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The environmental impact of the fashion industry

Summer Hope
Oct 26, 2018
2 min read

An area of the environmental impact of the fashion industry I have briefly focused on is how plastics from fibres of a fabric effect life in the ocean, rivers etc. As part of a task, we have been told to write around 250 words about our chosen topic within this area.

"The Fashion Industry is the second largest polluter in the world".

Throughout most countries where textiles and fashion garments are produced, 'untreated toxic wastewater' from factories are directly thrown into rivers surrounding them, there are no substances being used to treat this toxic waste to help the environment and the place in which it's being dumped. "Wastewater contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, amongst others. These are extremely harmful for the aquatic life and the health of millions of people living by those river banks. The contamination also reaches the sea and eventually spreads around the globe." Most people wouldn't think about this aspect of fashion when buying a garment; there is much more of a background behind garments being produced, in this case, destroying sea life and animals that live within rivers and lakes, and enabling millions of people to be in contact with these harmful substances being produced by factories. "Vibrant colours, prints, fabric finishes are appealing features of fashion garments, but many of these are achieved with toxic chemicals." Here again it states that no matter how appealing bold, bright prints and fabrics can be, the way they were made is not so positive as it's destroying aquatic life as previously stated. The way in which we could prevent these is to find a substance not so toxic and not to just 'dump' it into the ocean, but to get rid of it carefully and unharmfully, also to start choosing clothes that are made within countries that have stricter environmental regulations for factories so that we're preventing these toxic chemicals being produced within the environment.