cotton shirt. That's enough water for one person to drink at least eight cups per day for three-and-a-half years." My grief with the article is it hypes things and doesn't give very good context. It feels like it is cherry picking the worst examples. Research is already being done to grow cotton using less water. This is the sort of solution that works. 100% cotton is difficult to find and finding good quality 100% cotton shirts is even more difficult. For Jeans, the original Levi's 501 blues is 100% cotton denim, many of the new styles are blends.
rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
Flights are currently "used" by a tiny % of the global population, whereas clothing is a necessity for 100% of the population. What does that comparison says, exactly? Changing the habits of a few persons would have much impact on the environment as changing the habits of every person on Earth? Which change should we prioritize? Mmmh...
- notahacker 7y ago
  I don't think any sane person is proposing the future of humanity lies in nudity. But you'd have a tough job persuading me that having 60% more clothes than 20 years ago and landfilling 85% of textiles bought a year is necessary, or that extensive wardrobes replaced every season are less frivolous than transport.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  This comparison can be read as saying that if one was to search for changes at the industry level, either technological or legal, then clothing looks like a high-payoff place to do that.
- foobar1962 7y ago
  Most of that clothing is for consumption for the western world, of which the USA would probably be first and European Union second. The third world often gets sold the remnants and retainers from the first world.
buboard 7y ago
Ouch. Lets see what they have to say about the cosmetics industry ...
esotericn 7y ago
We really need a better industry around re-use of essentially everything. Let's say I need some X. Last week I bought a base layer because it's getting cold here. I can order, or buy in a store, a brand new X trivially. I don't actually need a brand new X. A used X would do me just fine. But the difficulty in doing so is ridiculous in comparison. Cottage industry eBay stuff (that you have to order online) vs. an entire infrastructure built around producing and selling new stuff.
- wil421 7y ago
  If you really want to do go down this path I would highly recommend Patagonia wornwear. They get a lot of hate for their prices but they are trying to be as sustainable as possible. The Ironclad guarantee is one of the best. eBay is full of their used stuff and some neat retro gear. https://wornwear.patagonia.com https://wornwear.patagonia.com
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Neat. Didn't know Patagonia had that. Though, truth be told, the Patagonia clothing I could potentially buy used probably lasts me so long that I don't really need any more.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  I mean, would you order online, and then have it shipped to you? That might be an improvement over what we have now? But I suspect that it's hardly ideal. Unless you were geographically restricted in what you could order. (ie - No ordering some wiz-bang base layers from a family that happens to be in Norway when you live in Minneapolis.)
- leggomylibro 7y ago
  What about thrift stores or organizations like Goodwill? Those places have lots of secondhand clothes, houseware, and small appliances. You might have trouble finding a used A/C in the middle of July, and you might have to try a few locations to find what you're looking for, but it's less trouble than plenty of stuff that people do to be more eco-friendly.
booboolayla 7y ago
I think the carbon scare will prove to be the biggest blemish on science EVER, but I have to admit this is kind of funny :)
anm89 7y ago
I would call this the garments or textiles industry, not "fashion" Just a nitpick.
std_throwaway 7y ago
Money spent = Emissions generated (direct or indirect by further spending) If you want to save CO2, then save as much money as you can in paper form. Don't spend, don't invest. Instead keep everything as cash. This also has indirect effects by slowing down the economy which reduces money flow for other people, too.
- timwaagh 7y ago
  Indeed. We keep chasing our own tail. It's largely pointless.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  You can spend your money on digital goods which have a very tiny environmental impact. This doesn't have the result of preventing other people from spending that money but it is at least sustainable if everyone does it.
mc32 7y ago
I’m glad this finally got the attention it deserves. Forever21 went into reorganization bankruptcy because they were not “fast enough”! That’s lunacy. Make things that last, in other words durable. Make them timeless. Bigger upfront investment, lower total cost. Lower impact on environment.
birdyrooster 7y ago
>85% of all textiles go to the dump each year So only 15% of textiles make it into someones home or office and doesn't get thrown out. Where is the waste? I assume it is 1) Unsold stock, 2) Unusable material during manufacturing, and 3) Consumers throwing clothing away in the first year of ownership. Could we reduce waste most significantly by moving to on-demand clothing manufacturing?
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  That's not a correct inference. It might be that all textiles produced make it to people's homes, but people also throw away lots of old clothes. Another reason might be that some textiles are not made into clothes, and are used only briefly for the purpose they were created before being tossed.
- groby_b 7y ago
  Yes and no :) "On-demand" clothing manufacturing is practiced today, in that fashions change rapidly, and in response, retailers produce what can only be described as "shitty quality, fast". (Exacerbated by Chinese clothing manufacturers + social media - they're extremely effective at churning out extremely glossy pictures for what's about the lowest possible bar of quality) That - "fast fashion" - is what gets discarded. That's not the way forward. On-demand manufacturing that's more along the lines of traditional high-quality bespoke clothing could be an answer, but it would mean that the vast majority of people likely can't afford to wear the latest fashion all the time. And even if we can sidestep that problem through technology, wearing "the latest" itself is a huge part of the problem. If you have clothes that are only meant for a season, you'll dump large amounts of textiles. So what's needed is both a move to higher quality, and a move away from "fast fashion". Given that the entire industry makes money mostly on "what's new and hot", this would require a significant cultural change.
  - gherkinnn 7y ago
    Now, if only bespoke shorts and tshirts became a thing. I’d happily pay a decent sum for a set of charcoal tshirts that fit me perfectly and last for a few years of daily use. Bonus points of I get to choose a fabric other than pure cotton.
evolve2k 7y ago
Ecologically speaking maybe Steve Jobs/Star Trek respectively were onto something. A high quality minimal personal style that involves orders of magnitude less garment churn and waste with the added benefit of just not having to spend time on what to wear each day (insert pithy Jobs quote). But seriously if I was to explore finding a personal style that I could wear as my day to day work/life “uniform”, where to look, where to source from. Are there any companies focussed around this?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I'd happily wear a DS9 or First Contact era Starfleet uniform all day. They look great! :). Regarding your serious point, I'd like to know too. I'd pay for a service that would help me find a style that looks good on me, with associated supply of quality clothes in this style. My current clothing choice pattern is "random, with a pre-filtering done by my wife".
  - Swizec 7y ago
    I learned a most important trick watching America’s Next Top Model with my sister: Buy oufits, not clothes. You make the decision on what goes together and looks good at the store. You try stuff until you find what works. When it works, you buy the whole outfit. Possibly in multiples. No more decisions when getting dressed. You have predetermined outfits for whatever activity you’re doing that day. Refresh every few months or years as your life and personality evolves.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Thanks! I'll try that the next season.
