Clothing and getting on the Environmental "Green Triangle"

Dana Thomas, author of the book, Fashionopolis, published in 2020, has a scary message:  Our addiction to cheap, trendy clothing is poisoning the planet and keeping millions in poverty.

Fast fashion is bad for you.

The fashion industry as a whole is responsible for ten percent of all carbon emissions worldwide, and a whopping twenty percent of all industrial water pollution, according to Thomas' research. Meanwhile, sweatshop operations (Thomas reports of young people working in 110-degree heat in some of the factories she visited) paying low wages to the people manufacturing our clothes continue in many countries, including our own. Her research shows that one in six people worldwide, nearly twenty percent, is employed in some manner by the fashion industry. Of those millions of people, only two percent of them are able to earn a living wage.

There is a Sisyphean side to the fashion industry as well:  We will only wear the clothing these people worked so hard to manufacture an average of seven times before discarding, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. The amount of "textile waste" in the U.S. in 2017, according to the EPA, was over eleven million tons. That works out to approximately 81 pounds of clothes per person per year. 

Do we really need all of this clothing?

Denim is particularly problematic.

Used denim jacket purchased used at Goodwill for $15

Made of cotton, which requires intensive use of water and pesticides, denim is particularly problematic for the environment. In addition to the use of cotton (did you know that denim used to be made of wool?), the chemical dyes used to create the characteristic indigo color had until recently created serious environmental and health issues in the Zengcheng district of Guangzhou City, China, considered the denim capital of the world (efforts taken since 2013 have reduced some of these issues). 

The Green Triangle

But enough of the scary statistics. I didn't set out to help the environment when I started buying used clothes; I was just trying to save money. The effect of any decision to change your behavior in order to save money will often have a positive effect on both the environment and on your health.

This virtuous cycle is known as the green triangle:

From Context.org

A common example is the decision to ride a bike as much as possible instead of driving a car. You save money on the gas, insurance and on the wear and tear on the car. However, you also help the environment by lowering carbon emissions, and you improve your health by getting more cardiovascular exercise - an unintended consequence of the decision to spend less.

You can start from any point on the triangle to begin this virtuous cycle. If you decide to purchase fewer processed foods to improve your health, you'll save money (convenience food is more expensive), and you'll cut down on packaging waste, which has a positive effect on the environment.

Used clothing lets you have it all.

If you decide to buy more of your clothing used, you can sidestep the sweatshop labor issue, since you are not actively adding to the demand for such clothing - even though you may end up wearing it. 

In addition, if you buy more of your clothing used instead of new, you delay, if not outright reduce, the stream of textile waste into our landfills. If you'd like to read more about the fate of our cast-away clothing, check out Greenamerica.org's article, "What Really Happens to Unwanted Clothes?"

Finally, if you buy your clothing used you save a bunch of money - but you already knew that.