Fast fashion is one of the main contributing factors to waste. The number of garments made annually has doubled since 2000. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck filled with clothes is put into landfills or is burned globally. Fast fashion brands who rapidly release new style at high quantities are evidently the reason why there is shockingly large amounts of unwanted clothes with no where to go. The psychological process of engineering people to robotically buy garments at cheap prices and at expectedly low quality, means that the lifecycle of that once individual garment is very limited. In order to make up for the style which is no longer trending or in good condition, you're tricked into the cycle of buying more. But what happens to all this unwanted clothes?
2 NEGATIVE WAYS CLOTHES ARE DISPOSED OF
Landfill waste:
An estimate of £140 million worth of clothes is sent to UK landfills every year. Depending on the type of fabric, the process of clothes decomposing happens at a very slow rate. The amount of clothes being added to landfills is at a faster rate than it is at breaking down what's already there. Organic waste like food waste or natural fibres, as well as biodegradable things break down in landfill without oxygen. But as this happens, the bacteria releases gas and some of this is methane. Also known to be highly flammable, it is also known as a silent killers. Methane is particularly bad for climate change as it is more potent to trapping heat in our atmosphere in comparison to carbon dioxide.
Burning waste:
Some brands have been known to set fire to their clothes that they do not sell, instead of selling them at a discounted price. Burberry is one of the well known brands to have done this only until recently. In 2017, £28.6 million worth of clothes was known to be burnt by Burberry. September 2018, after intense public scrutiny, they announced that they have stopped incinerating clothes with immediate effect. The most obvious downside to burning clothes or burning anything in general is the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which is a contributing factor to climate change.
At Ama Thea The Label we focalise on slow fashion to minimise our involvement in contributing to waste. Our main way of combating the start of waste buildup is by operating based on small batches for each style. We'd rather maximise the variety of styles, colours and prints that we have to offer in order to accommodate to more style preferences, rather than having large quantities with limited demand ultimately resulting in waste. As a brand we are really passionate about create high quality garments at reasonable prices and by doing so we take pride in our choices of fabrics. As for our printed garments, the inks we use are water based with no toxic harmful chemicals, this is not only an eco conscious decision for our environment but also allows for a more safer way of recycling our garments towards the end of their life cycle. We also choose to use sustainable fabrics that are made with innovative yarns made from natural or recycled materials which limits the need for the direct use of synthetic materials which usually have a harmful and short lifecycle. We also manufacture all of our styles using resource efficient methods, like keeping fabric waste to the absolute minimum. We believe in zero waste. All of our off cut fabric are turned into beautiful accessories like scrunchies and any fabric that is impossible to turn into a product is sent to be recycled into something new sustainably. We only ever do restocks on styles that are popular.
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