Fashion kills !!!!
What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Droughts all over have increased, sea level is rising, erratic rainfall patterns all over the globe and at the same time there is high drinking water scarcity , temperature is rising at a speed higher than ever, many plants and animals are on the verge of extinction, floods and flash floods have become more common, cyclones are getting stronger and unpredictable than ever, lightning incidences have gone high, pattern of seasons is changing unusually, permafrost is melting at an alarmingly high rate, drinking water is being over-polluted, soil health is declining and still our needs are not done yet.
There is a large divide(social, economic, digital, health access, education access, etc.) between the 1st and 3rd world countries which are getting exploited and wasted for the need, greed and comfort of 1st world countries.
Anthropogenic activities have altered all the ecosystems of the planet and though they are surviving and thriving right now, changes have begun to show effects directly on people and in the long term our future appears to be in dark. Of all the harmful ways through which we have been harming Earth and in a way our own future this article shall be limited to:
Fashion and what the fashion industry is ?
How and to what extent is fashion industry responsible for climate changes?
what can we do to mitigate over emphasis on fashion ?
1. Fashion and what is the fashion industry I'm talking about?
Fashion, in simple terms may be considered as the way we express ourselves w.r.t space and time we are currently in. It shall include our lifestyle accessories, from footwear to clothing to make-ups, etc. Industry that helps us in attaining and expressing different forms of fashion shall, for the purpose of this write-up, be called fashion industry.
2. Fashion and climate change
" An average person drinks around 2 litres of water a day. Do you know how much water did your cotton shirt and a pair of jeans cost to the earth? Enough to quench the thirst of a person for more than 13 years or for a family of 5 for more than 2.5 years."
Have you ever thought about how much water we waste for washing clothes using washing machines?
Amongst the 17 extremely water stressed areas classified by WRI , India is one, and the fact that our country has 3 times the population of all other 16 countries combined is alarming. The report said we are close to DAY ZERO conditions- when the water tap dries. We have seriously depleted the Groundwater table esp. in the areas of Haryana, Punjab, west U.P, east Gujarat, Rajasthan, parts of north M.P.
It costs 700 gallons for 1 cotton shirt and 2000 gallons for 1 pair of jeans.
A pair of shoes costs around 2257 gallons of water. Leather shoes-more than 3000 gallons
Single smartphone consumes around 3190 gallons of water for its production.
Car- around 13000-22000 gallons
Bedsheets(cotton)- around 2800 gallons
(1 gallon = 3.78 litre)
Data sources:
Water footprint for various products
Weforum-Fashion-Unsustainability
I've just put the data for the production part and with respect to water only as fashion industry is the 2nd largest consumer of water worldwide. Impact seriousness can be understood better by this example : Aral sea used to be one of the 4 largest lakes in the world. It got dried up in 50 years of exploitation by Uzbekistan due to cotton farming for textile industry.
There are other very serious implications such as :
1. Deforestation for mining minerals for technology sector - an area of Amazonian forest equal to the size of a football stadium is being destroyed every minute just for digging out gold required in technology sector.
2. Disposal of e-wastes- e-waste disposal is posing threats to the environment. The more we consume, more wastes we generate. With so fast changing technologies we often tend to be drawn towards best products (which might be just a little upgradation of the last device you used). Such attitude has increased among us and that is costing a lot of disposal of harmful wastes. With the global internet penetration somewhere between 50-60% , e-waste was around 50 million tonnes with only one-fifth of them being able to be recycled formally. Millions of people do informal recycling which exposes them to toxicity and it's detrimental for world health.
3. Water pollution- Textile-dyeing is world's 2nd most water polluter. Washing clothes release 5 lakh tons of microfibres into the sea, equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles each year. Many of these fibres are polyester which doesn't breakdown and releases 2-3 times more carbon than cotton.
4. Carbon emissions- 10% of total carbon emissions per year is contributed by fashion industry.
5. There has been a 400% increase in the amount of clothing we consume than what we did 2 decades ago. We buy more, prices fall due to more production, we under use them and hence more and more stocks get piled up in garbage, overburdening landfills. A lot of them is burnt too which causes another set of problems. In total, upto 85% of textiles go in the dump each year.
Data- Weforum-Fashion-Unsustainability
6. Lake chad has dried up 90% since 1960s, due to overuse and climate change. Climate change is responsible as to why that region experience 1.5 times the temperature rise as experienced globally. Lake used to be the source of livelihood for more than 30 million people. Fisheries and agriculture have declined drastically, rendering most of the population jobless and starving for basic needs. The islands developed on lake chad (due to drying up) have become hiding places for BOKO HARAM terrorists who operate from there. Millions are facing humanitarian crisis, millions displaced from home and become refugees .To earn livelihood, people are joining BOKO HARAM and ISIS and contributing further to the crisis and crime.
