Fashion & Sustainability
Hello, my name is Cherith Kay I'm from Washington DC but I attend Winston Salem State University. I'm currently a rising senior majoring in Information technology. After I graduate in May 2024 with my master's I plan on going into a cyber security career. While doing this I still want to pursue a career in the fashion industry. Rather it's Runway or even creating my own modeling agency one day. I have decided to work at the BTB foundation because I wanted to learn more about what happens in the background of the fashion industry because I think it is important to know the history of your passions.
THE PROBLEM
What is fashion sustainability? Fashion sustainability is the act of making fashion more eco-friendly. Fast fashion plays a big part in the world's carbon footprint.
According to Planetaid.com, "When clothes end up in landfills they create greenhouse gases, so recycling them with Planet Aid instead helps diminish the forces that contribute to climate change. Reusing the fabric in old clothes means less resources, both monetary and environmental, are wasted in growing fiber for new ones.”
How Much Pollution Comes from Clothing
Every year the fashion industry uses 93 billion cubic meters of water — enough to meet the consumption needs of five million people.
Around 20 % of wastewater worldwide comes from fabric dyeing and treatment.
Of the total fiber input used for clothing, 87 % is incinerated or disposed of in a landfill.
The fashion industry is responsible for 10 % of annual global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. At this pace, the fashion industry’s greenhouse gas emissions will surge more than 50 % by 2030.
If demographic and lifestyle patterns continue as they are now, global consumption of apparel will rise from 62 million metric tons in 2019 to 102 million tons in 10 years.
Every year a half a million tons of plastic microfibers are dumped into the ocean, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles. The danger? Microfibers cannot be extracted from the water and they can spread throughout the food chain.
Source: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2019/09/23/costo-moda-medio-ambiente
Solutions
