The materials clothes are basically natural fiber s and chemical fiber s.
Natural fibers mean fiber of animas or plants. On the other hand, chemical fibers are fibers human make from artificical things. For example, cotton and wool are natural fibers, but nylon and polyester are chemical fibers.
Many people have bad images that chemical fibers are not eco-friendly and many of them are made from oil and not degradable.
But natural fibers, which many people have good images of, are sometimes not eco-friendly. Why? More than 60% of clothes are made from cotton, which were born from raw cotton. When they are grown, a lot of chemicals, insecticides and weed-killers are used. The cotton fields account for only about 2.5% of cotton farms in the world, no less than 15.7% of insecticides and 6.8% of agrochemicals. The amounts of them are surprizing!
（NPO Organic Association from Tokyo）
First, factories get orders for clothes from companies.Then, factories make paper patterns for the clothes. Then, they make saved waste paper patterns to reduce used cloth.
If they reduce a part of waste of cloth, they can reduce garbage and costs.
Next, they dye cloth in factories. The clothes have various colors. They dye cloth with the color using chemical dye and a lot of water after they bleach cloth completely. They cause the highly contaminated water and it is drained as raw sewage in the river and the sea.
A long time ago, the textile industry so bad for the environment that it was called “pollution industry ”. Now, the problem is improving but many areas still have the problem.
Lastly, they cut in the paper pattern, sew the cloth, and put buttons on clothes in a factory. Then the clothes are completed!
When clothes are transported,the environmental problems get more serious.
In Japan, we import more than 70% of the clothes from China, Vietnam, Indonesia and so on. So, we have to use plains, ships or tracks to transport them and by doing this amount of CO2 emission increases.
By the way, do you know the word "food mileage"? It means "the distance of transportation of food". If we can reduce "food mileage", we can also reduce the amount of CO2 emission during transportation. Let's apply this word to the clothes. Considering "clothes mileage", we have to reduce it and it is good for Japan to do thelocal clothes production and consumption .
In addition, we use many plastic bags and cardboards so that we cannot scratch products. Plastic bags are not eco-friendly because they are not degradable. As I have explained, we make a lot of trash. Some companies use eco-friendly tracks which don't discharge CO2 and use folding containes instead of cardboards.
（Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, JAPAN）
Then, let's think about these problems from a view point of a consumer .
How do you dispose of the clothes which you no longer need? There are many ways like giving someone, selling to a secondhand shop. However, I think many people often throw them away, and in fact it is one of the serious problems which consumers cause and affect the environment.
According to the survey by Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, JAPAN, in Japan, there are about 1337kt clothes produced for home and 959kt of those are thrown away. It means that over 70% ends up as waste.
Moreover the recycling rate of clotes is only about 26% and lower than others.
Fast fashion also has much effect on the environment. Fast fashion is a bussiness condition which produces and sells goods in large quantities at a lower cost in short terms. And their low price can make the cycle that people buy and throw away clothes one after another without considering the environment and producers.
As a lot of consumers regardless of their age or sex can choose what they want to wear at the lowest cost, they are likely to forget what is happening behind the industry and how our shopping have an impact on the environment. Shopping, we think, is a political action that we can have responsibility for those problems and support what we think is useful to solve them.
（The values refer to "HP of Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheriesa" and "Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, JAPAN"（H21））