    - grenoire 7y ago
      I like a combination approach much better. Buy multiple shirts, tees, sweaters, and pants which can match with each other. Oftentimes these are less saturated earthy colours with white and black mixed in. It'll be timeless and easy to maintain—not to mention very suitable for ones who have analysis paralysis with clothes. You can't mess up!
bigYahnz 7y ago
That is impressive given that most container ships seemed to be powered by burning investor's money.
beat 7y ago
Generally, it's a good article, but it lands on a sore point for me with many environmentalist articles - treating "water use" as if water disappears when used. Generally, water doesn't cease to exist - it just gets temporarily stored.
- JofArnold 7y ago
  Whilst that’s true, it’s not how it’s experienced. Take for instance Mexico City which has been using up its groundwater at a tremendous rate; sure, the water hasn’t been destroyed in the chemical or atomic sense, but the lack of it locally is very real.
  - beat 7y ago
    I agree, but that makes it a much different sort of argument.
- ghostly_s 7y ago
  The type of water use we're talking here - saturating it with detergents, dyes, etc. -- makes it unpotable, at which point it is, best-case, going through a very expensive treatment process before it can be returned to the water cycle, which you can be certain the manufacturers are not footing the full cost of; or more likely in the places where garment manufacturers set up, is just being dumped into the environment, destroying ecosystems and the health of those unlucky enough to be stuck with its fallout. So you're right, water can't be "used up", but the amount of it being used in industrial processes is a very good proxy for environmental harm.
  - petre 7y ago
    Very expensive? You just let it sit and evaporate.
    - foobar1962 7y ago
      And after the water evaporates, how is the concentrated chemical sludge treated? Does it get removed for safe disposal? Does it get left to sink down and contaminate the ground water? That’s the problem.
narcindin 7y ago
This article reads like a twitter thread. I wasn't sure if I was reading one article or multiple. I wasn't sure what was a image and what was an ad.
syphilis2 7y ago
I'm glad to see growing awareness concerning plastic in clothing. The article mentions problems with cotton production as well. With clothing I feel the same way I do about food, and the same way many people have felt for decades: I've been duped! It's not difficult, but it takes time money and effort to make good purchases, and that can be frustrating.
Nicci00 7y ago
Bought a H&M zipper jacket by the start of this year, somehow now it's is as worn down as a Adidas one I bought in 2011! H&M mostly sells disposable clothing, and they have the never of making "conscious" fashion ads.
globular-toast 7y ago
If you're a man you can immediately stop contributing to this by opting out of fashion and buying high quality garments that will last you a decade or more. Buy handmade shoes that are worth resoling. Buy shirts and only wash them when necessary. Stop wearing printed t-shirts that degrade quickly. Don't wash your trousers.
gok 7y ago
The problem with carbon footprintting is that it suffers from a variation of the coastline paradox. It's impossible to meaningfully determine the carbon footprint of a t-shirt, for example, because you can also find another level of externality.
meerita 7y ago
To me men (not all 100%, the majority) are stoic: few garments, the necessary. How many of you are the opposite to this? My GF is a machine of buying clothes. Her friends too. I don't see my friends buying that much each month. When I go to a shopping center the majority of stores are women oriented, the entire fashion industry is run for them to ludicrous levels.
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  You don't speak for all men, and especially not all women.
  - meerita 7y ago
    I didn't claim all men are stoic. I said "to me".
- hnick 7y ago
  I do not and never will understand fashion. I understand the whole speech in The Devil Wears Prada (that the things we all wear were once the trendsetters, just like the tech in luxury cars trickling down) but I just don't get it. Even when someone buys me something I tend to just pick a favourite and stick to it. I have a few pairs of shoes but pretty much just wear one unless the occasion says I shouldn't. And then there are the gamers with their "Fashion is the real endgame!" attitude which I've found in a few games. I seriously don't care if I look like this (http://i.imgur.com/SfYDtUO.jpg http://i.imgur.com/SfYDtUO.jpg) when playing. Just gimme the stats I need.
  - baot 7y ago
    Gaming as a hobby is no more rational than fashion.
- user_rob 7y ago
  Maybe it is the result of evolution and the hunter-gatherer optimisations for humans. Hunters hunt and are interested in clever things to do that and gatherers gather and are engaged in those type of activities. Both of these activities seem to be uncontrolled in much of the population. Without control or a dramatic evolutionary step we may be doomed to destroying our planet.
flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
I can't wait for the day when I can walk to my local dump and move into a mcmansion somebody threw out because the paint was the wrong color... And I am only half joking. Go into your local thrift store and try not to gasp as you walk past $300 pair of designer jeans after $400 dress, some of them still with tags on them as they've never been worn, and most all of them in seemingly brand-new condition. It's a consumer's dream world out there, baby. And we can't seem to get enough. Storage units weren't even a thing 75 years ago. Now they're ubiquitous. The idea of paying rent to store things you'd never use to our grandparents was insanity. (It still is imho). I'm going thrifting right now, actually. To everybody else in the world, if you could take a break from buying more brand new clothing, to consider why you might not need to buy more brand new clothing, we would all be a lot better off imho.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Recently i've been paying attention to monthly dumps in the city. People seem to have an endless stream of things to throw away. It's said to be a time of crysis, and unless half the population decided to live without furnitures, it seems every body buys new things endlessly. Here goes the 'less consumerism, less shipping' advice.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Rich people throw away nice stuff. The trick to getting it is patience and the capacity to pick things up on a whim. I've furnished my entire house with free stuff. It takes a log longer than just throwing your credit card at Ikea but the stuff fits my house so much better anyway. It's not clapped out junk either. It's mostly nice stuff from people moving and empty-nesters downsizing.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      I live between poor and rich neighborhoods, both of them throw a massive amount of stuff. It's true that you can find better brand / rarer stuff in rich places but the volume is similar.
  - 7y ago
spodek 7y ago
Need incentive to buy less clothing, especially fast fashion? Watch The True Cost, available free here: https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDx711ibD1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDx711ibD1M
mrb 7y ago
The source appears to be this report by Quantis: https://quantis-intl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/measuringfashion_globalimpactstudy_full-report_quantis_cwf_2018a.pdf https://quantis-intl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/measurin... Specifically page 18: «Together the apparel and footwear industries generated between 5 and 10% of global pollution impacts in 2016. Footwear alone represents approximately one-fifth the impact of the apparel industry, about 1.4% of global climate impacts (700 million metric tons CO2eq), while apparel represents 6.7% of global climate impacts (3,290 million metric tons CO2eq). Combined, they account for an estimated 8.1% of global climate impacts (3,990 million metric tons CO2eq).»
cryptonector 7y ago
Thus ended the climate change saga.
mac01021 7y ago
Ignorant question: for the purposes of this article, are all clothes "fashion"? Are other things fashion too? Which ones?
jferge 7y ago
