Sustainability in the Textile Industry
Textile industry practices can reduce water quality through the discharge of high amounts of harmful chemicals into water sources, air pollution, degradation of soil by solid waste disposal, high energy consumption, air pollution, and high water and chemical used. The sustainable textile industry seeks to reduce environmental damage and restore such a process. This POSTnote aims at exploring the associated land, air and water management options, manufacturing, constraints imposed by a new trading environment, and how various authorities have ensured the sustainability of the industry.
What is Sustainable Textile Industry
Sustainability in the textiles industry refers to the process of using manufacturing methods and business practices that are unharmful and do not destroy natural resources. The measures will consider the use of organic cotton, water consumption, energy, and chemical use. The most useful measures that have been established or are suggested for implementation include:
- Textile waste and collection (Box 1) Repairing, craft education, reusing second-hand clothes and upcycling, pro-consumer waste, stock burning, take-back schemes, and textile collection.
- Reducing Microfibre Shedding (Box 2) intervention of brands at the design stage, a collaboration of the cross-sectors, comprehensive research on the risk of synthetic fibre and sources of microplastics.
- Measuring Impact (Box 3) comparing the cost of different textiles, the environmental impact of the products.
- Establishing Clothing Action Plan life cycle waste targets (Box 4) Sustainable Clothing Action Plan (SCAP), and Funding of the action plan by the government.
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Overview
- Sustainability textile industry measures seek to use resources and energy efficiency and reduce environmental damage.
- What mitigations succeed will depend on the environmental and manufacturing context.
- The UK is introducing new manufacturing solutions that will assist in reducing the environmental impacts of the textile industry.
Box 1. Textile waste and Collection
The increased UK fashion, which has resulted in more demand for the clothes, increased UK economy and high job opportunities utilising about $500billion of the value of clothing production. In this regard, high consumption has been considered to cause a waste problem. However, the textile companies are considered to be more efficient as the demand and production increase, but the rate of disposal is high. The waste, when poorly disposed and enters the municipal waste it becomes difficult for recycling and reusing. The authorities have established various measures to curb the disposal effect on the environment.
Repairing
The UK government has ensured the sustainability of the textile industries by providing that they consider increasing the garment lifetime that will be useful in reducing the environmental footprint. Consequently, the government has introduced maintenance skills that are used in repairing clothes to avoid disposal. Additionally, the maintenance skills should be mandated to be a part of the national curriculum in schools that will ensure that various students graduate with practical skills associated with repairing clothes. Furthermore, the government should ensure that apprenticeships opportunities to be increased in the technical and craft skills for garment and textile production.
Reusing second-hand clothes and upcycling
Sustainability in the textile can be attained by ensuring that there is the selling of the second-hand clothes in the market. In this regard, the action will assist in environmental as it will the number of clothes that could have been disposed of thus cutting water use in every tonne of cloth by 4% and that of carbon emission per every tonne of clothing by 3%. The resale of the second-hand clothes is encouraged to be in the markets where the new garments are sold. In this regard, it will ensure that the buyers see the importance of improving the lives of their old garments than disposing of. Additionally, the consumers can take their old clothes to the stores, including charity shops that will be upcycled by the crafter, artisans, and microbusiness.
Pre-consumer waste
The pre-consumer occurs during the manufacturing of the clothes before reaching the consumers. In the process pieces of the dresses are disposed of cutting various patterns of manufacturing the garments. The remaining parts in the UK were estimated to be about 800,000 tonnes in the year 2016. In this regard, to ensure sustainability in the textile industry various legislation should be enacted to ensure that the pre-consumer waste during manufacturing is separated and recycled or repurposing the products including the clothing, fabric scraps, belts shoes or bags.
Craft Education
The schools and colleges should play a role of ensuring that they raise sustainability awareness and foster skills and habits that will be necessary on the students to create, mend and care for clothes. In this regard, as a lack of expertise resulted in the disposal of torn clothes, the students with expertise will be able to use the skills in repairing the clothes.
Stock Burning
Various textile industries have been involving in the burning of stock intending to control the selling of excess unsold clothes and accessories cheaply in the market considering that cheap products will be purchased in large amount thus increasing the rate of disposal of the old clothes. The burning of the clothing is deemed to create climate impact as it generates emissions into the atmosphere, thus harming the respiratory health. The burning of clothes that are manufactured from synthetic fibres is considered to release plastic microfibres in the air thus producing more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is deemed to damage the ozone layer increasing the global warming. Consequently, for a sustainable textile industry manufacturing the waste or the excess and unsold stock should be burned but to be reused and recycled. The recycling will create safety and health case of destroying the stock; they should be banned and landfilling of the unsold inventory.
Take-back Schemes
Measures should be put to ensure that the textiles companies have the responsibility of recovering their products from the markets. The recovering should be through various initiatives that will include the establishment of recycling bins in the market that will ensure the old or unused clothes are disposed of in the bins. Additionally, the companies should employ take-back schemes that will be capable of encouraging the consumers to deposit their old clothing in the company’s stores that are used in charities. Moreover, the companies use financial schemes such as money in ensuring that it encourages the consumer to return the old and unused clothes to the stores of the firm. The commercial programmes include giving back vouchers to people who take back the old clothes in the company stores. For instance, long garments industries such as Oxfam, Marks and Spencer have launched such schemes that have assisted them in collecting about 20 million old items from the year 2008. Additionally, other firms such as Zara and John Lewis are engaging in the schemes.