Overall, we can understand how our excessive demands and over consumerism, endless needs and greed are putting excessive stress on the environment. We are using a lot of freshwater, emitting a lot of carbon, destroying nature(of which we are an integral part, not to forget) , causing pollutions of all sorts-water, air, soil and making things dirtier for our own future generations. We are all aware of the impacts of climate change so I won't go into much detailing of that I would just like to add some numbers to give a brief idea of how are we indirectly assisting in killing ,amongst others, those ignorant people who have no role in destroying the environment.
Around 450 million people live in the areas that are highly water stressed where they can't meet even daily needs. Many die with the lack of proper drinking water. When disasters hit due to climate change related events, they are most susceptible to diseases like cholera and typhoid.
Everyday over 700 children under 5 die due to diarrhoea caused due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene.
Rising sea levels are making freshwater salty, hence compromising water resources of millions.
Extreme weather events and changes in water cycle patterns are making it more difficult to access safe drinking water , particularly for vulnerable population.
"Around 30% of world population lives in dry areas of the world accounting for majority of world's poors( 16% of them are in chronic poverty).Unfortunately, drylands are losing 23 hectares per minute to drought and desertification which means an average loss of 20 million grain production every year and mind you they are poor people living already at less than 1.25$ per day. "
With Perma-frosts and ice sheets melting, many unknown and never understood viruses are emerging . Virus incidences like Corona will happen to increase in coming years due to climate change. and we all know how devastating it is.
Pemafrost could release bacteria and viruses
Lightning - largest cause of accidental death due to natural causes. People affected are from rural and socially not so affluent background and so such things are not cause of concern for majority. But we need to understand these things more clearly that such incidences drive already poverty-ridden people to chronic state of poverty and generations of darkness. Due to climate change , lightning incidences have gone up lightning, how, why , lightning and climate change
So, over-emphasis on fashion kills the basic tenets of humanity. In the greed for looking and being better off we are actually making fools of ourselves and digging graves for our and the living planet's future in a more hurried manner. We need to find ways to reduce the speed with which we are marching towards doomsday.
Lets see some simple ways -
3. Mitigation [Remember the idea- 'Less is more']
1.Extend the life of your e-gadgets, esp. smartphones as we tend to change them too often .
Use it one yr more to pollute less
2.Keep mobile phones intact enough to get exchanged for recycling rather than throwing them away.
3.Minimize unnecessary shopping just because you are getting extra discounts. Less demand =less production = less harm = less climate change and associated problems = better air to breathe, better water to drink = healthier people , extended life, less unnatural deaths= less harm on other plant and animal species. Remember, planet doesn't belong to us but we belong to the planet, right?
4. Give less attention to brandishing and the peer groups that put pressure on buying brands and keep buying all the time you encounter an occasion. You might have seen ads where they teach you to dress differently in different occasions. It's their business to sell, don't fall in the trap. Dress according to your choice and convenience not theirs . You don't need to follow the trends set by so called fashionistas and fall for their money-minting people killing business. Instead, set a healthy trend as we all are educated and responsible citizens of this planet, aren't we?
5. Buy good quality clothes that would last long. To prolong life of clothing we can wash by hands, remove stains before it gets hard to be removed, mend if torn, air dry.
6. Use energy-efficient appliances and don't use appliances for things we can do without them. We have been becoming greedy about having unnecessary items at home to do even the most basic things.
7. The best benefits of being a minimalist is that you can focus on less things in a much better way, you can use your energies in a much more efficient way as you don't need to waste time and energy over useless stuffs. Life would be less complicated as you reduce your choices. For example- If you have 5 pairs of shoes you are always confused which one to wear when you go to a particular place; combine it with the clothes that you would like to make choices about. We spend enormous amount of time everyday on them. We need to reduce such time leakage and utilize it at better place as we all have limited time, right?
8. Remember some basic needs for a quality life and bring things down to them when choices and overuse overwhelm you sometimes and you are stuck in a dilemma- Health, Social and familial Relationships, Vocation(not vacation).Some questions might help in sorting things out:
Is the thing needed?
Is the thing sustainable or least disturbing of all options you got?
Does it contribute to your wellness/health and doesn't considerably harm others' wellness/health?
Will the future generation curse you for leaving too little space for them for leading a life with dignity?
"The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists to see, but it’s all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it."
The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved. This blog is an effort to get the readers involved towards making life a bit less tough for the poverty-stricken and most vulnerable sections of people and other creatures of the planet. It intends to highlight the importance of why we should change our attitudes towards trends to simplicity and to enhance our accountability towards all. It would be pleasing to note if even one of the readers understands and propagates the idea and reduces over-consumption.
The blog is not meant to stop/rebuke anybody from consuming and forcing change towards archaic methods and things like that. we don't need to do that, we don't need to put blames on each other. Rather, We just need to limit to basic needs and see to it that whatever we buy should be(if practically possible) sustainable and should not be under-consumed.
Thanks
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