The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world just after the oil industry. And the environmental damage is increasing as the industry grows. In most of the countries in which garments are produced, untreated toxic wastewaters from textiles factories are dumped directly into the rivers. Wastewater contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, among others. These are extremely harmful to 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. Another major source of water contamination is the use of fertilizers for cotton production, which heavily pollutes runoff waters and evaporation waters. 20% of industrial water pollution comes from textiles treatment & dyes. 200,000 tons of dyes are lost to effluents every year. 1.5 trillion litres of water is used by Fashion Industry every year. 2.6% of the global fresh water is used to produce cotton. 750 million people in the world do not have access to drinking water.

Every time we wash a synthetic garment about 700,000 individual microfibers are released into the water, making their way into our oceans. Scientists have discovered that small aquatic organisms ingest those microfibers. These are then eaten by small fish which are later eaten by bigger fish, introducing plastic in our food chain. A recent study has shown that wearing synthetic fibers is releasing plastic microfibers into the air. According to the study one person “could release almost 300 million polyester microfibres per year to the environment by washing their clothes, and more than 900 million to the air by simply wearing the garments”. 190,000 tons of textile microplastic fibers are going into the oceans each year. Twice as many particles are released by older garments compared to newer ones. 52% of our clothes contain polyester.

A family in the western world throws away an average of 30 kg of clothing each year. Only 15% is recycled or donated, and the rest goes directly to the landfill or is incinerated. Synthetic fibers, such as polyester, are plastic fibers, therefore non-biodegradable and can take up to 200 years to decompose. Synthetic fibers are used in 72% of our clothing. The equivalent of 1 garbage truck of textiles is wasted every second. 5.2% of the waste in our landfills are of textiles. 3 years is the average lifetime of a garment today.

Chemicals are one of the main components in our clothes. They are used during fiber production, dyeing, bleaching, and wet processing of each of our garments. The heavy use of chemicals in cotton farming is causing diseases and premature death among cotton farmers, along with massive freshwater and ocean water pollution and soil degradation. Some of these substances are also harmful to the consumer. 23% of all the chemicals produced worldwide are used for the textile industry. 20,000 people die of cancer and miscarriages every year as a result of chemicals sprayed on cotton. Cotton production used 24% of the insecticides & 11% of the pesticides produced globally.

The apparel industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions. The global fashion industry is generating a lot of greenhouse gases due to the energy used during its production, manufacturing, and transportation of the million garments purchased each year. Synthetic fibers used in the majority of our clothes are made from fossil fuel, making production much more energy-intensive than with natural fibers. Most of our clothes are produced in China, Bangladesh, or India, countries essentially powered by coal. This is the dirtiest type of energy in terms of carbon emissions. Also, according to James Conca from FORBES: "Cheap synthetic fibers also emit gases like N2O, which is 300 times more damaging than CO2." 70 million oil barrels are used every year to produce polyester. 400% more carbon emmissions are produced if we wear a garment 5 times instead of 50 times.

The soil is a fundamental element of our ecosystem. We need healthy soil for food production but also to absorb CO2. The massive, global degradation of soil is one of the main environmental issues our planet is currently facing. It presents a major threat to global food security and also contributes to global warming. The fashion industry plays a major part in degrading soil in different ways: overgrazing of pastures through cashmere goats and sheep raised for their wool; degradation of the soil due to massive use of chemicals to grow cotton; deforestation caused by wood-based fibers like rayon, etc. Degraded soil will lead to a decrease of 30% food production over the next 20-50 years if nothing changes.