technology / D2C / supply chain startups are desperately needed in this area to solve these problems. At unspuntech.com (where i'm employed) we're working on creating high quality denim garments using 3D body scanning as the basis for custom fit. This allows us to go 0 inventory, and consumers generally don't mind a 2-3 week wait time for manufacturing thus far. up to 10-30% of garments end up unsold, so 0 inventory can have a large effect. We're also working on robotics solutions to remove steps from the manufacturing process, and eventually to reuse parts of the garment that get worn out. More thought has to be put into the fast fashion part of the equation -- consumers (moreso women than men for clothing) want a large variety of options, and if they can get them at the cheapest prices, why not? There either needs to be a shift culturally (maybe look at how organic foods became prevalent at super markets) or through some sort of regulation (not ideal). if any hner's want to talk more about these issues, please email me!
hristov 7y ago
This article has a bit of an underhanded motive. It pretends that is all pro environment but it comes out as an attack on fast fashion. One can argue that fast fashion is bad for the environment. One can argue that it encourages people to throw away clothes, that fast fashion clothes are cheap and wear out very quickly, etc. But that does not have to be the case. The ideal of fast fashion is that it is about putting clothes out in the stores and letting the customer decide what to wear and then quickly creating new designs based on customer demand, rather than the old system where the clothing industry would change collections only four times per year and more or less force the customer to like those collections based on a massive top down system of advertising, fashion magazines, models, movie stars, etc. A side effect of this system of making people like the new fashion is by bombarding with ads with beautiful people is that you also make people hate themselves. So fast fashion does not necessarily have to be low quality or low durability. And having a large number of collections does not necessarily suggest low quality either. Personally I cannot say much about fast fashion darling ZARA, because nothing there fits me, but I wear a lot of GAP, Banana Republic and some Uniqlo, and those clothes have been generally quite durable. That being said, if certain companies do make low quality clothes they should be called out. To change the subject, one accurate thing about the article is about how bad plastic clothes are. In addition to being bad for the environment they just feel worse on your body. I would just avoid buying artificial fibers as much as practical.
- 01100011 7y ago
  > they just feel worse on your body I don't think this is true anymore. I am a huge fan of cotton, but for athletic activities there is nothing like a modern, wicking, synthetic shirt. The 32 Degrees brand really sold me on synthetics a few years ago. Yes, it is bad for the environment... I'm just saying that synthetics aren't like they were in the 80s.
aledalgrande 7y ago
You don't even have to reuse to lower carbon emissions, just buy something durable. I have a shirt from RL that still looks new and I bought it in 2009. I still run with a pair of Nike socks from 2012, although I bought a new pair just this summer and they had holes just after 2 months, so I guess quality went down while price went up for this brand. Vote with your wallet for things that are durable. The market will follow. See Forever 21 going down the drain [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_21
m463 7y ago
So maybe shipping is more efficient than manufacturing?
egdod 7y ago
Where’s Greta when we need her?
DesiLurker 7y ago
this is the reason we need carbon & pollution tax! this is like whack-a-mole, way too many industries lurking under the radar & polluting our common resources for private profit. unless we put a price to it they will not factor in the cost to the rest of us.
- TheRealPomax 7y ago
  How does that stop people from still buying the now corrected-for-those-taxes garments? All you've done is added a revenue stream in the middle, and now there's even less incentive for regulators to do anything about the _actual_ problem, because now they're making (more) money off of the problem, and solving the underlying problem would damage those revenue streams.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    The price correction is the point. If the externalities are internalized it makes better methods proportionality more incentivized and viable if say cotton fabric garments are only seventeen cents more expensive than a synthetic instead of the previous two dollars without environmental costs factored in. Demand would be shifted accordingly.
m0zg 7y ago
LOL at dudes in the thread shopping at thrift stores and dumpster diving for clothing. I own 2 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of shoes, about a dozen t-shirts and some underwear, socks and a hoodie. My wife, on the other hand, has a bedroom-sized closet stuffed so full of clothing and shoes, if a clothing- or shoe-slide happens inside she won't be able to open the door. 95% of what's in there was worn only once or twice as far as I can tell, and she has long since lost track of what she does and does not have. Which is a long-winded way of saying, dudes contribute nearly nothing to this particular part of global emissions, and all the dumpster diving will be for naught. You gotta convince the ladies they don't need more shoes and clothing, and this is very, very hard to do. I've been trying for 20 years now, and so far I haven't figure out how to argue this case effectively.
Causality1 7y ago
Fashion is such an inscrutable practice to me. My closet is full of clothes but aside from my formalwear every shirt matches every pair of pants. When I get up I pick a set at random and go about my day. I don't own anything I don't like and I don't keep anything I can't wear so what's the point of choosing what to wear when it doesn't matter to anyone else? Throwing away a shirt to make room for another shirt is like throwing away a hamburger so you can buy another hamburger.
tempsy 7y ago
I'm surprised there's no viable business model in just renting clothes at this point. I know there's "Rent the Runway" for women, though unsure if their customers are renting the majority of their clothes or just using them to rent one off pieces for special events.
cmurf 7y ago
Most places that do alterations can do repair. But someone who is very good at repair is worth extra. Good repairs are strong. And they'll see weak areas needing repair before a hole starts, which might require patching. Buy that cashmere sweater and repair it. I've got two over 20 years old, one pair of jeans over 5 years old I wear so often they got crotch holes in them, easily and authentically repaired.
tanilama 7y ago
While it might be technical true...Will it be surprising when study emerges that food industry take the crown of carbon generation?
mazeye 7y ago
It aint even a problem we cant solve. My buddy here in Goa, India realise most of that water and land pollution in her home state came from chemicals used to dye these fabric pink, purple, blue, etc etc. Guess, what she did, she learnt the traditional art of natural dyeing and now, book she and all her friends wear clothes that have footprint of less than a q-tip. Unlike consumption of meat, fashion is something that can be solved by demanding different. Different chemicals. Different production methods. Different efficiency.
prirun 7y ago
My gripe is with tennis shoes. Back in the day (70's), tennis shoes always had a piece of rubber across the toe to prevent your toe from wearing through the fabric. Now, tennis shoes either don't have anything covering the toe, or even more ridiculous (Under Armor), there is a small piece of leather/vinyl on the outside edge of the big toe, but it strategically doesn't cover where your toe actually comes through the fabric after a year. It used to be that tennis shoes could be worn until the soles were worn through. Now, the upper portion wears holes through in a year, maybe two if you're lucky, and the sole looks almost new. And it's not just the fashion industry who are making products designed to fail: I just replaced a water heater after 7 years that had a 6-year warranty - surprise! The gas valve stopped working. Water heaters used to last 40 years! It's sickening to me that every household in America is sending a water heater and other major appliances to the landfill every 5-10 years, just so manufacturers, supply houses, and installers can make more money.

