ISSUES THAT FASHION CREATES
3 t-shirts for 15 euros? Yes please. 70 percent sale on beachwear? Let me get on that bikini section. But do you really need the same t-shirt in three colours? Does the 10 days per year you get to spend on a beach justify a drawer full of swimwear? Textile consumption is destroying the world, and FAST FASHION is the one to blame.
Fashion—a $2.5 trillion sector—is the second most polluting industry on Earth, right behind oil. The pressure to reduce costs and speed up production time means that environmental corners are cut in the name of profit. Fast Fashion’s negative impact includes the use of cheap, toxic textile dyes – with the fashion industry the second largest polluter of clean water globally after agriculture.
The speed at
which garments are produced also means that more and more clothes are disposed
of by consumers, creating a huge amount of textile waste.
This image sums up what actually is fast fashion up to .
If only fast fashion just turned us into consumption monsters with a penchant for Pugsley Addams inspired outfits, but the industry is also destroying the planet and exploiting human labour. As the purchase price for fast fashion drops, it’s cost on the environment and human lives rises.
The same research by UNECE shows that the fashion industry is the second-highest user of water worldwide and produces 20 percent of global water waste. That one cotton shirt we pay five euros for requires 2700 litres of water to produce. That’s the amount an average person drinks in 2.5 years. Fast fashion isn’t only depleting the world’s water sources but is also poisoning them. According to the Institute of Sustainable Communication, the clothing industry is the world’s second-largest clean water polluter.
NATURAL FIBRES
Natural fibers are fibers that are produced by plants,animals and geological processes.They can be used as a component of composite materials,where the orientation of fibers impacts the properties.Natural fibers can also be matted into sheets to make paper or felt.
Natural fibers are also used in composite materials, much like synthetic or glass fibers. These composites, called biocomposites, are a natural fiber in a matrix of synthetic polymers. One of the first biofiber-reinforced plastics in use was a cellulose fiber in phenolics in 1908. Usage includes applications where energy absorption is important, such as insulation, noise absorbing panels, or collapsable areas in automobiles.
RECYCLABILITY OF NATURAL FIBRES
The recycling of natural textile fibers can be made with those textile wastes which have a composition and an internal structure for the most part made from fibers of natural origin. Some examples are cotton, rayon or wool, typical natural fibers used by the textile companies or laboratories to produce consumer goods such as socks, knitwear and clothing in general.
The recycling of the natural fiber of cotton, for example, occurs first dividing this material from other waste. After the division, the cotton fiber selected is packed with the use of a hydraulic press. Finally, the bale of cotton fiber is then stored to be ready for sale as excellent Secondary Raw Material (MPS). The same type of procedure can be performed for the wool natural fiber or viscose natural textile fiber.
DEGRADABILITY OF NATURAL FIBRES
The degradation mechanisms of natural fiber in the alkaline and mineral-rich environment of cement matrix are investigated. Cement hydration is presented to be a crucial factor in understanding fiber degradation behavior by designing a contrast test to embed sisal fibers in pure and metakaolin modified cement matrices. In addition to durability of sisal fiber-reinforced cement composites determined by means of flexural properties, degradation degree of the embedded fibers is directly evaluated by proposing a novel separation approach. The results indicate that, by reducing alkalinity of pore solution, metakaolin effectively mitigates the deterioration of natural fiber. By combining results of thermogravimetric analysis and microstructure, the alkali degradation process of natural fiber, which consists of hydrolysis of lignin and hemicellulose, stripping of cellulose microfibrils and deterioration of amorphous regions in cellulose chains, is visually presented.
GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS
The carbon footprints of the different natural fibres (flax, hemp, jute and kenaf) are not significantly different. In the range of uncertainty, the carbon footprint to the factory gate of the European nonwoven producer in the automotive or insulation sector is about 400 kg of CO2-eq per tonne of natural fibre for all four natural fibres, when applying mass allocation. Jute and kenaf show less emissions during cultivation, harvesting and decortication because of manual processing, but long transport to Europe levels this advantage.
When economic allocation is used, more of the greenhouse gas emissions stemming from plant cultivation and processing are placed on the fibres, as their value is higher than the by-products’ value. The carbon footprint of natural fibres using economic allocation is around 900 kg of CO2-eq per tonne of natural fibre.
Because fertilizers have a high share in the total calculation of emissions, substituting mineral fertilizers by organic fertilizers leads to a lower carbon footprint of 360 kg of CO2-eq per tonne of hemp fibre instead of 400 kg of CO2-eq/t (mass allocation). Using organic fertilizer is only possible if the crop and the region are suitable.
BIBLIOGRAPHY -
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-06-15/textile-recycling-fashion-old-clothes-waste/11197904
https://www.bwss.org/fastfashion/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0008884615000617
Fast fashion is a problem really we should create awareness in our society.
ReplyDeleteYour blog is very informative. Very well written blog 😊
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