Several times a year in the world’s fashion capitals, willowy models in dazzling outfits sashay down the catwalk to present the coming season’s trends. Fashion feeds a growing industry and makes textile and clothing the world’s second-biggest economic activity for intensity of trade. However, the environment pays a heavy price for this and to stem pollution, textile producers, manufacturers and distributors are launching initiatives built around sustainable development meaning ecology may be the next new trend.
Every customer product has an impact on the environment but an average consumer does not know which product has less or more impact than any other. Any product, which is made, used or disposed of in a way that significantly reduces the harm it would otherwise cause to the environment, could be considered as eco-friendly product. Slowly, consumers are taking the lead in prompting manufacturers to adopt clean technologies to produce eco-friendly products.
The textile industry is divided between natural fibres such as wool, silk, linen, cotton and hemp, and man-made ones, often made from petrochemicals. These cheap and easy-care synthetic fibres are becoming the textile industry’s miracle solution but their manufacture creates pollution and they are hard to recycle (with nylon taking 30 to 40 years to decompose).
From an environmental point of view, current production methods mean that natural fibres may be no less damaging than their synthetic counterparts. Cotton is the most pesticide intensive crop in the world, using 22.5 per cent of all the insecticides used globally. These pesticides injure and kill many people every year. Cotton growing also uses vast amounts of chemical fertilizers that pollute and deplete the soil. Herbicides, and chemical defoliants which are sometimes used to aid mechanical cotton harvesting, add to the toll on both the environment and human health. These chemicals typically remain in the fabric after finishing, and are released during the lifetime of the garments. The development of genetically modified cotton adds environmental problems at another level.