Despite widespread claims of steps to improve environmental footprints, the clothing industry is still responsible for 10% of greenhouse gas output.
An analysis by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has found that around 44% of all material involved in the production of a t-shirt will be lost before the garment reaches the store.
Clothes manufacturing contributes to global warming, excess nutrients and toxins entering freshwater sources and increased consumption of water, and land degradation. This means making production processes more efficient is an essential step in humanity’s attempts to become more environmentally friendly and use resources more efficiently.
However, despite the incredible waste evident in the early stages of manufacturing, most efforts are still focused on downstream improvements. For example, increasing the proportion of garments that can be recycled from the current maximum of 17%. It is believed that with better systems, the 44% of materials would be suitable for recycling and emissions could be reduced by 10%, with other impacts cut by anything between 20 and 25%.
Although the world needs to dramatically increase how many clothes are brought into the circular economy at the end of their initial lifecycle, with just 1% of items recycled globally, addressing inefficiencies higher up the stream is also essential.
‘When we talk about textile waste, the debate often focuses on the clothes we throw away. But the problem starts much earlier,” said Rakib Ahmed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), currently a researcher at SINTEF Industry. ‘But much of the material used to make the clothes is lost before the garments even reach the consumer. This aspect gets far less attention.
‘Many life cycle analyses of garments and material flows are based on the assumption that a garment is only used in one cycle and that the materials are not recycled,’ said Ahmed. ‘Focus is also placed on the situation in each individual country, rather than on a global scale. That makes it difficult to get a realistic picture of how much of the fibres we can recycle and reuse.’
Image: Ionela Mat / Unspash
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