560 points by hkmaxpro 7y ago

The quality of clothing has gone downhill over the years. Both the fabric and the stitching. They just fall apart faster.

etagobla 7y ago
At least it creates jobs for the younger generation.
helpPeople 7y ago
I'm not sure I can agree. I'll give a few examples. "Free clothing" quality has gone up and become more fitted. Instead of 1 gender neutral size, clothes are by gender, and fabric softer. Stitching seems unchanged. I've had to purchase these for groups. High quality clothing has more accents. Quality of fabric is secondary to aesthetics.
- pkaye 7y ago
  So where is a good place to buy good quality T-shirts for men?
  - helpPeople 7y ago
    I make my own clothes so I haven't been going to retail stores. Try a few places, if they feel good, they are likely good quality.
petre 7y ago
It's called planned obsolescence. The plan is to be obsolete by next season, so four to six months. Although I wouldn't count on H&M clothing to last ten washing cycles.
- drdrey 7y ago
  Is it planned obsolescence or just competing on price? If you try to make something as cheap as possible, you're not optimizing for durability
  - petre 7y ago
    I think it's both. Some brands are marketing crappy disposable clothes (like H&M), other more conservative brands like Adidas for instance, are marketing some longer lasting clothing that one could use for more than one season. Actually the H&M Group has a more "exclusive" brand called COS which is about the same quality as Zara only more expensive - similar average quality synthetic materials but arguably better designs. The funny thing is that under a single company one could have it both ways. Look at Inditex, they're the best example. They include the Pull & Bear, Zara and Massimo Dutti brands under one umbrella company. While one markets disposables, the other markets upscale clothing that can last several seasons and there's also the in-between brand that markets clothes that last aproximately for one season. I guess there are buyers for all of these, depending on age/gender/income demographic.

tito 7y ago

10% of global emissions are for clothing. Wow! And growing..."If the fashion sector continues on its current trajectory, that share of the carbon budget could jump to 26% by 2050" (from the article) Flights: 2.5% of global emissions [1] Maritime shipping: 4.0% of global emissions [2] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/climate/air-travel-emissions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/climate/air-travel-emissi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shipping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...

pergadad 7y ago
The shipping numbers are rather dubious. No way it's actually"just" that much. Reporting is lacking and even where it's enforced shippers use defeat devices (that secretly pump pollution into the water rather than spew it in the air) or a second, weaker engine.
- vkou 7y ago
  The shipping numbers are correct. Shipping is incredibly carbon-efficient at moving large amounts of freight. The pollution problem from shipping is not in the form of carbon emissions. It's in the form of oil spills, NO2, SO2, etc pollution, and it is difficult to accurately estimate. [1] On the other hand, estimating ship carbon emissions is easy - count how much bunker oil gets produced, world-wide, and assume all of it gets burnt in the engines of cargo ships. [1] This is why occasionally, you see anti-environment publications push nonesense like 'Gas taxes are stupid, because one cruise ship produces more pollution then every single car in this city combined.' Yes, in NO2 and SO2. [2] No, not even remotely in terms of CO2. And carbon taxes are intended to... Reduce emissions of CO2, not NO2 or SO2. [2] Those gases are pollutants, they cause health and environmental problems, but they aren't very important in the context of climate change... Which is what carbon taxes try to address.
  - tito 7y ago
    Yeah as my life cycle analysis friend says, "transportation is waste".

amacalac 7y ago

That's interesting. I was thinking about this a lot over the past 2-3 weeks. The sheer amount of clothing lying in all the shops across the world. Talk a walk into any Macy's / Bloomingdales / Hudsons Bay and count the number of items of clothing. Then multiply that across that one store's chain of shops. Then realize there are multiple chains like that. Then realize there are multiple stores not in chains. Then realize that's just the geographic area you're aware of. Then think about other cities, counties, regions, provinces, countries. Then remember all the clothing you have at home already...

chimi 7y ago
All the industries are competing to be the one by which you display your worth to society. The order as I see it is: House, Car, Clothes, Phone. Jewelry goes in there somewhere. Each of these products is trying to convince you of their value, excess value really, so you will spend your money on them, yet the expense of the product isn't worth much. You need a house to protect you from the weather and other people. After having done that, the rest is extravagance. Jewelry is absolutely no value. If you can call, text, and browse the internet, you're good. If a car gets you from A to B and doesn't need a lot of maintenance, that's sufficient. I remember a Sex in the City scene where Carrie was talking about her $40,000 worth of shoes. Beyond providing the basics, these products aren't worth more except for their display of wealth. Meanwhile, we destroy the planet a little more each day to prove we are worth mating.
- rwmurrayVT 7y ago
  Who is to say that $40,000 in shoes is any worse than $100 in shoes constantly used and abused? In that extreme of a case I would say it's most likely worse, but there's something to be said for more expensive and longer-lasting. In Carrie's case I would say it's worse just because she never struck me as the type to wear them for more than a single fashion season. Love the show, hate the movies.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    I buy $100 shoes. They typically last me about 3 years. $40,000 worth of shoes assuming they last just as long per $ (Wrong but its the only way this comparison works) would last me many lifetimes. There is simply no way that a person could spend that much on shoes in a lifetime and it be a good idea. One thing I am considering is going slightly up and getting a pair of $600 leather boots since I know someone who has been wearing the same pair for 10 years now and just has the sole replaced.

hos234 7y ago

Well I hope the FKK party emerges out of this one.

selimthegrim 7y ago
Maybe the YKK party

dr_dshiv 7y ago

I don't believe it, actually. Considering how much waste I use wrt food .. clothes seem much less wasteful. But, who is to know?

