Here are 20 things you didn’t know about the fashion industry:
- 99% of cotton is grown with chemicals and uses 25% of the world's insecticides.
- Chromium leather tanning is harmful to our health and is a known carcinogen.
- Many popular fast-fashion brands are still selling lead-contaminated purses, belts, and shoes above the legal amount.
- Beading and sequins may be an indication of child labor. Machines that apply sequins and beading are very expensive and it's highly unlikely that a factory would invest in that equipment.
- The textile industry is responsible for 30% of industrial air pollution in China.
- More than 2.5 billion pounds of used clothing ends up in our landfills each year.
- Polyester is made of crude oil. Thanks to fast fashion, polyester is about 40-45% of all fabric produced around the world.
- The fashion industry is designed to make you feel unfashionable and off trend after one week. Why? Because instead of focusing on classic and timeless style, they want to sell you something you won’t need for very long so you can purchase something new in a few weeks.
- Clothing is designed to fall apart. Stores want a high volume, low-quality product so they can continue to sell more. Also, they know that consumers only wear an item of clothing a few times.
- A typical pair of jeans takes 900 gallons of water to make.
- On average, e-commerce uses about 30% less energy than traditional retail.
- Only 2% of the clothing sold in the U.S. is also made in the U.S.
- Fashion is the 3rd highest contributor to pollution in the world after oil and agriculture.
- The fashion industry likes to tell you what to wear. They usually don’t encourage individual style.
- Americans throw away an estimated 8 lbs of clothing per year per person.
- Cotton production accounts for ¼ of the world’s pesticide usage.
- The lead contamination is not the only problem we need to worry about. Pesticides, formaldehyde, insecticides, flame retardants and other known carcinogens reside on the clothes we wear as well.
- Most garments lose 15% of material from cutting patterns.
- Air-drying your clothes just 6 months a year would save 700lbs of CO2.
- In 2010, China’s textile industry processed 41 million tons of fiber and accounted for 53% of the world’s total production.
What a bummer, right? Let’s create awareness around the problem and inspire people to get educated and buy local, buy less, buy used, buy from small businesses, buy ethical, and buy kind.
Source: akindjourney.com
