Save the nature. Wear clothes longer
'12.04.2017'
ForumDaily Woman
In recent years, we have increasingly heard about eco - globalization in relation to many areas of our lives. Eco problems have already sunk into the field of fashion and design.
Donna Karan, a proponent of the concept of minimalism in fashion design, said: “I think that our lifestyle requires the limitation of our expenses. Of course, this also matters for our wardrobe. Women want functionality, comfort and luxury to be combined in one thing. They want clothes in which the boundaries between day and evening, between work day and weekend are blurred. ”
According to the international consulting company McKinsey & Company, making 1 kg of fabric generates 23 kg of greenhouse gases. In addition, the entire process of making garments, from pesticides in cotton fields to dyeing yarns, requires huge amounts of energy, water and other resources. Now, it is not so much the improvement of the form that has come to the fore, but the reduction in design products, materials and technologies. It is possible to reduce consumption volumes by extending the life of the product, which is very difficult in the context of constantly changing fashion trends. There are also certain ways of reducing, and in some places, rejecting the use of disposable products. Many modern fashion designers are supporters of the idea of a minimal basic wardrobe, consisting of items suitable for any occasion. One high-quality and universal thing can replace a dozen others.
If earlier a favorite thing could be worn for several years, and it did not go out of fashion, did not lose its appearance and relevance, now a thing from the mass market will live for one season at best. You can of course blame the "transience of fashion", but many affordable brands release up to several dozen collections a year. For example, Swedish H&M released 16 collections last year, and Spanish Zara more than 20.
In order to make fast and inexpensive, instead of natural fabrics using cheap artificial polyesters. Mechanical recycling methods do not cope with the processing of synthetic fibers, and chemical methods are so expensive that they are commercially unprofitable. The result is pollution of the environment, groundwater and soil, because unprocessed textiles have been rotting in the landfill for years.
Another option that partially solved the problem is the delivery of used clothing to poor countries in Africa and Asia. But alas, the low quality of modern production makes short-lived clothing that is still alive like rags, but how clothes are worthless.
And what do you do?
Every day there are more and more companies that understand how important it is to use "fashionable" environmental trends. H&M, for example, has ditched the toxic polyfluorinated compounds it used to impregnate waterproof clothing. Nike has reduced waste from the standard gluing process by 60% by knitting shoes.
Other representatives of the fashion business are not far behind. So, the creator of the brand Patagonia, mountaineer and eco-activist Yvon Chouinard produces recycled clothing. Yvon is the owner of many patents with an eco-bias, at the beginning of 90's, his company presented to the world the first collection of clothes from plastic bottles. Now his clothing includes nylon, recycled wool from old sweaters and textile waste from Asian factories. But the most famous product of the Chouinar is a wetsuit from the Mexican plant Guayula. It does not pass moisture and consists entirely of biological material.
Brazilian shoe brand Melissa presented the world with the first shoes from a special type of plastic - polyvinyl chloride. PVC, which is used when creating shoes - monoplastic Melflex. Everything works like in an infinite circle. Monoplastic is the result of recycling, and it can be recycled again and again. Thanks to Melflex, the brand solved several problems at once. In addition to virtually waste-free production, we have plastic shoes that are light, breathable, hypoallergenic, and non-toxic.
Environmentalists are pinning their hopes on recycling - recycling and reuse of materials. At the heart of it - separate garbage collection. In some European cities, in addition to tanks for plastic, paper, glass and metal, containers for collecting old clothes and shoes appeared. In sorting centers things are sorted out, the good ones are given to the poor, and the unsuitable are divided by type of material and sent for recycling. As a result, cotton produces beautiful paper for watercolors and banknotes, and synthetics falls on plastic processing plants.
All that remains is conscious consumers - to sacrifice the amount of clothing in favor of its quality, be careful and wear things as long as they remain intact.