EpicEng 7y ago
I don't see a comparison to food here... just flying and shipping via boat.
TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
“Who is to know?” That’s what the report linked in the article is for. To provide evidence for the claim stated in the title of this post.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  You mean the UNEP report? It provides the fact, but no source. I trust the UN, but I would appreciate knowing how the number is bigger than flying and shipping. That's pretty remarkable, no?

slowmovintarget 7y ago

Seems like we need to bring back "Make Do and Mend": https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large106365.html https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large106365.html

colechristensen 7y ago
It's hard for people to find high quality clothing because evaluating quality is hard and "quality" is sold by many places and it ends up being only an impression. It comes back to a thought I've had in mind for a while about margins. Margins are often set as a multiple of material cost. 10x, 100x, something like that. That rather large multiple handles the materials obviously, but also manufacturing, shipping, QA, marketing, overhead, etc. To make a price competitive product, you minimize your material cost and then use that multiple to set price. The problems lies in that if you use 2 cent nails instead of 1 cent nails, everything upstream does not double in price. There would be a small increase in cost-of-capital, and other losses related directly to the merchandise, but many many things aren't related at all. When your product is all the way at the bottom of the quality,price bracket, doubling your materials cost doesn't double your actual marginal cost and shouldn't double your price, but so often it does and stupid quality decisions are made which results in it being very difficult to find decent products. You end up having to pay super premium quality prices to get things designed and built as they reasonably should be. Or you end up paying hundreds of dollars so the one part that matters is up to spec when the actual difference in cost of that one part was maybe two or three dollars.
globular-toast 7y ago
Who has time to mend clothes now that everybody goes to work?
- baroffoos 7y ago
  And yet the average person somehow has hours per day to spend on TV/Social Media/Video Games
  - globular-toast 7y ago

DoreenMichele 7y ago

In Europe, fashion companies went from an average offering of two collections per year in 2000 to five in 2011. And a lot of it is zany garbage. Plus, fashion helps promote a lot of warped body image issues.

seltzered_ 7y ago

The article references this report from a year ago: https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/putting-brakes-fast-fashion https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/putting... (2018) “ The fashion industry produces 20 per cent of global wastewater and 10 per cent of global carbon emissions - more than all international flights and maritime shipping. Textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of water globally and it takes around 2,000 gallons of water to make a typical pair of jeans. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned. If nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. ”

paulcole 7y ago
By comparison, a pound of beef is around 1,800 pounds. Average American eats like 200 pounds of meat per year. How many pairs of jeans do you think a person buys each year? I buy 1 pair of Levis and just wear them about once or twice a week (never washing them) and throw them out after 2 or 3 years. https://foodtank.com/news/2013/12/why-meat-eats-resources/ https://foodtank.com/news/2013/12/why-meat-eats-resources/ https://www.globalagriculture.org/whats-new/news/en/32921.html https://www.globalagriculture.org/whats-new/news/en/32921.ht...
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Are you talking about cow farts? When cows eat grass, the carbon they emit was already in the system. It's just like any other organism staying alive. This is different than burning fossil fuels, the carbon of which until they are extracted hasn't been in the system for millions of years. To the extent that the beef industry burns fossil fuels, that's something you could criticize, but it's hardly unique to the beef industry. Cattle would eat less intensively-cultivated corn and more grass if the corn farmers weren't subsidized so much. If no corn was cultivated at all, cattle would still be a pretty efficient way of sustainably extracting food from marginal grassland.
  - seltzered_ 7y ago
    Hum, I'm not familiar with ruminant (i.e. cow) digestion but I think you're right in suggesting there's greater complexity here when associating cattle with the use of modern agriculture practices (haber-bosch process). Regarding the parent's comment, the 1800 pounds-of-water-for-pound-of-beef figure seems to be sourced from https://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report-48-WaterFootprint-AnimalProducts-Vol1.pdf https://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report-48-WaterFo... (which won't say 1799 because it's metric) https://www.watercalculator.org/footprints/beef-king-big-water-footprints/ https://www.watercalculator.org/footprints/beef-king-big-wat... seems to aggregate various estimates. To direct the conversation towards solutions, Project drawdown (https://www.drawdown.org https://www.drawdown.org) mentions Silvopasture practices (closely related to Joel Salatin style farming). That said, reducing the amount of intensively-cultivated corn grown ultimately still means reducing the number of cattle (we're ~80-90% more than 100yrs ago) and seemingly less meat consumption per capita.

SapporoChris 7y ago

First I was shamed for driving a car, then flying, now wearing clothes. Fine, I'm a terrible person. I'm going to stop trying now. sarcasm

toss1 7y ago
Not clothes, artificial clothes. From TFA: "Many of those fibers are polyester, a plastic found in an estimated 60% of garments. Producing polyester releases two to three times more carbon emissions than cotton, and polyester does not break down in the ocean." I'm not sure if it is more the consumers or the producers driving it, but it's almost impossible now to find actual 100% cotton clothing., at least in the US. It seems that an entire generation or mor literally does not know what genuine cotton jeans feel like.
- itronitron 7y ago
  either Patagonia or The Gap (maybe both) did an environmental impact analysis in the late '90's and were surprised to discover that cotton had the biggest negative impact. I don't recall the exact reason or numbers but it sounds like someone needs to do another analysis on total cost of production for each material.
- SapporoChris 7y ago
  Article shames cotton also. "It takes about 700 gallons of water to produce one cotton shirt. That's enough water for one person to drink at least eight cups per day for three-and-a-half years." My grief with the article is it hypes things and doesn't give very good context. It feels like it is cherry picking the worst examples. Research is already being done to grow cotton using less water. This is the sort of solution that works. 100% cotton is difficult to find and finding good quality 100% cotton shirts is even more difficult. For Jeans, the original Levi's 501 blues is 100% cotton denim, many of the new styles are blends.

