Welcome back to the Fast Fashion Run(a)way! To better understand the impacts of the fast fashion industry, let’s take a look behind the garments and the fashion life cycle.
Linear fashion life cycle
The figure below shows a simple cradle-to-grave life cycle of wool from extraction from sheep to garment manufacturing to end-of-life where wool is disposed of or recycled.
The stages can be summarized into five key stages:
- Extraction
- Production
- Manufacturing
- Use
- End-of-life
Wastes can be generated at any of the five stages of the fashion life cycle. Stage 2 Production and Stage 3 Manufacturing may include the emission of harmful gases and chemical leakages into surrounding water bodies and soil. Between Stage 3 Manufacturing and Stage 4 Use, there are also emissions involved in the transport and distribution of garments to consumers. In Stage 4 Use, washing and drying the garments also involves the use of electricity and water.
Importance of the fashion life cycle
The fashion life cycle provides a systematic and structured understanding of how wastes can be generated across the fashion supply chain. The life cycle is also useful in understanding life cycle assessment (LCA) studies where environmental impacts of the entire supply chain and use phase of the garments are studied. Conducting LCA studies are in turn, important in helping to identify areas to improve efficiency and wastes in the supply chain.
Moving towards a circular economy
We can observe how the fashion life cycle is linear and one-way as it progresses from Stage 1 to Stage 5. This life cycle can be referred to as a linear take-make-dispose model. However, in favour of more sustainable models, a circular economy model takes precedence over a linear model. A circular economy is one that designs waste out of the resource ecosystem and focuses on extending the use stage for as long as possible. This entails better design that reduces resource use (sustainable production) and changing behaviours of consumers to repair and reuse products instead of replacing them with new ones (sustainable consumption). In the fashion and textile industry, a circular economy takes on many forms. For example, textile waste can be reused for other applications (Provin et al., 2021):
- Valorising cotton-polyester textile waste to pet fibre and glucose syrup
- Using textile waste and natural rubber to produce sound insulation materials
- Converting cotton textile waste to solid fuel
These provide a sneak peek at Chapter 3 of the Fast fashion Run(a)way which discusses initiatives to counter the take-make-dispose economy of the fast fashion industry.
Until then, let’s keep running away from fast fashion!
Cheers,
Chermaine
References
Provin, A. P., Dutra, A. R. de A., de Sousa e Silva Gouveia, I. C. A., & Cubas, e A. L. V. (2021). Circular economy for fashion industry: Use of waste from the food industry for the production of biotextiles. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 169, 120858. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120858
What is Circular Economy? (n.d.). Retrieved 8 February 2022, from https://www.towardszerowaste.sg//zero-waste-masterplan/chapter2/circular-economy/
Wiedemann, S. G., Biggs, L., Nebel, B., Bauch, K., Laitala, K., Klepp, I. G., Swan, P. G., & Watson, K. (2020). Environmental impacts associated with the production, use, and end-of-life of a woollen garment. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 25(8), 1486–1499. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-020-01766-0