Wreaking havoc on its way to our wardrobe

I haven’t got the figures (yet), but I’ve been pondering the life of my clothes before they got to me…it is turning into a trail of destruction.

Firstly there are all those raw materials, where did they come from? Land cleared for cotton then all those chemicals used to grow the cotton. What about synthetics what are they made of? How did those chemicals come about?
Once produced those raw materials chew up some fossil fuels making their way to the factory when they are turned into fabric. That takes a bit of energy, water and chemicals before they chew through some more fuel to the cutting room (in some cases sweat shop). I don’t buy many “one-off”s so I am guessing the actual production and manufacture happens in a factory munching up even more into fossil fuel…..

Once produced a huge amount of packaging happens, plastic hangers, plastic wraps, some polystyrene padding and packaging, big plastic wraps over all that. Then it is back on the road or a ship guzzling up more fuel on it’s way to a warehouse for storage before back on the road (guzzle guzzle) to the shop. Once in the shop, off comes all that plastic and off to landfill with it.

Once in the shop I love it, so I buy it. Yay! New clothes! In the old days I would have carried it home in a plastic bag, but now I take my own or they have all those new reusable recycled ones these days. Wearing my new clothes, I’m happy all is good, but one day I’m not into those clothes anymore, or I have fallen in love with a new item, put on weight, lost weight or spilt red wine down the front of it, so I need to re-home my old clothes. Where will they go? A lot of my old clothes go to charity 2nd hand shops, but eventually most unwanted clothes (including the ones that go to 2nd hand shops) will end up in landfill.
When you think about all the crazy weird and bizarre fashions that come and go (thank god some of them go) that is a lot of landfill with a long and polluting journey behind it.