Research
Research on Product Life Cycle, Materials Circulation, and Innovation of Sustainable Fashion Solution
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Global purchasing behavior and apparel circular system from raw materials to landfill
- Consumer Needs
- Income Disparities
- Fast Fashion
- Social Identity
- Water consumption and pollution
- Circular Economy
- Clothing reuse and repurposing
- Consumption of water
- Global warming
- Environmental pollution
- Less waste
- Better materials
- Replace: switch raw materials
- Reduce: make energy savings along the value chain
- Recycle: invest in systems to re-use rather than throw away clothes
- Rethink: change the disposable fast fashion culture
5. Business awareness of sustainability
- Zara
- Levi's
- Adidas
6. long term impact on Global Sustainability
- Sustainable Fashion Saves Natural Resources
- Sustainable Fashion Helps Reduce Carbon Footprint
- Sustainable Fashion Saves Animal Life
- Sustainable Fashion Requires Less Water
- Sustainable Fashion is Healthy for The People & The Planet
1. Introduction
Experts claim that an eco-friendly approach to closet curating is more achievable than you might assume.
You'll probably see someone examining a food box down any grocery store aisle. Nutrition labels and certifications like the USDA organic seal assist us in making better food choices for ourselves and the environment. When it comes to apparel, however, consumers don't have a lot of information on how the garment was created or whether the producers employed environmentally friendly methods. An eco-friendly approach to curating your closet is more attainable than you might think, experts say, Look down any grocery store aisle, and you’re likely to spot someone studying a food package. Nutrition labels and certifications such as the USDA organic seal help us make healthier food choices for ourselves and the environment. But when it comes to clothing, consumers don’t have a lot of insight into how the garment was made and whether its manufacturers used sustainable processes to create it.
H&M, Zara, and Topshop, for example, produce up to 52 weekly "micro-seasons" each year. Hyper-affordable fashion firms, such as Shein and Fashion Nova, which sell directly to consumers, manufacture even more. And, with the rise of social media platforms, there's more pressure than ever to seem good: According to a 2017 research conducted by the London-based environmental organization Hubbub, 41% of 18- to 25-year-olds feel compelled to change their clothes every time they go out. However, all of those new garments result in more waste. People buy more garments but wear each item less between 2000 and 2018, virtually doubling the amount of clothing thrown away.
That is why, Recycling and upcycling play an important role in the economic, environmental, and social sustainability requirements. They support a closed-loop model that enables the concept of "for everyone, forever" in a world with finite resources. Recycling helps to eliminate waste by reusing materials and finished garments, conserve the environment by reducing landfills and pollution by redirecting waste to alternative uses, and preserve natural resources such as water and natural virgin fibers by using a model that allows the same materials to be reused over and over again. As the market shifts away from staples and toward continuous filaments, the ability to grind, combine, and extrude fibers opens up significant opportunities for recycling technology innovation as well as cost savings.
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=112946
2. Global purchasing behavior and apparel circular system from raw materials to landfill
- Consumer Needs
The first stage in consumer purchase is to identify their needs (Engel, Kollat, & Blackwell, 1968). Physiological needs, safety, and security requirements, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs are among the five types of needs identified by Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory (Maslow, 1943). These needs are linked to people's behaviors in a variety of situations, including socializing, working, and shopping. Purchasing behaviors are particularly interesting because they contradict one of the economic postulates: people behave rationally and consider options and decisions within a logical structure of thought (DiRita, 2014). The current article examines how consumers' needs influence their purchasing decisions in the fashion business.
- Income Disparities
As people's living standards rise, the fashion sector plays an increasingly important role. Apparel, footwear, and accessories are the most important characteristics or representations in the fashion industry. People with poor money and low social position cannot purchase the clothing of well-known brands, which implies that buying clothes serves just to meet physiological and security demands. People with a stable and high level of income have met their basic wants, and they would turn to luxury products to satisfy their self-esteem demands, such as displaying social standing or gaining greater respect from others. According to Henry (2014), when a consumer's income rises, luxury items become a larger part of their market basket. According to the data, the first income quintile, which is the poorest quintile in Singapore, spent only 1.8 percent of monthly expenditure on apparel and footwear in 2013, while the fifth income quintile spent roughly 2.7 percent (The Singapore Department of Statistics, 2016).
