It is one of the world's largest industries, and the data on this is clear: each year, around 70 million tons of clothing are consumed in the world. A figure that could decrease if we buy quality clothing, consciously, and responsibly. To make this massive amount of clothing, you need to make use of a wide variety of natural resources that we could conserve if we did things differently. Also, the fashion industry is very polluting. It is responsible for 1.2 billion greenhouse gas emissions, a figure exceeding those of sectors such as air and marine transport.
Water is one of the natural resources that are most affected by fast fashion, which leads millions of consumers to buy clothes in an almost addictive way. To produce the textiles with which the clothes that will fill the establishments of thousands of commercial chains will be made. About 79 billion cubic meters of water are used per year, necessary to grow the raw materials. This water ends up being contaminated with highly toxic chemicals, which seriously damage the soil, biodiversity, and watersheds.
Plastic, an extremely polluting material, floods our seas and oceans, destroying marine life, reaching them in enormous quantities: almost 10 million tons a year. It might seem that the fashion industry has nothing to do with it. Still, the truth is that it is in the sea where about 1.5 million of those tons end up in plastic microfibers that come from fibers such as nylon. , polyester or acrylic. Other threads come from cellulose. Nearly 100 million trees are cut down each year to make them, putting our ancient forests in danger and making them disappear.
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