Industry Fraud? Fast Fashion Announces 2025 100% Using Sustainable Fabrics

Recently, textile and clothing people's circle of friends is estimated to have been cleaned up by these things. The major brands have launched environmental sustainability.

In July this year, the fast fashion brand Zara announced its ambitious ambitions for sustainable fashion. Zara parent Inditex group announced at its annual shareholders' meeting on July 16th local time that the group's 7500 stores will be efficient, energy saving and environmental friendly before 2019. Before 2025, 100% of all brands of the group including Zara, Pull & Bear and Massimo Dutti will be made of sustainable fabrics. "We must be the driving force of change, not only in the company, but in the industry as a whole." Zara parent Inditex CEO Pablo Isla said so.

The fast fashion brand H&M has launched ninth environmental conscious action limits series this year, using three new materials, including pineapple leaf fiber plant leather, seaweed sponge foam and orange peel fiber.

H&M said: its inspiration comes from the earth, and combines all kinds of printing and sustainable fabrics. At present, 57% of H&M products have sustainable materials, and in 2030, 100% of the products are recycled or other sustainable sources.

CONVERSE announced the launch of the Renew series, which is made of recyclable garbage. This series of three products, made from recycled plastic bottles, recycled jeans and recycled canvas, is still in use of classic Chuck Taylor All Star and Chuck 70. In July 5th, Co was produced by recycling waste plastic bottles and then producing polyester fibers. Nverse Renew Canvas took the lead.

The question is, is it possible for any fashion giant to make 100% sustainable cloth? "Anika Kozlowski, a professor at Ryerson Fashion College, replied in an article in The Fashion Law:" this is almost impossible.

As the world's largest fast fashion retailer, Zara produces 450 million single products a year, and can produce 500 new products per week. In the middle of 2000s, its efficient and mass production mode was regarded as a revolutionary initiative by the industry, indicating the coming of the super consumption era.

Marta Ortega, the daughter of Amancio Ortega, founder of Zara, said that the brand has been trying to develop new technologies, has been looking for better ways to use recycled materials, and has created new fabrics that are capable of facing the future for the company's designers and even the entire fashion industry. "This is the right thing from the moral and business level."

In the past few years, Zara began to implement a series of sustainable measures in the company.

In 2015, Zara placed clothing recycling bins in 834 shops in 24 countries around the world. Up to now, these recycling bins have collected over 34000 tons of clothing. It is understood that in 2020, all the brands of Inditex group will be equipped with recycling devices to collect obligations for charity and recycling. Inditex group regards the project as the cornerstone of the company's recycling economy.

In recent years, the fashion industry is obsessed with sustainable and green fashion. It seems to be offering some sustainable fabric products. The major fashion giants and consumers can be reassured, including Zara, HM and UNIQLO fast fashion Brand Company.

They use a product known as "sustainable" and a very large area of recycled clothing. Recycling is certainly a lot, but according to statistics, 1000 metric tons of recycled clothing will take 12 years to complete exhaustion, and the same amount, some fast fashion brands can be produced on average 48 hours. In addition, the data indicate that the global consumption of clothing has doubled, but only 1% of the garments have been recycled.

Zara Join Life series source: Zara

Therefore, we can see that the proportion of fast fashion manufacturing and recycling, and the proportion of people buying and recycling, we can know that if the production mode and scale of fast fashion are not changed, "recycling" will always be a marketing means. It has nothing to do with sustainability and has nothing to do with environmental protection. If setting up a recycling bin can make the fast fashion customers feel secure, then why are these fashion giants not happy?

By the way, the strategy of recycling clothes in exchange for discounted coupons is being strongly criticized by environmentalists: while recycling clothes, we continue to encourage people to buy clothes. The brand is really "sustainable" development, right?

As far as the scale of clothing industry is concerned, the corresponding recycling capacity is not yet exist, and the recycled clothing is usually more energy consuming than the new garment production. The technical cost of the recycled fabric is higher than that of the general cloth.

There is no "100% sustainable" fabric in the world.

Another 100% sustainable fabric put forward by Zara is also controversial.

First, the abuse of the word "sustainability" in the fashion industry is not so clear and standardized. The second is that the generation of fabrics and fabrics requires huge energy and natural resources. The so-called "sustainable fabrics" in the industry, however, are less harmful to the earth than the average cloth.

First of all, the most traditional source of cloth is cotton. First of all, it needs a lot of water to grow. The main reason for Desertification in Aral Sea is to plant too much cotton around and deprive the local water resources. On average, a single piece of jeans needs 1600 gallons of water for cotton. Secondly, it is the world's most demanding crop of chemicals. It needs a lot of fertilizer and insecticides to grow smoothly.

As for organic cotton, it refers to reducing the toxic fertilizer and the farmers returning to the soil health after being planted. According to the Irish fashion magazine "IMAGE", many of the "brand" of the fashionable brands are uncertified, some of which are only a handful of organic cotton, some of them are actually organic cotton, but later they are dyed with chemical dyes.

In addition, the most popular fabrics in recent years, such as polyester fiber, nylon, Lycra and so on, are all made from petroleum, which are cheap and fast. So far, they account for 65% of garments. It consumes huge amounts of energy and fossil fuels and goes to the ecosystem with toxins (such as NO2, 300 times more harmful than carbon dioxide).

Synthetic fibers must not be biodegradable. Unless we burn them, every nylon dress or Lycra tights will still be on the planet in the coming 1000. According to the research of Ellen MacArther Foundation of charitable foundation, about 500 thousand tons of plastic microfiber are washed into the ocean everyday by washing plastic based textile fabrics (polyester, nylon or acrylic material). The amount of microfibers in the global waters has reached a considerable amount, and a certain number of plastic microfibers have been found in the human body. PrimaLoft said that the most important textile industry at present is the pollution of marine micro plastics caused by cloth.

As for recycled polyester fiber (RPET), it refers to the melting of existing waste plastics, such as plastic bottles, which is 59% less energy than the original polyester fiber, 32% less carbon emissions and less oil consumption, but it is still not biodegradable, and even recycled polyester fibers consume more energy than natural fibers.

Why can brands only say "sustainable" empty words?

The biggest problem is that the fashion industry itself, fast fashion and high-end fashion brands continue to operate with unlimited production and sales. Fast fashion is a "non growth or death" industry. Even if the growth rate slows down, sales will continue to rise to survive.

If we really want to achieve sustainability, there are basically two ways to return: first, to reduce output; two, to change consumption habits - to buy less new products, and to use each item for a longer time. But both of them are against the fashion brand's business objective (increasing sales), so that's why they never advocate doing so.

Fast fashion puts forward 100% sustainability. Please examine the following points.

(1) data on Sustainable cloth are clearly stated. How much waste is it made of? Recycled materials, as Patagonia says, is a single product made from several plastic bottles. To say 100% sustainability, we must first set down the number of sustainable environmental indicators.

(2) the ratio of recovery and production (the amount of annual recovery can be produced in two days)? What is the ratio of recycling and waste to the annual surplus of clothing?

(3) what can we do to recycle clothing, how to recycle it? Where to go? What is the impact on the third world? What is the energy cost?