- Fast Fashion
The term "fast fashion" refers to a trend in which a series of high-street garments are inspired by celebrities or catwalks (Rauturier, 2021). People's goal or need to be accepted by society, as referred to by Maslow's need for love and belonging, is the reason why quick fashion may gain a place in the fashion market. When some people in our environment begin to wear a particular fashion item, others tend to join in by purchasing the same or a similar piece of clothing. Bike shorts, for example, which were first worn by celebrities and were popular in the United States, made their way to China in 2019, despite being regular skinny pants worn by bikers. As a result, people buy clothing or other luxuries to satisfy physiological, security, love and belonging, and self-esteem requirements. Individuals, however, may differ in the extent to which such requirements impact them, based on their gender, income, or other factors.
- Social Identity
Maslow's hierarchy of needs places a high value on people's own identities. However, life is not a one-act play; it is intertwined with society, and people play numerous parts in various social groupings. The concept of one's own role within a group is referred to as social identity (McLeod, 2019). According to social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981), people define themselves based on social elements, such as perceptions of belonging to a human community. "That element of an individual's self-concept that emerges from his knowledge of his participation in a social group (or groups) coupled with the value and emotional significance linked to that membership," Tajfel defined social identity. To put it another way, people take on distinct obligations based on their social identities.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42824-021-00026-2
- Water consumption and pollution
The existing apparel cycle (from manufacture to consumption) is inefficient and polluting (Fig. 1C). Fiber manufacturing, garment creation, usage, and disposal all consume a lot of water and leave fiber and chemical residues in water sources. Berger et al. 2021; Morlet et al. 2017 estimate that yearly textile production consumes 93 cubic meters of water, which is comparable to 37 million Olympic swimming pools. Furthermore, it takes around 2720 l of water to manufacture one cotton T-shirt, which is similar to what one adult would consume in three years (Chan 2020). Even throughout various usage cycles, such as cleaning, water consumption persists. In areas where there is a scarcity of water, this excessive usage is immediately noticed. Furthermore, as a result of dyeing and finishing during manufacture, the textile sector is believed to be responsible for 20% of global water contamination (Kant 2012). Furthermore, the majority of fiber and apparel manufacturing takes place in underdeveloped nations. The finished garments are then shipped to developed countries. The logistics alone aren't enough to keep the ship afloat.
In a summary, due to the sector's inefficient and polluting linear economy, sustainability and circular economy in the clothes and textile business are strongly advocated. Micron synthetic fibers get up in water streams and, as a result, in the human bloodstream, posing a health risk. Furthermore, the industry's significant water use and pollution from dyes and fibers are damaging to the environment as well as living organisms. However, the items (clothes) made using such inefficient methods are only utilized for a short period before being wasted or landfilled in the environment. After reviewing the condition of the garment sector, its operations, and their influence on overall environmental sustainability, it's time to figure out how to address these issues.
- Circular Economy
The existing clothing system is nearly fully linear in terms of manufacture, distribution, and use of clothes (Fig. 2). Over 68 percent of existing fibers come from non-renewable resources like fossil fuels and are used to produce clothing (using polluting procedures) that are only worn for a short time before being discarded in landfills or burnt. Each year, almost $183 million worth of apparel is discarded in landfills (Wrap 2020). Such a linear system wastes numerous economic possibilities, pollutes and damages the environment, places a burden on precious resources, and strains society's finances. To overcome the difficulties, it is critical to the transition from a linear to a circular economy (Gardetti 2019). Reduce, reuse, and recycle are three primary activities and practices that drive the circular economy (Fig. 2), which are all conventional waste management approaches (Manickam and Duraisamy 2019). Reduction encompasses waste reduction at all phases of manufacturing (including the use of minimal raw resources) as well as various stages of consumption and use. In this domain, reuse means rethinking manufacturing in order to produce items that can be readily recycled or repurposed for a number of different uses. Increased re-use and repurposing will eventually offset the increased need for production.
