We Have No Idea How Bad Fashion Actually Is for the Environment
Author: Alden Wicker | Published: March 15, 2017
My journey down the rabbit hole started with this fact: “The global fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world.” You’ll hear this repeated at panels, on blogs and news sites, and anywhere else sustainable fashion is being discussed.
Intuitively, it sounds true. We’ll start with the fact that an estimated 50 million tons of polyester — a petroleum product — were produced in 2015. Growing cotton, especially if it involves pesticides, herbicides, and oil-powered machinery, is also a large carbon emitter (though not as large as polyester). And then there is the journey the multiple components of one garment take around the world on oil-gulping ships to be spun in one country, then sewn in another factory powered by coal and generators, then finished in yet another, buttons and zippers from another continent, packaged, and shipped to stores, briefly worn, tossed into the landfill (which emits the potent greenhouse gas methane), or shipped back around the world to secondhand markets.
But when I searched for the source, I couldn’t find it. No study, no official report. I asked every sustainable fashion industry expert I knew. Several said they would get back to me. A couple of experts pointed me to the Danish Fashion Institute, which in turn disavowed the fact.
“The report it was associated with has been pulled by its authors and the Danish Fashion Institute has been trying to walk this back since it accidentally used it in a press release,” Jason Kibbey, CEO of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, told me in an email. “It’s often quoted, and could theoretically be true, but at this point, I don’t have any credible facts to assess where the fashion industry would rank.”
“We don’t believe the statement to be accurate either, but we are aware that it has become a popular misconception,” the Danish Fashion Institute said in an email. “We can, however, tell you that fashion is one of the most resource-intensive industries in the world, both in terms of natural resources and human resources.” They said they would be announcing a report in May attempting to clarify its impact.
Another fact floating around says that fashion accounts for 10 percent of global emissions. That was pulled from a 2010 Textile World article, written by an Italian salesman of textile equipment. But it is actually referencing the entire textile industry, not just fashion, which could include rugs, bed linens, engine belts, automotive carpets, and all manner of other very unfashionable things. And there’s no way to know if it’s true — when Textile World changed management, the fact-checking binders were lost, and the author of this article didn’t respond to my messages.