The Life Cycle of Clothes Activity One: Watch this video 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The life cycle of a t-shirt - Angel Chang and answer the questions below In which 3 countries is most of the cotton grown? In which 4 countries are most of the factories which make the fabric? Why does producing clothing domestically (within a country) cut out some pollution from the process? Which industry is the 2nd largest polluter in the world? What are 3 actions which people can do to reduce the negative environmental impact of clothing? Activity Two: In the table below are 9 events in the process of commercially creating clothes. Read through each of the events in the table and put them in order correctly for when they happen. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. E … … … … … … … … A. The clothes are then made available in shops or online for people to buy. The company selling the product will decide on a price to sell it at which will make the company a profit. Some businesses sell clothing items for 2 to 3 times the cost of what it costs them to make the product. Many brands will charge 50 times the cost of making and transporting the product though. Sometimes the shop will advertise that the garment is being sold in the hopes that more people will buy the item. B. Eventually, all clothes will end up as rubbish, either in a landfill, in a compost or as litter. They will eventually biodegrade but will take different lengths of time to do so depending on the material and where it is put. Non-biodegradable clothes are usually made from petroleum oil including polyester, spandex, and nylon. It may take between 20 to 200 years to fully biodegrade these textiles. C. The raw material is grown or made, which will then be turned into fabric. There are many different fabrics which clothing can be made of. Although a lot of clothing is made of cotton or a mix of cotton and another material, there are many other fabrics to choose from too. Some of those fabrics are made from plants such as cotton and bamboo. These plants need to be grown on farms to get the raw cotton. Some fabrics are made from animals like wool, leather or silk. Some materials are created from coal, oil or plastic like polyester, rayon and acrylic. These are called ‘man-made’ materials. D. Once a garment has been made they are normally covered in plastic sheets to keep them clean and then boxed up. They are then transported across the world to warehouses and shops, usually on big ships. E. A garment is designed by a fashion designer. Designers plan in detail what the garment will look like. They also need to organise how the garments will be made and where they will get the materials from. Some of the designers' responsibilities are to decide what it will look like, which sizes it will be made in, what material it is made of and will figure out how much it will cost to make. F. If garments do not sell right away the price might be reduced so they sell all of it. If a garment is not sold after a while then many companies choose to get rid of the product. Sometimes products are donated to charities, however often unsold products are recycled into new fabric, burnt, or cut up and thrown away. G. The raw material is processed in the factory to turn it into the fabric. Little fibres of the material are spun many times until it is in long strands. Those strands are then weaved or bonded together to create sheets of fabric. The fabric is then dyed using chemicals to create the many different patterns and colours to create a variety of fabric options. H. The fabric and the designs for the clothing are taken to factories. At the factories, workers cut out the fabric into the shape of the garment. They need to cut it into the different sizes. Extra fabric is usually thrown out or recycled. After the garments have been cut out, they are sewn together. Buttons, zips and any other details are usually sewn on at the end. I. We wear our clothes. Some clothes we wear a lot, some clothes we barely wear. Once we have finished with the clothing we get rid of our clothes. There are many reasons why we get rid of clothing. Sometimes it is because we have worn it so much that now it has holes in it, is stretched or fraying. Sometimes we have changed size so the item is now too small or too big. Other times we are bored with it. When we have finished with our clothes we try to pass them on to someone else to use by either selling them, donating them to charity or passing them on to a friend or family member. Activity Three: Create a storyboard below outlining the process of creating clothes. Find an image using google search for the picture and summarise the process from the paragraphs above to one sentence. The garment is designed and the production process is planned out - including costing, sourcing materials and factories to create the final product.