- Clothing reuse and repurposing
3. How fast fashion affect apparel life cycle in general
- Consumption of water
Textile and allied sectors are only surpassed by agriculture in terms of clean water usage and pollution, according to studies. The sheer volume of water used in textile manufacture, particularly wet processing, reveals a lot: 80 to 150 liters of water are needed to treat a kilogram of fabric, along with additional chemicals. If cotton cultivation is taken into account, the textile industry uses around 4% of worldwide freshwater extraction, or 93 billion cubic meters of water each year. Clothing is responsible for more than 60% of the total.
- Global Warming
The average temperature on Earth is always rising, but the rate at which it is rising has been too high, particularly since the Industrial Revolution—the phenomenon known as global warming. According to several estimations, the temperature rose by 0.6–0.8°C, which is 10 times quicker than the projected normally. The number of greenhouse gases generated, such as carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbon, as a result of the usage of fossil fuels, as well as other advancements, contribute to man-made global warming.
The manufacture of textiles and clothes plays a significant part in this worldwide phenomenon. GHG emissions from textile manufacturing accounted for 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions in 2015. (GHG). This statistic exceeds the emissions produced by all international flights and marine shipping combined, which are two of the most important modes of transportation. Transferring finished goods from developing nations to stores in affluent countries demands long-distance sea transportation, which raises overall nonrenewable fuel use.
If current trends continue, the textile industry would consume 26% of the carbon budget and 300 million tonnes of crude oil by 2050, a huge increase from 2% and 98 million tonnes in 2015.
The textile industry consumes a lot of energy and does it inefficiently. Thermal energy is used to heat water and dry textiles in the chemical processing leg of the manufacturing, whereas electrical energy is used in the spinning and weaving legs. The annual power usage for producing 60 billion kg of textiles is estimated to be almost 1 trillion kilowatt-hours.
Environmental pollution
The textile sector consumes almost a quarter of all chemicals produced globally. For textile manufacture, a variety of chemicals are utilized, mostly in wet processing. Many of the over 2000 distinct compounds have negative health effects. Some chemicals evaporate, while others are dissolved in treatment water and returned to the environment, while others remain in the product. Cotton clothing, after all, is considered to be particularly natural and healthful, but it necessitates cotton growing, which today requires 0.2 million tonnes of insecticides and 8 million tonnes of fertilizer worldwide. Cotton farming accounts for just 2.5 percent of all agricultural area in the globe, yet it accounts for 16 percent of all pesticide use. Furthermore, the chemicals used to cultivate cotton have a significant impact on cotton growers' physical health, and incidents of acute pesticide poisoning among cotton farmers are prevalent. Cotton farming uses around 4% of all nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers used worldwide, and these chemicals are a major source of clean water contamination. If these chemicals are dumped into rivers, they can cause algal blooms, depriving the river of oxygen. The production of cellulose-based fibers also needs a huge quantity of chemicals, some of which are hazardous. However, the agricultural component of textile manufacturing is not primarily to blame for the industry's chemical consumption. Chemicals are also used in the fiber production processes, such as for dyes and finishing treatments. This phase of the manufacturing process is expected to require almost 43 million tonnes of chemicals globally.
Even while we still don't completely understand the long-term effects of microplastics entering the seas, experts are becoming increasingly worried. Microfibers released by textiles during washing procedures contribute to the growing amount of plastic pollution in the oceans. The Ocean Conservancy's Chief Scientist, George Leonard, thinks that the volume of microfibers on the bottom might have reached 1.4 million trillion.
