Can your choices in clothing help save planet earth?

According to a UN report issued earlier this year human driven climate change is already causing widespread devastation and the world has a “brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future.” Among the startling facts cited in the report included that some 3.3 billion people (about half the global population) live in areas classified as “highly vulnerable” to climate change, with millions facing food and water shortages due to climate change.?

Can something as seemingly benign as the clothes in your closet adversely contribute to climate change? The short answer is yes - clothing manufacturing plays a significant role in contributing to global climate change due to several factors. First making clothes is a resource intensive production process. It can take more than 2,700 liters of water to produce just one cotton T-shirt. The land used for cultivating fibers (like cotton and flax for linen) can lead to deforestation and habitat destruction.

Chemical pollution is also a bi-product as large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers are used in conventional cotton farming. Harmful chemicals are often used in dyeing, finishing, and treating fabrics leading to water pollution. The energy used in factories for spinning, weaving, dyeing, and finishing textiles comes mostly from fossil fuels, leading to GHG emissions.

The Impact of Fast Fashion

?Fast fashion has a decidedly negative impact on climate change as well. It has led to increased production of clothing items that are not sold and end up as waste. Fast fashion also encourages people to buy more and dispose of clothes more quickly, leading to more waste in landfills. The cultural shift towards viewing clothing as disposable exacerbates the problem. Increased demand means more production, more resource use, and more waste. Synthetic fibers like polyester, nylon and acrylic are essentially plastics derived from petroleum. They take hundreds of years to degrade and release harmful micro-plastics into the environment.

The Move Towards Sustainable Fashion

In order to combat these issues, there is a growing movement towards sustainable fashion. This includes practices like using organic materials, reducing waste through circular fashion models, implementing water-saving technologies, and shifting consumer behavior towards valuing quality and longevity over quantity. The UN has even created an Alliance for Sustainable Fashion linked to their SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).

It can also come down to changing one’s view of fashion and style, and how we go about buying clothes. As Coco Chanel once remarked “Fashion changes, but style endures.” Always Be Content looked at fashion and style in their new book on slow fashion called “Dare to Care – What you Wear.” Here they provide some outstanding examples of how to find mindful style than can be fun and environmentally friendly at the same time. The solutions range from embracing hand-me-down garments to finding amazing cool and affordable clothes in used clothing thrift / charity / vintage clothing shops. Often what is old is new (while being quite fashionable and often very affordable) – you just need to be mindful when seeking it out.

Beyond clothes - Personal choices can make a sustainable difference

Beyond being smart about buying clothes - here are some of the UN’s recommended actions each of us can take to help combat climate change:

?1.???? Save Energy at Home: Use less energy by reducing your heating and cooling use, switch to LED light bulbs and energy-efficient electric appliances. Wash laundry in cold water, hang things to dry vs. using a clothes dryer. Use better insulation and replace an oil or gas furnace with an electric heat pump.

2.???? Change Your Home’ Source of Energy: Ask your utility company if your home energy comes from oil, gas, or coal. If possible, see if you can switch to a renewable source such as wind or solar. Or install solar panels on your roof to generate energy for your home.

3.???? Walk, bike, or take public transportation: Not driving your car is an easy way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and help your health and fitness in the process. For longer distances take the train or bus. Carpool whenever possible.

4.???? Switch to an Electric Vehicle: If you plan to buy a car, consider going electric or hybrid, with more and cheaper models coming on the market.

5.???? Consider Your Travel: Airplanes burn large amounts of fossil fuels, producing significant greenhouse gas emissions. That makes taking fewer flights one of the fastest ways to reduce your environmental impact.

6.???? Reduce, Reuse, Repair and Recycle: Electronics, clothes, plastics, and other items we buy cause carbon emissions at each point in production, from the extraction of raw materials to manufacturing and transporting goods to market. To protect the climate, buy fewer things, shop second-hand, and repair what you can.

?Combating global warming by helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions is something we can all start doing today. Nothing less that the future of the planet we leave to our children and grandchildren is at stake. Dare to care about making a difference.