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago

Flights are currently "used" by a tiny % of the global population, whereas clothing is a necessity for 100% of the population. What does that comparison says, exactly? Changing the habits of a few persons would have much impact on the environment as changing the habits of every person on Earth? Which change should we prioritize? Mmmh...

notahacker 7y ago
I don't think any sane person is proposing the future of humanity lies in nudity. But you'd have a tough job persuading me that having 60% more clothes than 20 years ago and landfilling 85% of textiles bought a year is necessary, or that extensive wardrobes replaced every season are less frivolous than transport.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
This comparison can be read as saying that if one was to search for changes at the industry level, either technological or legal, then clothing looks like a high-payoff place to do that.
foobar1962 7y ago
Most of that clothing is for consumption for the western world, of which the USA would probably be first and European Union second. The third world often gets sold the remnants and retainers from the first world.

buboard 7y ago

Ouch. Lets see what they have to say about the cosmetics industry ...

esotericn 7y ago

We really need a better industry around re-use of essentially everything. Let's say I need some X. Last week I bought a base layer because it's getting cold here. I can order, or buy in a store, a brand new X trivially. I don't actually need a brand new X. A used X would do me just fine. But the difficulty in doing so is ridiculous in comparison. Cottage industry eBay stuff (that you have to order online) vs. an entire infrastructure built around producing and selling new stuff.

wil421 7y ago
If you really want to do go down this path I would highly recommend Patagonia wornwear. They get a lot of hate for their prices but they are trying to be as sustainable as possible. The Ironclad guarantee is one of the best. eBay is full of their used stuff and some neat retro gear. https://wornwear.patagonia.com https://wornwear.patagonia.com
- ghaff 7y ago
  Neat. Didn't know Patagonia had that. Though, truth be told, the Patagonia clothing I could potentially buy used probably lasts me so long that I don't really need any more.
bilbo0s 7y ago
I mean, would you order online, and then have it shipped to you? That might be an improvement over what we have now? But I suspect that it's hardly ideal. Unless you were geographically restricted in what you could order. (ie - No ordering some wiz-bang base layers from a family that happens to be in Norway when you live in Minneapolis.)
leggomylibro 7y ago
What about thrift stores or organizations like Goodwill? Those places have lots of secondhand clothes, houseware, and small appliances. You might have trouble finding a used A/C in the middle of July, and you might have to try a few locations to find what you're looking for, but it's less trouble than plenty of stuff that people do to be more eco-friendly.

booboolayla 7y ago

I think the carbon scare will prove to be the biggest blemish on science EVER, but I have to admit this is kind of funny :)

anm89 7y ago

I would call this the garments or textiles industry, not "fashion" Just a nitpick.

std_throwaway 7y ago

Money spent = Emissions generated (direct or indirect by further spending) If you want to save CO2, then save as much money as you can in paper form. Don't spend, don't invest. Instead keep everything as cash. This also has indirect effects by slowing down the economy which reduces money flow for other people, too.

timwaagh 7y ago
Indeed. We keep chasing our own tail. It's largely pointless.
baroffoos 7y ago
You can spend your money on digital goods which have a very tiny environmental impact. This doesn't have the result of preventing other people from spending that money but it is at least sustainable if everyone does it.

mc32 7y ago

I’m glad this finally got the attention it deserves. Forever21 went into reorganization bankruptcy because they were not “fast enough”! That’s lunacy. Make things that last, in other words durable. Make them timeless. Bigger upfront investment, lower total cost. Lower impact on environment.

birdyrooster 7y ago

>85% of all textiles go to the dump each year So only 15% of textiles make it into someones home or office and doesn't get thrown out. Where is the waste? I assume it is 1) Unsold stock, 2) Unusable material during manufacturing, and 3) Consumers throwing clothing away in the first year of ownership. Could we reduce waste most significantly by moving to on-demand clothing manufacturing?

xyzzyz 7y ago
That's not a correct inference. It might be that all textiles produced make it to people's homes, but people also throw away lots of old clothes. Another reason might be that some textiles are not made into clothes, and are used only briefly for the purpose they were created before being tossed.
groby_b 7y ago
Yes and no :) "On-demand" clothing manufacturing is practiced today, in that fashions change rapidly, and in response, retailers produce what can only be described as "shitty quality, fast". (Exacerbated by Chinese clothing manufacturers + social media - they're extremely effective at churning out extremely glossy pictures for what's about the lowest possible bar of quality) That - "fast fashion" - is what gets discarded. That's not the way forward. On-demand manufacturing that's more along the lines of traditional high-quality bespoke clothing could be an answer, but it would mean that the vast majority of people likely can't afford to wear the latest fashion all the time. And even if we can sidestep that problem through technology, wearing "the latest" itself is a huge part of the problem. If you have clothes that are only meant for a season, you'll dump large amounts of textiles. So what's needed is both a move to higher quality, and a move away from "fast fashion". Given that the entire industry makes money mostly on "what's new and hot", this would require a significant cultural change.
- gherkinnn 7y ago
  Now, if only bespoke shorts and tshirts became a thing. I’d happily pay a decent sum for a set of charcoal tshirts that fit me perfectly and last for a few years of daily use. Bonus points of I get to choose a fabric other than pure cotton.

evolve2k 7y ago

Ecologically speaking maybe Steve Jobs/Star Trek respectively were onto something. A high quality minimal personal style that involves orders of magnitude less garment churn and waste with the added benefit of just not having to spend time on what to wear each day (insert pithy Jobs quote). But seriously if I was to explore finding a personal style that I could wear as my day to day work/life “uniform”, where to look, where to source from. Are there any companies focussed around this?

TeMPOraL 7y ago
I'd happily wear a DS9 or First Contact era Starfleet uniform all day. They look great! :). Regarding your serious point, I'd like to know too. I'd pay for a service that would help me find a style that looks good on me, with associated supply of quality clothes in this style. My current clothing choice pattern is "random, with a pre-filtering done by my wife".
- Swizec 7y ago
  I learned a most important trick watching America’s Next Top Model with my sister: Buy oufits, not clothes. You make the decision on what goes together and looks good at the store. You try stuff until you find what works. When it works, you buy the whole outfit. Possibly in multiples. No more decisions when getting dressed. You have predetermined outfits for whatever activity you’re doing that day. Refresh every few months or years as your life and personality evolves.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Thanks! I'll try that the next season.
  - grenoire 7y ago
    I like a combination approach much better. Buy multiple shirts, tees, sweaters, and pants which can match with each other. Oftentimes these are less saturated earthy colours with white and black mixed in. It'll be timeless and easy to maintain—not to mention very suitable for ones who have analysis paralysis with clothes. You can't mess up!

bigYahnz 7y ago

That is impressive given that most container ships seemed to be powered by burning investor's money.

beat 7y ago

Generally, it's a good article, but it lands on a sore point for me with many environmentalist articles - treating "water use" as if water disappears when used. Generally, water doesn't cease to exist - it just gets temporarily stored.

