Fashion Needs And Consumption: Global Perspective

Last but not the least, let's look at what I've learned so far and how my global perspective towards fashion has changed. So, let's get started!

As I have already established earlier, just like most of you, even I didn't know fashion was the most pollutant industry after Oil Industry. But apart from this, there are many other things that I have learnt and realized with time. For example, I used to believe that cotton is a eco-friendly fiber, while in reality, due to the cotton plantations our water bodies are disappearing. Yes, you read it right. Cotton is the most thirsty fiber which requires thousands of gallons of water just to make one single product. Apart from this, I always thought that donating clothes at H&M is the best way to go since they recycle those clothes and make most of their products sustainable. But guess what? It's not all sunshine and rainbows. 

Even though brands like H&M have started initiatives for recycling our old clothes, still when you look behind the scenes you'll know how our technology isn't just there yet. It is still very difficult to recycle the old products into new ones. In fact, less than 1% of the worlds used clothes are turned into new ones. So what exactly are these brands doing with our donations? The majority of these donations are bailed and sold overseas through a middle man, who further sell them in East-African countries like Kenya. But whatever money H&M gets from those donations, they donate it to UNICEF. So, the reason why H&M might be focusing on textile recycling is because its an easy sustainability win for them. But compared to other brands H&M is a frontrunner in sustainability efforts.

But now, even these East African countries are saying that they don't want our hand me downs, since its destroying their own textile market. So, we can only imagine how many clothes will end up in a landfill if these clothes are not being reused or recycled. And even though 'Sustainability' is a hot topic now, and people are slowly buying in it, still there's only 1% of total sustainable designers. So, the only conclusion that I've come up with so far is that we all can atleast do our part. But what exactly can we do? Some people like to swap clothes so that's the first line of defense. If something is in really good condition we can give them to a consignment store or donate to a reputable charity. But before that, we should do your research on who we're giving our clothing to. And I cannot stress this enough, but we don't have to buy so much. 

So, the bottom line when it comes to our used clothing is that don't throw it away, try and give it to somebody who can actually use it. And as said in one of the documentary, maybe there is no perfect solution to this complicated problem, but if there's something we should learn through this process is that we can atleast reverse the process no matter where all this started from. At the end I would only say that there's still a lot that I'm learning about but whatever I do learn I'll keep updating it on my blog. So, Stay Tuned!

All the images have been sourced from Pinterest.