Another big worry is the waste caused by the production and consumption of textiles. Global textile usage is estimated to be around 100 million tonnes. The rate of recycling, on the other hand, is rather low: After use, only 13% of the total material intake gets recycled in some fashion. Only a little portion of the recycled 13 percent is used to make new clothing—less than 1%. The remainder is recycled into low-value goods like insulation, cleaning cloths, and mattress filling.
Additionally, the textile sector has significant environmental repercussions such as odor issues and noise pollution. Odor pollution is a sign of environmental change that has an impact on human health and well-being. Strong, unpleasant, or offensive odors can have a negative influence on people's enjoyment of life, especially if they are frequent and/or chronic. When it comes to noise pollution, many activities in the textile chain might create noise levels that exceed the authorized limit of 90 decibels (A) and cause concerns, particularly for employees. Due to the fast-moving elements in the processing equipment, dry procedures create more noise than wet processes, posing another threat to employees in addition to hearing difficulties.
https://www.commonobjective.co/article/can-fashion-stop-climate-change
4. How can Fashion designers, Manufacturers, and Retailers take action to create an impact
- Less Waste
Because decisions made at the design stage affect 80 to 90% of a clothing item's sustainability, new tactics can eliminate waste from the start. Zero-waste pattern cutting is used to place pattern pieces on fabric like a Tetris puzzle to reduce the 15% of fabric that generally gets up on the cutting room floor during the creation of a garment.
Some clothing can be intended to be disassembled at the end of its useful life, making it easier to recycle or upcycle the pieces into a new garment. Other clothes are reversible or constructed with components that can be removed or added to make them multipurpose. Petit Pli, founded in London, creates children's clothes from a single recycled fabric, making it easier to recycle; the garments also have stretch pleats, allowing children to wear them as they grow.
3D printing may be used to digitally figure out specifics before manufacturing, reducing trial and error and waste. It can also make custom-fit clothing on demand, reducing waste. Recycled materials like plastic and metal may also be 3D printed.
- Better Materials
Instead of cotton, several manufacturers are opting for fabrics manufactured from natural materials like hemp, ramie, or bamboo. Bamboo has been hailed as a sustainable fabric because of its quick growth and lack of water and pesticide requirements; nonetheless, some old-growth forests are being razed to make room for bamboo farms. Furthermore, most bamboo textiles are subjected to chemical processing to make them soft, which contains chemicals that are harmful to the environment and human health.
- Replace: switch raw materials
The majority of a garment's climatic effect is due to its basic components. Changing the fabric might aid in the healing process. Mechanically recycled polyester emits 70% fewer greenhouse gases than virgin polyester, according to Textile Exchange.
Patagonia has long been recognized for using recycled polyester in its clothing, but other major retailers are following suit - Nike, H&M, and Target are all among the top 10 consumers of sustainable synthetics. Similarly, according to the Textile Exchange's thorough Life Cycle Assessment, moving from conventional to organic cotton may reduce global warming potential by 46 percent. Although current supplies are insufficient to fulfill fabric demand (less than 1% of global cotton output is organic8), the use of more environmentally friendly materials will likely play a key part in decreasing fashion's carbon footprint in the future.
This might rely on new technologies that are still in their infancy, such as agricultural waste-derived man-made fibers.
- Reduce: make energy savings along the value chain
Firms may cut energy usage in their warehouses, retail, and offices beyond the materials stage. By upgrading to energy-efficient lightbulbs, ASOS was able to reduce its electricity use in one warehouse by 76 percent. Sensors that switch off lights in vacant rooms might also be beneficial. Businesses may benefit the environment by finding efficiencies in the transportation and logistics phases. Hugo Boss discovered that moving from air to rail freight could reduce emissions by 95 percent when they examined their carbon footprint.
These kinds of enhancements are all attainable with current technology and can pay for themselves in a short period of time.
- Recycle: invest in systems to re-use rather than throw away clothes
Brands can help educate consumers about the need for mending and recycling their clothing. Some already provide repair services; in 2016, Nudie Jeans fixed over 44,000 pairs of jeans. Several manufacturers feature collecting sites in-store for end-of-life clothes that may be recycled or resold for charity.
