Fashion, the silent culprit of global plastic pollution

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The elegance of our outfits hides an unflattering environmental reality. While the fashion world shines with its catwalks and sparkling window displays, a study published in Nature Communications reveals the other side of the coin: our wardrobes are massive contributors to global plastic pollution. A massive and little-known pollution, mainly caused by end-of-life synthetic clothing, which disproportionately affects developing countries.

Our wardrobe: an ecological time bomb

Our contemporary clothing bear the indelible mark of the plastic age. Polyester, nylon and acrylic; all derived from oil exploitation, are intertwined in our everyday fabrics, transforming our clothing collections into a gigantic source of pollution.

The figures revealed by the study are dizzying: in 2019, the clothing industry generated more than 20 million tons of plastic waste worldwide. That's the equivalent of over 500 billion 500 ml plastic water bottles. Imagine stacking these bottles on top of each other, it would form a tower reaching several times the height of the stratosphere, between 12 and 50 km above sea level!

Roland Geyer, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is astonished by the data: “I already knew that the textile industry was a big consumer of plastics, but I was shocked by the amount of synthetic textile waste that ends up polluting our ecosystems.” History has shown us time and time again that we tend to underestimate the impact of our activities on the environment. This new observation is unfortunately only another illustration.

From the cotton field to the ocean: the long road of textile pollution

The life cycle of clothing, when examined closely, is revealed to be verymore complex and problematic than we imagine. Synthetic textiles, omnipresent in our daily clothing, represent the main source of this contamination with 18 million tons of waste, or 89% of the global total. This predominance of synthetic materials is explained by their presence at each link in the production and use chain.

Richard Venditti, co-author of the study, has precisely mapped the multiple faces of this pollution: ” We conducted an in-depth study on the life cycle of clothing, analyzing global data on textile production, import and export. By cross-referencing this information with existing data on each stage of the production chain, we were able to estimate the amount of plastic released into the environment at each stage. This plastic comes not only from manufacturing and packaging waste, but also from tire wear during transportation and microplastics released when washing our clothes ».

Even natural fibers like cotton are not immune to this vicious cycle. With 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste generated annually, mainly from packaging, these materials also contribute to environmental degradation.

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The fragmentation of plastic particles constitutes a particularly worrying aspectof this contamination. Microplastics, these fragments invisible to the naked eye, gradually detach from synthetic fabrics during washing cycles. These microscopic particles, less than five millimeters in size, infiltrate water networks and end up in the oceans, where they enter the food chain of marine organisms.

The globalized injustice of fast fashion

The saddest thing, which is often the case when we deal with a topic related to pollution, is that we, Westerners, do not pay the heavy bill for this global pollution. Clothing sold in industrialized countries, such as the United States or Japan, ends its life cycle in less developed nations, thus exporting their ecological footprint far from the more affluent. A geographical disparity highlighted by Geyer: ” Developing countries are the garbage dumps of fast fashion and bear the environmental and social costs of our excessive consumption “.

This perverse dynamic is rooted in the fast fashion culture of Western countries. The clothes, quickly out of fashion and discarded, feed a constant flow into secondary markets abroad, where the lack of waste management infrastructure turns these items into discards.

Nothing new under the sun: fashion obeys the same mechanisms of an unbalanced globalization, where the environmental consequences of the consumption behaviors of rich countries are externalized to the most vulnerable nations.

What to do in this case? Researchers recommend a transition to a circular economy, favoring the recycling of materials and the use of non-synthetic renewable textiles. Wise advice, but the creation of efficient and large-scale recycling channels requires significant investments, which are not, today in any case, a priority. Transitioning to a circular economy also means profoundly changing consumer behavior. Buy less, buy better, a slogan that is certainly attractive, but for those who have little budget to allocate to their clothes, it rings hollow.

The concept of clothing sustainability, while appealing on paper, risks further widening the gap between those who can afford an ethical wardrobe and those for whom cheap clothing remains a daily necessity. Faced with this insoluble equation, the solution can only emerge from a profound overhaul of the system, involving all actors in the chain, from producers to consumers, including policy makers. However, in the current context of global economic instability and galloping inflation, this radical transformation of our textile production and consumption methods looks more like wishful thinking than a project that can be achieved in the short term.

• The textile industry is a major source of plastic pollution, mainly due to synthetic clothing.
• Textile waste often ends up in developing countries, exacerbating environmental inequalities in the process.
• A transition to sustainable textiles and responsible consumption is essential, but it remains difficult to implement quickly.

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