impact report 2020
every year, in the month of april, the sustainable and ethical fashion advocates run amok sharing the same statistics we’ve been seeing for years now:
“the fashion industry is one of the top polluting industries in the world”, “the fashion industry generates a significant portion of global greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions”, “microplastic pollution is out of control”. you get the gist.
these facts are important to know and they’re overwhelming to even think about. however, this year, in celebration of both my anniversary of shifting to a more sustainable lifestyle and the 50th anniversary of earth day, i’m committing to throwing some new statistics into the mix - my own impact.
sustainability is a complicated, intersectional issue but that doesn’t mean that it’s impact can’t be personalized. in this report, i’ll be doing just that - i’ve broken these huge statistics down to the personal level across three impact categories: water, waste, and wages. while these don’t cover all of the issues that we face in the fashion industry, these contribute significantly to the sustainability conversation. i’m excited to share my first every quarterrican impact report!
the methodology
calculating the impact of my wardrobe was no small feat so i want to be sure i share some context around the approach i took when determining these numbers. as i was researching, i encountered a lot of gaps in the data. as a result, i took some effort to simplify the data i needed to calculate in order to prevent this project from becoming years worth of research and a 60 page dissertation.
for all impact figures, i have only calculated the gross impact of my sustainably or ethically sourced pieces in my wardrobe. since the rest of my wardrobe was purchased (almost) entirely before i made this transition, i considered the impact of that to be “0” since those purchases are in line with the environmental impact of an average individual’s wardrobe. so, you’re only seeing the impact of sustainable and ethical habits that are outside what i would consider to be a normal shopping habit.
as i said, there wasn’t a ton of data available for what i was looking for, especially around wages. however, all data points have the source included so you’re able to enjoy some further reading as well as see that some of the statistics i share are true, as unbelievable as they might be. additionally, due to the personal scale i was operating at, all figures were measured per kilogram unless otherwise specified.
now that i put those few things on the table, let’s get into what we’re all really here to read about - the impact!
water
at this point, it feels extremely unnecessary to reinforce the important role of water to support life. water is a critical resource which is why finding ways to conserve it wherever possible is just as important as the water itself. the fashion industry accounts for 10% of all industrial water use in world every year, which equates to about 79 trillion liters of water. it’s probably an understatement to say that’s a ton of water - in fact, it’s about 17% of the total volume of water in lake erie.
strict laws and regulations, both at the governmental and business level, are needed to significantly reduce excessive water usage in the fashion industry. however, our personal sustainable decisions can have a larger impact than you might think. based on the average liters of water used to produce cotton, wool, linen, leather, and synthetic fibers, i personally saved 169,612 liters of water by prioritizing secondhand fashion over new fashion. that figure is the result of only 21 secondhand pieces - a more avid secondhand shopper would be saving even more water as long as those pieces are all being used.
thankfully, the water savings don’t stop there - clothing also has to be dyed, which uses water too. it takes about 150 liters of water to dye one kilogram of clothing. thankfully, i have 2 kgs worth of undyed pieces so that’s another 300 liters of water saved. i also find undyed pieces to have a certain beauty to them in their own right. if you’re looking to add some rich creams and deep browns, i highly recommend searching out a brand that covets the natural color of their fibers.
the easiest way to save water, it turns out, is to hold on to your clothes and stop viewing them as disposable. extending the lifespan of a piece of clothing by 9 months more than the average lifespan saves up to 10% of water. with the lifespan of fast fashion nowadays specifically, this is a pretty easy ask. the average lifespan of fast fashion clothing is about 7 wears. just 7. with a more limited wardrobe, i wear my pieces about 7 times within the first few months of having them. as a result, i factored in a 10% water savings to any consistently worn pieces i’ve had for over a year which amount to 7,832 liters.
combined, all these numbers led to a grand total of 177,743 liters of water saved from the sustainable choices i’ve made since i began my journey a year and a half ago. that’s an enormous amount of water just by making some small personal changes such as prioritizing secondhand pieces, seeking out undyed options, and committing to preserving my wardrobe’s lifespan.
“a grand total of 177, 743 liters of water saved from the sustainable choices i’ve made since i began my journey a year and a half ago”
while it’s crucial that we don’t lose sight of the massive structural changes that must be implemented by brands and governing bodies, we cannot overlook the impact we have as consumers. if each and every one of my instagram followers made the same decision, that could generate a potential water savings of over 380 million liters - and while that’s assuming you end up with the exact textile breakdown as i do, it’s the fact that each of has the power to amplify this impact by making a few changes to our shopping habits that’s most important.
waste
waste is an inevitable part of life - we generate waste when we cook, we create heat as waste when we go for a walk or run, we even generate waste just by existing. however, not all waste is created equal and the fashion industry has an extremely toxic relationship with its waste, and not just because some of its waste is actually toxic. i’ve managed to track my impact on the waste generated in the fashion industry across water waste, textile waste, and greenhouse gas emissions.
water as waste
according to the fashion revolution, the majority of water used to dye and finish textiles is simply dumped into waterways. the chemicals used in the dyeing process pollute these water systems, rendering them unusable. on top of that, the pesticides used in the cultivation of crops such as cotton also find their way into water systems as runoff from the fields. these chemical pesticides also pollute waterways and adversely impact the health of surrounding communities.
prioritizing secondhand garments, organic cotton, and undyed garments are ways i’ve been able to reduce my personal impact across toxic wastewater. within the water i’ve saved by prioritizing secondhand garments, a small portion of that accounts for the water that wasn’t needed to dye these garments thereby preventing the release the catches of toxic water that would have been used to make new versions of these products. it takes about 150 liters of water to dye a kilogram of textile. in my closet, i have 15.2 kilograms of undyed and secondhand textiles which equates to 2,280 liters of water. while this is a much smaller figure than the overall water savings, it’s far from insignificant.