Wastage throughout the manufacturing process must also be treated seriously — in 2014, Tonlé, a Cambodian fashion company, prevented the release of 70 tonnes of CO2 into the environment by digesting pre-consumer trash. Automated procedures like optical fiber sorting may make it easier to recycle our garments in the future — we can't keep dumping millions of tonnes of clothing into landfills every year.
- Rethink: change the disposable fast fashion culture
Finally, if the fashion business is to have a good influence on the environment, the fashion culture must adapt. Fast fashion is essentially unsustainable for the environment, as Common Objective CEO Tamsin Lejeune shows out.
We won't be able to achieve the necessary reductions in GHG emissions unless we make less, purchase a lot less, and improve our garment end-of-life management. We need to stop thinking of garments as disposable and start thinking in terms of circular fashion, which treats a garment's life cycle as a closed-loop. The industry's toolset for combating climate change must include the creation of an environment that supports and invests in new ways of thinking. Perhaps by 2050, fashion will have tackled the worst waste of all: the huge majority of our garments in our closets that are never worn. The future of fashion might be a business that substitutes ownership with on-demand fashion rentals from a worldwide pool of clothes. It has the potential to make the world a better place, and fashion will no longer be a negative word.
5. Business awareness of sustainability
The fashion sector contributes significantly to carbon emissions, water use, and textile waste. Fast fashion, in particular, has the biggest environmental and social effect; clothing produced in this business is frequently poorly manufactured with inappropriate materials. The following are 3 brands that are committed to environmental and social sustainability.
https://fashionunited.uk/news/retail/zara-publishes-sustainability-manifesto/2021080957038
- Zara
Zara emphasizes some of its major efforts, such as politically motivated programs, integrating social and environmental sustainability, and product health and safety, under the phrase 'Working towards sustainability.' 'Join Life' garments are made with processes and raw materials that help to reduce environmental impact. By 2022, the corporation hopes to have 50 percent of its goods achieve the 'Join Life' criterion.
At the end of their useful lives, their boxes, bags, hangers, and alarms are reused and recycled. Customers' bags are presently made entirely of recycled paper, and by 2023, they will no longer be provided any single-use plastics.
Currently, its stores have been refurbished to prioritize energy and water efficiency, and zara.com's servers run on renewable energy. By 2022, the company wants all of the energy in its offices, logistical centers, and own stores to come from renewable sources.
https://goodonyou.eco/levis-ethical/
- Levi's
According to research commissioned by Levi's, the consumer care phase of one of the company's main products— Levi's® 501® Medium Stonewash jeans—accounted for 37% of climate impact and 23% of water use. This has prompted Levi's to issue a call to action, encouraging buyers to view Levi's jeans as a long-term investment rather than a fast-fashion purchase. So, how has this concept affected the company's practices?
Levi's has made major promises to environmentally friendly denim manufacturers, including a considerable reduction in water consumption. By 2020, Levi's wants to use recycled materials in 80 percent of its goods. So far, it appears to be on course to accomplish these goals.
Adidas
Adidas has taken a holistic approach to sustainability. Adidas is one of the few companies taking action to address the current climate, pollution, and plastic waste crises. However, Adidas is not a newcomer to the game; the corporation has been grinding for years and recognises that this is a protracted battle that will take many years to win.
Adidas has implemented various measures that will pay off in the near future as part of their objective to eliminate plastic waste and make the business more sustainable. For example, the company is working hard to locate environmentally friendly products to replace its current supplies.
