Fast fashion wastes over 700 gallons of water in the production of one t-shirt. This is water that one person could drink for nearly three years, and that’s just one t-shirt. Fast fashion relies on cheap labor to create excessive amounts of clothing that ultimately end up in a landfill.
Billions of people around the Earth go without water on a regular basis while fast fashion continues to wastewater and many other resources while using unfair practices. Whatever water that is leftover is polluted, and the air is polluted. This all causes excessive amounts of carbon dioxide to fill the air and create an inhospitable Earth. People and animals die as a result.
Sustainable Fashion Is The Solution
Sustainable fashion creates far less waste and serves as a major way to save the Earth and provide a means to sustainable fashion that helps people to stay healthier, save money and provide a better life for future generations. Sustainable fashion can help to reverse existing damage to the Earth too. It has a number of other benefits. This is why we should focus some of our attention on recycling cotton.
Why We Should Focus On Recycling Cotton
While cotton is biodegradable, there are many practices in fast fashion production that creates a number of issues: using excessive amounts of water in growing cotton and dying fabrics, cheap labor, depletion of resources, and air and water pollution among other issues. There are better sustainable practices in the production of cotton for clothing. However, since we have a surplus of clothing (tons of it ends up for donation daily) and there is cotton that never ends up in consumers’ hands, we can use existing clothing and scraps to give it new life.
How It’s Done
Recycled cotton comes in two forms: It comes from post-consumer and pre-consumer. Pre-consumer recycled cotton comes from clippings and scraps that never make their way into the production of clothing, towels, or otherwise. Post-consumer recycled cotton comes from clothing and other items. These are more difficult to recycle, but recycling can still be done. Both types of cotton used for recycling need to be mixed with new cotton and other fibers. Recycling cotton greatly reduces water consumption, pollution, prevents clothing from ending up in landfills, and other issues associated with cotton production.
The issue isn’t that cotton is grown for the purposes of clothing and linens, in general. The issue is how it’s grown and produced. Organically grown cotton leads to far less waste. This cotton can be recycled as well. Combined with soy, hemp, bamboo, and other fibers, clothing can last consumers a number of years. Recycled cotton that is mixed with hemp, organically-grown cotton, and other fibers give it strength and durability. Hemp is particularly strong and is suitable to mix with recycled cotton to create long-lasting garments and linen.
When recycling post-consumer cotton, like-colored fabrics are used together. They’re shredded and re-spun to create something new. Because the post-consumer cotton has already been dyed, it’s not always necessary to re-dye the end product. Safer practices can be used in dying fabric if re-dying is desired.
Cotton cannot be continuously be recycled. Once it has been recycled, it should not be recycled again to avoid compromising its fibers. It’s up to us to use ethical, responsible, and safer practices in growing cotton and from thereon recycling it to help preserve the Earth and help reverse the damage.
Handle Certified Organic Fabrics At Organic Apparel
Organic Apparel will help you move beyond synthetic fibers and conventional cotton. Our goal is to reduce wasteful practices within the system.
To find out more, please reach out to us today. Organic Apparel will match you with sustainable fabrics and energy-efficient production processes.
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