3R’s Fashion Fix
Textile Waste
• The UK creates around 1 million tonnes of
textile waste every year.
How much of this gets reduced, reused or recycled?
• Half of all the clothes, shoes and accessories
bought in 2008 were never worn.
This cost us an estimated £11.1 billion pounds and produced more
CO2 than all the houses in Wales!
Textile Waste
• Textiles can be made from 3 main types of
materials.
Can anyone name any of these?
• Man-Made fibres do not decompose in landfill
as they are usually made from oil, just like
plastics.
• Natural fibres from animals and plants
decompose in landfill to produce methane.
Animal, Plant or Man-Made?
1. Silk
2. Wool
3. Jute
4. Hemp
5. Spandex
6. Leather
7. Nylon
8. Cotton
9. Polyester
Textile: Reduce
• Reducing the amount of textiles we buy and
then waste, is the best option for the
environment.
How can we reduce our textiles waste?
Cheap clothes/textiles have usually exploited people or the
environment
Human exploitation
• When clothes are produced cheaply, it usually
means the people making these clothes are
working in bad conditions and being paid very
little money.
• In some case, these workers may be children
as young as ten, picking cotton or making the
clothes.
• The cheaply made clothes are often
produced for high street shops.
UNICEF believe that 1 in 6 children between 5 and 14 have to work.
Textile: Reuse
• Reuse is the next best environmental option
and is the most common way of stopping
textiles ending up in landfill.
– Vintage Boutiques
– Charity Shops
– Donations to less economically developed
countries
• Over 70% of the world’s population use
second hand clothes.
If everyone in the UK bought one second hand woollen jumper each year, it
would save an average of 371 million gallons of water (the average UK reservoir
holds about 300 million gallons) and 480 tonnes of chemical dyestuffs
Textile: Recycling
• Textile recycling is one of the oldest forms of
recycling.
• 200 Years ago in Yorkshire, Benjamin Law
used unwanted cloth and some new wool to
make a material called shoddy. Shoddy was
used to make new items.
• Today textiles are still recycled. Clothes that
can’t be reused by charities are recycled in to
cloths, rags and fillers/padding for sofas.
• Even old plastic bottles can be recycled in to
clothes.
Activity
• It is now your turn to reuse the item of
clothing you brought in, to spread a message
about the environment to everyone that sees
you. You need to make it;
– Clear
– Eye-catching
– Readable