Furthermore, their purpose now emphasises the utilisation of recycled or indigenous resources. So that their end products' carbon footprint is kept to a bare minimum. Adidas didn't stop there; instead of creating new material from scratch, their team was able to recycle Parley Ocean Plastic to create their products.
https://www.kraywoods.com/blogs/our-stories/how-does-sustainable-fashion-help-the-environment
6. long term impact on Global Sustainability
- Sustainable Fashion Saves Natural Resources
- Sustainable Fashion Helps Reduce Carbon Footprint
- Sustainable Fashion Saves Animal Life
Sustainable companies all across the world are promoting the usage of cruelty-free alternatives. For nearly every material used in fast fashion, there is one. Polyester manufactured from ocean garbage, bags made from recycled seatbelts, shoes made from plant-based biodegradable, silk derived from mushrooms, and bio-fabricated vegetable wool are all available.
- Sustainable Fashion Requires Less Water
- Sustainable Fashion is Healthy for The People & The Planet
https://real-leaders.com/how-governments-can-kick-off-the-future-of-fashion/
7. How do countries ensure the implementation of waste management on apparel and a more conscious circular model
Switching to a service paradigm and investing in digitalization and openness would be the only way to ease this problem. We see the need for required sustainability reports that clearly demonstrate firms' environmental and social implications, as well as holding brands accountable for their goods throughout their full life cycle. France's Anti-Waste Law, which prohibits firms from discarding unsold items and makes microplastic filters essential in industrial washing machines, is a promising example. In Germany, in addition to transposing waste legislation adopted under the European Union's Circular Economy Package into national law, the government will impose a "duty of care" on distributors, requiring them to ensure that goods returned by customers are usable and do not become waste.
Service models like as rental, maintenance, and resale, on the other hand, might help keep retail prices low for customers who want to purchase sustainably but can't afford premium rates. Furthermore, expanding the breadth of business models to include services like repair, redesign, and upcycling may assist fashion firms to convert less informed clients into customers, resulting in increased income. With the assistance of technology, it is possible to maintain the same level of profitability, if not increase it. To be system-altering, digitization's obstacles to the status quo must be analyzed, particularly in light of present online activities.
In its efforts to be more responsible, fashion needs a game-changer. The fashion business should dogmatize the equation of combining new technology to assure more sustainable fibers while reducing overall manufacturing volume and increasing sales efficiency. This new type of growth has the potential to save both the industry and the planet.
The COP26 UN Climate Change Summit is deemed crucial as governments' attention turns in the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic and global economic crisis. It will be the first COP following the implementation of the historic Paris Agreement's provisions. While the COP26 is scheduled to finalize "implementation guidelines" for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which deals with "cooperative methods" to combating climate change, it is also the first occasion for countries to get together since then to review pledges and boost ambition.
Conslusion
In comparison to the original product, the fibers recovered via recycling are often assessed in the manufacturing of lower-value items (downcycling). Recycling fibers, on the other hand, have just begun to gain favor in high-value-added goods (downcycling). The approach that focuses solely on the cost of producing recycled clothing, on the other hand, is incorrect. The textile business is one of the most polluting and waste-producing industries when it comes to water consumption, pesticides, and artificial fertilizers. In this regard, textile and garment recycling is critical in terms of conserving natural resources (e.g., water required to produce seeds or oil used in the manufacture of synthetic fibers) and lowering CO2 emissions. Recycling will help save energy and chemicals in the creation of new textiles, as well as reduce pollution. In this environment, it is critical for our world's future to assess all production and consumption processes, as well as supply networks, with a circular economy and sustainability in mind. As a result, it is critical to recycle textile industry waste.
Textile recycling's future is largely dependent on its adoption in the industry and the development of greater expertise and groundwork for more inventive approaches. Clothing retailers are important players on this front since they are in a unique position to influence and change consumers' attitudes about sustainability. Clothing merchants not only have the power to influence customer decisions, but they also have the power to change consumption patterns. Companies may teach people about the value of recycling, reuse, and resale, and this is not confined to underdeveloped nations. Consumer knowledge of sustainable consumption would rise as a result of such measures, resulting in less future environmental damage.
9. References
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=112946
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42824-021-00026-2
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/71971
https://www.commonobjective.co/article/can-fashion-stop-climate-change
https://fashionunited.uk/news/retail/zara-publishes-sustainability-manifesto/2021080957038
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