Eco-fashion: the truth about going green

The economy may be in the red due to the credit crunch, but our appetite for all things “green” is booming.

With the increasing popularity of eco-conscious clothing, its prices are falling and the locations from which it is available are proliferating.

However, balancing consumers interests between consumption and the environment is an exhausting task. The reason being that the pros and cons of green fashion are complex and need to be thoroughly understood.

In recent years, eco-conscious clothing has become more mainstream, with a variety of celebrities and designers embracing this trend – from Angelina Jolie to Ralph Lauren.

Recently released government figures reveal that the clothing and textiles sector in the UK produces around 3.1m tonnes of CO2, two million tonnes of waste and 70m tonnes of waste water each year.

Moreover, 1.5 million tonnes of unwanted clothing ultimately ends up in landfill, a figure that has increased in recent years as the shift towards wider use of man-made fibres has made recycling more difficult.

As a result of this, London Fashion Week 2009 saw many of the fashion industry’s biggest names signing up to the government’s new Sustainable Clothing Roadmap – an agreement to cut the industry’s giant environmental footprint.

More than 300 organisations, including retailers like Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s, clothing giant Nike, emerging green fashion firms such as Adili and charity shops agreed to undertake a wide range of measures designed to cut its environmental and carbon footprint across its global supply chains.

Many are worried that all of this talk about going green is just that – talk.

Serious concerns

Bamboo is being heralded as the newest eco-fabric to hit stores across the world. Although at one point of time, organic cotton and hemp were the most widely used substitutes for non-organic apparel.

Indian fashion designer Savio Jon says, “The concept of eco-friendly clothing was completely alien to India a couple of years ago. But now, many fashion designers, including myself, use fabric made from bamboo. Its texture is extremely close to that of satin, in comparison to organic cotton.

“Also, my clothes aren’t very expensive as organic clothes can be found in a number of shopping outlets in India,” he said.

Fabrics made from bamboo or hemp are promoted as having been raised without pesticides and also for growing much faster than cotton.

However, organic cotton which is also a favourite amongst environmentally-conscious designers and consumers, is also grown without the use of pesticides, but is not always used in its pure state.

The major downside for bamboo, hemp and cotton, is that once they have been harvested, they may be chemically treated, or printed with toxic dyes, and still be labelled as organic.

Julian Riley, an Environmental Science teacher at Watford Grammar School for Girls says, “These chemicals are extremely toxic and can cause severe health problems to the workers handling them.”

Even with all these health effects bamboo is still more environmentally friendly than many other materials. For example non organic cotton uses approximately 150 grams of pesticide per pound of raw cotton – enough to produce just one T-shirt.

Naturally softer fabrics made from soy have a mild impact compared to the three mentioned above.

According to several environmental groups, clothes made from soy wear out faster and have to be replaced more often – which has an environmental cost of its own, whereas bamboo or hemp fibres are naturally tough.

And there are still other serious factors that have to be considered.

For instance, how can clothes assembled in factories far from the fabric mills and shipped from one end of the world to another be green?

In addition to this, how eco-friendly is the packaging that contains these clothes?

Julian Riley glancing at the pair of socks he just bought over the internet makes an interesting point also. “Although I am a frequent buyer of organic clothes, what really gets under my skin is why do a lot of them have these huge cardboard information tags pinned to them, discussing their organic nature? Isn’t that a waste of paper?,” he asks holding up the newly bought socks.

Given such criticisms, are the bamboo-based and organic clothes really “green?”

“Perfect doesn’t exist and we’re probably never going to get there,” said Leslie Hoffman, the executive director of Earth Pledge, a non-profit group that promotes sustainable development and technologies. “We all make compromises every day. Making them with your eyes open instead of arbitrarily is the best piece of advice I could give.”