JofArnold 7y ago
Whilst that’s true, it’s not how it’s experienced. Take for instance Mexico City which has been using up its groundwater at a tremendous rate; sure, the water hasn’t been destroyed in the chemical or atomic sense, but the lack of it locally is very real.
- beat 7y ago
  I agree, but that makes it a much different sort of argument.
ghostly_s 7y ago
The type of water use we're talking here - saturating it with detergents, dyes, etc. -- makes it unpotable, at which point it is, best-case, going through a very expensive treatment process before it can be returned to the water cycle, which you can be certain the manufacturers are not footing the full cost of; or more likely in the places where garment manufacturers set up, is just being dumped into the environment, destroying ecosystems and the health of those unlucky enough to be stuck with its fallout. So you're right, water can't be "used up", but the amount of it being used in industrial processes is a very good proxy for environmental harm.
- petre 7y ago
  Very expensive? You just let it sit and evaporate.
  - foobar1962 7y ago
    And after the water evaporates, how is the concentrated chemical sludge treated? Does it get removed for safe disposal? Does it get left to sink down and contaminate the ground water? That’s the problem.

narcindin 7y ago

This article reads like a twitter thread. I wasn't sure if I was reading one article or multiple. I wasn't sure what was a image and what was an ad.

syphilis2 7y ago

I'm glad to see growing awareness concerning plastic in clothing. The article mentions problems with cotton production as well. With clothing I feel the same way I do about food, and the same way many people have felt for decades: I've been duped! It's not difficult, but it takes time money and effort to make good purchases, and that can be frustrating.

Nicci00 7y ago

Bought a H&M zipper jacket by the start of this year, somehow now it's is as worn down as a Adidas one I bought in 2011! H&M mostly sells disposable clothing, and they have the never of making "conscious" fashion ads.

globular-toast 7y ago

If you're a man you can immediately stop contributing to this by opting out of fashion and buying high quality garments that will last you a decade or more. Buy handmade shoes that are worth resoling. Buy shirts and only wash them when necessary. Stop wearing printed t-shirts that degrade quickly. Don't wash your trousers.

gok 7y ago

The problem with carbon footprintting is that it suffers from a variation of the coastline paradox. It's impossible to meaningfully determine the carbon footprint of a t-shirt, for example, because you can also find another level of externality.

meerita 7y ago

To me men (not all 100%, the majority) are stoic: few garments, the necessary. How many of you are the opposite to this? My GF is a machine of buying clothes. Her friends too. I don't see my friends buying that much each month. When I go to a shopping center the majority of stores are women oriented, the entire fashion industry is run for them to ludicrous levels.

iamaelephant 7y ago
You don't speak for all men, and especially not all women.
- meerita 7y ago
  I didn't claim all men are stoic. I said "to me".
hnick 7y ago
I do not and never will understand fashion. I understand the whole speech in The Devil Wears Prada (that the things we all wear were once the trendsetters, just like the tech in luxury cars trickling down) but I just don't get it. Even when someone buys me something I tend to just pick a favourite and stick to it. I have a few pairs of shoes but pretty much just wear one unless the occasion says I shouldn't. And then there are the gamers with their "Fashion is the real endgame!" attitude which I've found in a few games. I seriously don't care if I look like this (http://i.imgur.com/SfYDtUO.jpg http://i.imgur.com/SfYDtUO.jpg) when playing. Just gimme the stats I need.
- baot 7y ago
  Gaming as a hobby is no more rational than fashion.
user_rob 7y ago
Maybe it is the result of evolution and the hunter-gatherer optimisations for humans. Hunters hunt and are interested in clever things to do that and gatherers gather and are engaged in those type of activities. Both of these activities seem to be uncontrolled in much of the population. Without control or a dramatic evolutionary step we may be doomed to destroying our planet.

flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago

I can't wait for the day when I can walk to my local dump and move into a mcmansion somebody threw out because the paint was the wrong color... And I am only half joking. Go into your local thrift store and try not to gasp as you walk past $300 pair of designer jeans after $400 dress, some of them still with tags on them as they've never been worn, and most all of them in seemingly brand-new condition. It's a consumer's dream world out there, baby. And we can't seem to get enough. Storage units weren't even a thing 75 years ago. Now they're ubiquitous. The idea of paying rent to store things you'd never use to our grandparents was insanity. (It still is imho). I'm going thrifting right now, actually. To everybody else in the world, if you could take a break from buying more brand new clothing, to consider why you might not need to buy more brand new clothing, we would all be a lot better off imho.

agumonkey 7y ago
Recently i've been paying attention to monthly dumps in the city. People seem to have an endless stream of things to throw away. It's said to be a time of crysis, and unless half the population decided to live without furnitures, it seems every body buys new things endlessly. Here goes the 'less consumerism, less shipping' advice.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Rich people throw away nice stuff. The trick to getting it is patience and the capacity to pick things up on a whim. I've furnished my entire house with free stuff. It takes a log longer than just throwing your credit card at Ikea but the stuff fits my house so much better anyway. It's not clapped out junk either. It's mostly nice stuff from people moving and empty-nesters downsizing.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    I live between poor and rich neighborhoods, both of them throw a massive amount of stuff. It's true that you can find better brand / rarer stuff in rich places but the volume is similar.
- 7y ago

spodek 7y ago

Need incentive to buy less clothing, especially fast fashion? Watch The True Cost, available free here: https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDx711ibD1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDx711ibD1M

mrb 7y ago

The source appears to be this report by Quantis: https://quantis-intl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/measuringfashion_globalimpactstudy_full-report_quantis_cwf_2018a.pdf https://quantis-intl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/measurin... Specifically page 18: «Together the apparel and footwear industries generated between 5 and 10% of global pollution impacts in 2016. Footwear alone represents approximately one-fifth the impact of the apparel industry, about 1.4% of global climate impacts (700 million metric tons CO2eq), while apparel represents 6.7% of global climate impacts (3,290 million metric tons CO2eq). Combined, they account for an estimated 8.1% of global climate impacts (3,990 million metric tons CO2eq).»

cryptonector 7y ago

Thus ended the climate change saga.

mac01021 7y ago

Ignorant question: for the purposes of this article, are all clothes "fashion"? Are other things fashion too? Which ones?

