A while ago I was brainstorming how to solve the problem of plastic bottles in the environment, and tackle sustainable clothing at the same time. It was a simple plan: ask the public to collect 15 bottles each and bring them in for recycling. The recycled plastic could be used to make recycled plastic T-shirts. Each person who had brought in plastic bottles would now be able to get a T-shirt made from those same bottles.
Recycled plastic clothes have been around for a while. I own a couple of recycled plastic board shorts and T-shirts and US-based outdoor clothing manufacturer Patagonia has been using recycled polyester since 1993. It all seemed like a really good idea until in 2011 ecologist Mark Browne released a study showing that tiny bits of plastic clothing called microfibers could be the biggest single source of plastic in the ocean.
This made me question not just the use of recycled plastic clothing, but also the use of all synthetic clothes. The sight of plastic bottles disgusts us all. Our drains, rivers and coastlines are full of them. Plastic bags and particles are known to kill wildlife. Browne found out that these big, visible plastics might just be the tip of the iceberg. He spent months combing shorelines and filtering sediment. What he found surprised everyone: tiny, synthetic fibers.
They were mostly concentrated around sewage pipes and constituted a whopping 85 per cent of human-made material found on shorelines. Microfibers are described as plastic particles less than one mm in size. The microfibers Browne found came from materials like acrylic and nylon, pointing towards synthetic clothing being the culprit. He sampled wastewater from washing machines and deduced that around 1,900 fibers can be rinsed off a single synthetic garment per wash.
Whales and turtles die because they mistake plastic bags and the like for food. The ingested plastics cause them to choke, or it clogs up their stomachs and guts, in which case they suffer a slow, painful death. These are the big charismatic species that we have come to love and care about. What about the smaller animals? They too ingest plastic. Undoubtedly many smaller species are dying from microfibers, or they ingest plastic that eventually travels up the food chain, until it ends on our plate.
This is a human health concern. Not only does plastic contain toxins, but it also acts as a sponge for toxins from outside sources. This should give us cause to think about what type of clothing we buy, be it recycled-plastic or new synthetic material, or non-plastic based material like cotton, organic cotton, recycled cotton or hemp.
Recycling plastic has the advantage of delaying the problem of plastic waste one more step down the consumer chain. What is doesn’t do is make plastic disappear. Every bit of plastic ever produced is still in existence! Unless we live in a society that has a closed system within which 100 per cent of plastic is recycled, every time we purchase a plastic item we contribute to the problem of plastic pollution. The choice for clothing should be clear: choose non-synthetic alternatives.
A few non-synthetic options are: cotton, organic cotton, recycled cotton, GMO Bt cotton and hemp. There is also silk and wool. Figuring out which of these is most sustainable will be a bit of a balancing act. Cotton is a notoriously dirty crop, accounting for 16 per cent of the world’s pesticides. Organic cotton is quite good but expensive. Bt cotton is a bit controversial.
It is a genetically modified crop in to which the Bacillus thuringiensis gene that kills feeding insects has been inserted. The tradeoff is that it requires much less pesticides. Hemp is considered a sustainable crop but it is traditionally a bit coarse. Silk is an animal product and silkworms are thrown alive in boiling hot water for the best quality silk, so if you are a animal rights person that might offend you.
Wool seems to be quite eco-friendly but not if it is related to deforestation and desertification. In any case, in our tropical clime wool would probably not be a first choice of clothing for anybody. So what to choose? Clothes, like food, have become cheaper and cheaper. We are slaves to fashion, resulting in many plastic garbage bags full of outdated clothing being donated to charity or more likely just being thrown away.
Maybe the solution is to buy fewer but better quality clothes. What would you prefer to have? Ten so-so fitting, low-cost clothing items or two or three well fitting, eco-friendly, top-of-the-line outfits? Successful people like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, President Obama wear the same clothes every day.
