3R’s Fashion Fix

Textile Waste• The UK creates around 1 million tonnes of

textile waste every year.

How much of this gets reduced, reused or recycled?

• Half of all the clothes, shoes and accessories bought in 2008 were never worn.

This cost us an estimated £11.1 billion pounds and produced more

CO2 than all the houses in Wales!

Textile Waste• Textiles can be made from 3 main types of

materials.

Can anyone name any of these?

• Man-Made fibres do not decompose in landfill as they are usually made from oil, just like plastics.

• Natural fibres from animals and plants decompose in landfill to produce methane.

Animal, Plant or Man-Made?

1. Silk 2. Wool 3. Jute

4. Hemp 5. Spandex 6. Leather

7. Nylon 8. Cotton 9. Polyester

Textile: Reduce

• Reducing the amount of textiles we buy and then waste, is the best option for the environment.

How can we reduce our textiles waste?

Cheap clothes/textiles have usually exploited people or the environment

Human exploitation• When clothes are produced cheaply, it usually

means the people making these clothes are working in bad conditions and being paid very little money.

• In some case, these workers may be children as young as ten, picking cotton or making the clothes.

• The cheaply made clothes are often produced for high street shops.

UNICEF believe that 1 in 6 children between 5 and 14 have to work.

Textile: Reuse• Reuse is the next best environmental option

and is the most common way of stopping textiles ending up in landfill.– Vintage Boutiques– Charity Shops– Donations to less economically developed countries

• Over 70% of the world’s population use second hand clothes.

If everyone in the UK bought one second hand woollen jumper each year, it would save an average of 371 million gallons of water (the average UK reservoir holds about 300 million gallons) and 480 tonnes of chemical

dyestuffs

Textile: Recycling• Textile recycling is one of the oldest forms of

recycling. • 200 Years ago in Yorkshire, Benjamin Law used

unwanted cloth and some new wool to make a material called shoddy. Shoddy was used to make new items.

• Today textiles are still recycled. Clothes that can’t be reused by charities are recycled in to cloths, rags and fillers/padding for sofas.

• Even old plastic bottles can be recycled in to clothes.

Activity

• It is now your turn to reuse the item of clothing you brought in, to spread a message about the environment to everyone that sees you. You need to make it;– Clear– Eye-catching– Readable