How we can create a sustainable clothing Eco-system 🌿👗

Scientists have been warning us that we are wreaking havoc on our planet. We are told about how our soil is getting deteriorated and our fresh water supply getting polluted. We are told about all of these problems, and we are told how it is going to impact us. It's not just our polar ice caps that are going to be melting, it's going to impact our coastal cities too. We are told about all of this, but then we are not given many options on what we might be able to do about it. We are told to recycle, use fuel-efficient cars, turn the lights off etc. 

We feel powerless against this issue and it also seems that it is the responsibility of the government to take care of. Yet we know that the government is in gridlock. What can we do ?

We actually do hold the power and that power is what we wear everyday, it's our clothing. Because, what people haven't told us is that under the radar the apparel industry has actually become the second most polluting industry in the world. We need to think about how we got to this place and how we can take back control and use our power to answer the question. What am I going to wear today ?

Did we just decide one day? Yes, I want to purchase a lot more clothes of lease quality. It didn't happen this way. It started as trade barriers actually came down, which created financial incentives to move their production overseas. And this generally created a trend for cheaper clothing using cheaper materials and cheaper labor. Meanwhile, these fast fashion companies had huge marketing budgets to try to convince all of us that their cheap clothing is somehow covetable. So, we bought more and more. Cheap clothing has huge consequences both for the environment and for the people making our clothing.

The fast fashion industry is fueled by a new type of fiber Polyester. Around the year 2000 cotton was no longer king of our wardrobes. It was the rise of polyester as fast fashion came to the scene. Polyester is a polluting plastic made from fossil fuels and it's now over ⅔ rd of our clothing now. Almost every piece of polyester that has ever been produced is still on the planet today. 

However, fast fashion has darkside that not many consumers think about : Microplastics polluting our freshwater ecosystems.

A huge percentage of today's fast fashion is made from cheap, synthetic, non- biodegradable plastic materials such as polyester, nylon and spandex. The trouble with these fabrics is that when they are washed, they release plastic fibers into water which are so small that they pass through the waste water filtration system and flow into our rivers and oceans. Every year our clothes release half a million tonnes of these microplastics into the ocean - the equivalent of more than 50 billion plastic bottles. Fish unknowingly eat the fibers and are dying in their droves as a result Microplastics are not only a marine pollution problem. Microplastics have been found nearly everywhere scientists have looked, from pristine mountain streams to agricultural soil, and within human placenta, stool samples, and lung tissue. Microplastics can enter the food web, where plastic particles can transfer into tissue, and expose humans to plastic-associated and disrupting chemicals from seafood consumption.

We are making too much clothing. It's being made of a very high-energy intensive product in a place that is taking up a lot of energy. All of this adds up to the fact that the apparel industry is responsible for 10% of the carbon output of the entire world. We have a huge amount of clothing that we buy, this clothing is no longer made from natural materials but incredibly energy intensive material Polyester. We need to think about where this clothing is being made, we also need to consider who is making our clothes and what is happening to them. With our consumption of fast fashion at an all-time high, the environmental impact has never been more detrimental to our global ecosystems. If we, consumers and producers alike, do not change the way in which we think, buy, and produce ready-to-wear clothing, the fashion industry will single-handedly destroy our planet.

Citizen consumers hold the power. Consumers have the power to drive change, we choose which clothes to buy and who we support with our money.If we see ourselves as citizen consumers, and we vote with our rupees. We can change the industry because brands just follow what we are doing.

What a citizen consumer can do 

1. Check the tags: Understand where our clothing is coming from and what it is made out of. This alone can advance things a lot.
2. Check the seams of the clothing: We can see whether this is something that's going to last a long time.
3. Love what we buy: There is much marketing money being used to convince us that we like something and we don't really get to focus on what is our style, what do we really like, what do we really enjoy. If we focus on loving what we buy, we are going to end up buying less and enjoying it better.
4. Ask questions: As citizen consumers we have power to ask questions. 

• Ask if material used is organic/ biodegradable ?
• Ask the name of the factories?
• Ask if the mills are certified and are dealing with their dye and water appropriately?

We should think of our purchases in terms of cost per wear. In this way we are not stuck just on the price tag, we can see our clothing as an investment in the long term. This chaotic and polluting unjust system is really entirely within our hands to control. And we as consumer citizens choose to purchase and dictate what direction the industry goes. If we use our money to