there’s another type of water based waste the fashion industry produces long after it leaves the factory: microplastic fibers. since i started focusing on a more sustainable lifestyle, i have committed to only opting for natural fiber clothing whenever possible. this is because, every time you wash your clothes, they release thousands upon thousands of microscopic fibers. while the microscopic fibers released from natural textiles biodegrade as they move through our water systems, the ones from our synthetic clothing don’t. a single wash can release up to 500,000 of these microplastic fibers into our water systems which, while there isn’t a wealth of information on their impacts, probably negatively impact marine life.
so i decided to do the math and determined that, if these figures are accurate (there seem to be a lot of variables that impact the volume of microplastic fibers released), i have prevented the release of up to 18,719,494 microplastic fibers into the water streams based on my washing habits. if that doesn’t demonstrate the power we as individuals have, then time to keep reading!
textiles as waste
the onset of fast fashion brought about a mindset shift where we all too easily see clothing as disposable. i often think about how many times in the past i’ve just thrown something away the had a hole rather than trying to mend it or patch it. i saw something that requires so much energy to create as something that i could throw away as soon as i needed to take additional steps to care for it. i’ve come to learn that clothing is not garbage. we should do everything we can to preserve the lifespan of what we allow to enter our wardrobes. unfortunately, the end of a garment’s lifecycle is not the only point in time when textiles are thrown away.
“21% of fabric is wasted during the garment construction process”
— Son of a Tailor
according to son of a tailor, a brand fighting textile waste by 3d knitting their zero waste pullover, 21% of fabric is wasted during the garment construction process. based on this number, i looked again at my secondhand pieces as a source of waste reduction. assuming that the finished products that i own only account for 79% of the total fabric used in their making. i calculated that i have saved 3.59 kilograms of fabric which is enough to make about 14 t-shirts.
there are other great ways to prevent the waste of fabric scraps from the garment production process. fabscrap is an amazing organization that collects textile scraps that brands such as zero waste daniel use to make waste-free garments! it’s another great way to support the use of every last bit of textiles that we can because textiles are definitely not trash.
greenhouse gasses as waste
as with most industries, fashion is a significant contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. according to the world bank, it accounts for about 10% of all global emissions every year and is project to contribute even more in the future. greenhouse gas emissions is one of the crucial components of fashion where i firmly believe stronger legislation of the behalf of governing bodies is necessary to generate a serious impact. however, i was still able to use the data collected from the greenhouse gas emissions data for cotton, linen, wool, leather, and polyester to determine that i’ve prevented the release of 7.54 kilograms of co2 into the atmosphere from 12.8 kilograms of clothing.
surprisingly, the textile that has the most impact on a personal scale is wool which produces about 37.6 kilograms of co2 per sweater created. for the other textiles, the figures were so large and measured in tons of that textile that, when broken down to a small consumer scale, there wasn’t an enormous impact. however, it did really put into perspective the significant levels of greenhouse gas pollution the fast fashion industry is generating considering 62 million tons of clothing were consumed in 2019.
wages
wages were probably the trickiest part of the impact report to determine because minimum wage data was inconsistent. however, i felt that wages were critical to understanding impact so i did my best to use the available data to come up with a reasonable statistic.
the world fair trade organization is a non-profit dedicated to verifying that any brand within their community is a fair trade enterprise which has to meet certain standards around wages and labor practices. fair trade matters because fair trade works to close the chasm between the minimum wage and the local living wage in communities all over the globe. for most garment workers, the income they receive is not nearly enough to cover the necessary expenses accounted for in the local living wage.
based on the data i could find for 5 of the countries where my new clothing was constructed, purchasing from brands that have ethical labor standards and/or are certified by organizations like the wfto provides garment producers with 30.5% more income, on average, than those who would make minimum wage - in peru, it’s 47% and in the usa, it’s 50%. these figures only hold true if garment workers being paid minimum wage or being paid at all. however, since that data is not consistently available for all nations, that’s all i could calculate.
“purchasing from brands that uphold ethical labor standards….provides garment producers with 30.5% more income, on average.”
including wage data in my impact report is critical because clothing to this day is made by people across the globe. while ethical clothing is expensive and, at this point in time, a privilege to be able to afford, it’s the only garments that authentically honor the value of the labor involved. i feel like i must continue to advocate for it because it directly impacts the makers who deserve to be compensated for their work.
what does it all mean?
honestly, the answer is complicated because sustainability is complicated. there is no perfect fiber, there is no perfect brand, and there is no perfect consumer. in order for the fashion industry to be a more sustainable system, there would need to be so many changes on the government and brand levels. however, while those changes can take years to implement, we can alter our personal decisions much more easily.
when i started shifting to a more sustainable lifestyle back in october 2018, i knew it was a good decision, but i didn’t understand it as much as i do after generating this report. as a result, this is what i know on a personal level:
secondhand clothing has the highest direct impact. decreasing the demand for new clothing by using what’s already here matters. even recycling fabric still takes more energy and resources than buying secondhand clothing in its original form.
local makers and ethical brands deserve our support. while buying secondhand will always be the best for the environment since no new resources are being used, i believe that creation is part of human nature. we should support those who choose to do so in a way that benefits the planet, their community, and their customers.
personal impact is no small thing. the decisions we make every day have an impact on our planet. a few years ago, i didn’t buy into the “voting with your wallet” logic because i didn’t believe that we as individuals have that much power. obviously, now i do and there’s even data to prove it! don’t underestimate what you can do.
i hope this report gives you the encouragement to start making more sustainable decisions in your life. they have a much bigger impact thank you think.
interested in finding out your own impact? shoot me an email and i’ll help you calculate it.