jferge 7y ago

technology / D2C / supply chain startups are desperately needed in this area to solve these problems. At unspuntech.com (where i'm employed) we're working on creating high quality denim garments using 3D body scanning as the basis for custom fit. This allows us to go 0 inventory, and consumers generally don't mind a 2-3 week wait time for manufacturing thus far. up to 10-30% of garments end up unsold, so 0 inventory can have a large effect. We're also working on robotics solutions to remove steps from the manufacturing process, and eventually to reuse parts of the garment that get worn out. More thought has to be put into the fast fashion part of the equation -- consumers (moreso women than men for clothing) want a large variety of options, and if they can get them at the cheapest prices, why not? There either needs to be a shift culturally (maybe look at how organic foods became prevalent at super markets) or through some sort of regulation (not ideal). if any hner's want to talk more about these issues, please email me!

hristov 7y ago

This article has a bit of an underhanded motive. It pretends that is all pro environment but it comes out as an attack on fast fashion. One can argue that fast fashion is bad for the environment. One can argue that it encourages people to throw away clothes, that fast fashion clothes are cheap and wear out very quickly, etc. But that does not have to be the case. The ideal of fast fashion is that it is about putting clothes out in the stores and letting the customer decide what to wear and then quickly creating new designs based on customer demand, rather than the old system where the clothing industry would change collections only four times per year and more or less force the customer to like those collections based on a massive top down system of advertising, fashion magazines, models, movie stars, etc. A side effect of this system of making people like the new fashion is by bombarding with ads with beautiful people is that you also make people hate themselves. So fast fashion does not necessarily have to be low quality or low durability. And having a large number of collections does not necessarily suggest low quality either. Personally I cannot say much about fast fashion darling ZARA, because nothing there fits me, but I wear a lot of GAP, Banana Republic and some Uniqlo, and those clothes have been generally quite durable. That being said, if certain companies do make low quality clothes they should be called out. To change the subject, one accurate thing about the article is about how bad plastic clothes are. In addition to being bad for the environment they just feel worse on your body. I would just avoid buying artificial fibers as much as practical.

01100011 7y ago
> they just feel worse on your body I don't think this is true anymore. I am a huge fan of cotton, but for athletic activities there is nothing like a modern, wicking, synthetic shirt. The 32 Degrees brand really sold me on synthetics a few years ago. Yes, it is bad for the environment... I'm just saying that synthetics aren't like they were in the 80s.

aledalgrande 7y ago

You don't even have to reuse to lower carbon emissions, just buy something durable. I have a shirt from RL that still looks new and I bought it in 2009. I still run with a pair of Nike socks from 2012, although I bought a new pair just this summer and they had holes just after 2 months, so I guess quality went down while price went up for this brand. Vote with your wallet for things that are durable. The market will follow. See Forever 21 going down the drain [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_21

m463 7y ago

So maybe shipping is more efficient than manufacturing?

egdod 7y ago

Where’s Greta when we need her?

DesiLurker 7y ago

this is the reason we need carbon & pollution tax! this is like whack-a-mole, way too many industries lurking under the radar & polluting our common resources for private profit. unless we put a price to it they will not factor in the cost to the rest of us.

TheRealPomax 7y ago
How does that stop people from still buying the now corrected-for-those-taxes garments? All you've done is added a revenue stream in the middle, and now there's even less incentive for regulators to do anything about the _actual_ problem, because now they're making (more) money off of the problem, and solving the underlying problem would damage those revenue streams.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  The price correction is the point. If the externalities are internalized it makes better methods proportionality more incentivized and viable if say cotton fabric garments are only seventeen cents more expensive than a synthetic instead of the previous two dollars without environmental costs factored in. Demand would be shifted accordingly.

m0zg 7y ago

LOL at dudes in the thread shopping at thrift stores and dumpster diving for clothing. I own 2 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of shoes, about a dozen t-shirts and some underwear, socks and a hoodie. My wife, on the other hand, has a bedroom-sized closet stuffed so full of clothing and shoes, if a clothing- or shoe-slide happens inside she won't be able to open the door. 95% of what's in there was worn only once or twice as far as I can tell, and she has long since lost track of what she does and does not have. Which is a long-winded way of saying, dudes contribute nearly nothing to this particular part of global emissions, and all the dumpster diving will be for naught. You gotta convince the ladies they don't need more shoes and clothing, and this is very, very hard to do. I've been trying for 20 years now, and so far I haven't figure out how to argue this case effectively.

Causality1 7y ago

Fashion is such an inscrutable practice to me. My closet is full of clothes but aside from my formalwear every shirt matches every pair of pants. When I get up I pick a set at random and go about my day. I don't own anything I don't like and I don't keep anything I can't wear so what's the point of choosing what to wear when it doesn't matter to anyone else? Throwing away a shirt to make room for another shirt is like throwing away a hamburger so you can buy another hamburger.

tempsy 7y ago

I'm surprised there's no viable business model in just renting clothes at this point. I know there's "Rent the Runway" for women, though unsure if their customers are renting the majority of their clothes or just using them to rent one off pieces for special events.

cmurf 7y ago

Most places that do alterations can do repair. But someone who is very good at repair is worth extra. Good repairs are strong. And they'll see weak areas needing repair before a hole starts, which might require patching. Buy that cashmere sweater and repair it. I've got two over 20 years old, one pair of jeans over 5 years old I wear so often they got crotch holes in them, easily and authentically repaired.

tanilama 7y ago

While it might be technical true...Will it be surprising when study emerges that food industry take the crown of carbon generation?

mazeye 7y ago

It aint even a problem we cant solve. My buddy here in Goa, India realise most of that water and land pollution in her home state came from chemicals used to dye these fabric pink, purple, blue, etc etc. Guess, what she did, she learnt the traditional art of natural dyeing and now, book she and all her friends wear clothes that have footprint of less than a q-tip. Unlike consumption of meat, fashion is something that can be solved by demanding different. Different chemicals. Different production methods. Different efficiency.

prirun 7y ago

My gripe is with tennis shoes. Back in the day (70's), tennis shoes always had a piece of rubber across the toe to prevent your toe from wearing through the fabric. Now, tennis shoes either don't have anything covering the toe, or even more ridiculous (Under Armor), there is a small piece of leather/vinyl on the outside edge of the big toe, but it strategically doesn't cover where your toe actually comes through the fabric after a year. It used to be that tennis shoes could be worn until the soles were worn through. Now, the upper portion wears holes through in a year, maybe two if you're lucky, and the sole looks almost new. And it's not just the fashion industry who are making products designed to fail: I just replaced a water heater after 7 years that had a 6-year warranty - surprise! The gas valve stopped working. Water heaters used to last 40 years! It's sickening to me that every household in America is sending a water heater and other major appliances to the landfill every 5-10 years, just so manufacturers, supply houses, and installers can make more money.