What are your clothes really made of?

Let’s start at the beginning. Before any garment can be created, the fabric must be woven or knit from some type of fiber. These two processes are distinct, and they produce slightly different materials. The most obvious difference is that knit textiles are stretchy in all directions while woven textiles are less so. Garment patterns are designed with a type of textile in mind since the fit and drape of the garment will be affected. You might be able to determine how a piece of fabric was made just by looking at it. See the samples below: “In knit fabric, one continuous yarn is looped repeatedly to create what looks like tiny rows of braids. In woven fabric, multiple yarns cross each other at right angles to form the grain, like a basket.” 15

What the fabric is woven or knit from can have differing impacts on the environment, and some textiles might be considered more sustainable than others. Linda Greer of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has warned us that “textile manufacturing has a huge environmental footprint, polluting as much as 200 tons of water for every ton of fabric with a suite of harmful chemicals, and consuming tremendous amounts of energy...” 16

Now, let’s learn a bit about the different types of fibers. As mentioned in the introduction, polyester and acrylic-based textiles are made from synthetic fibers. These fabrics have been widely used for clothing since 1951, 17 and “an estimated 50 million tons of polyester… were produced in 2015.” 18 And because synthetic fabrics like polyester, nylon, spandex, and acrylic are made from a fine plastic thread created from petroleum, they will likely take hundreds of years to biodegrade. That means large amounts of resources were used up to produce something that will take a very long time to break down. But what happens when they do break down? Our planet is encountering a problem with microscopic bits of these fabrics being found in the oceans; however, one benefit of fabrics such as polyester is that they are recyclable if they are disposed of properly.

Natural fibers are those made from or by “natural” sources such as plants or animals, and they include silk, cotton, wool, cashmere, leather, hemp, and linen. These fibers may not consume non-renewable resources as the synthetic fibers do, but they present different problems. Notably, “cotton is the most common natural fiber used to make clothing, accounting for about [one-third] of all fibers found in textiles... [and it] requires large quantities of toxic pesticides to grow.” 19 According to the Organic Trade Association (OTA), conventional cotton uses more than 10% of the world’s pesticides and approximately 22.5% of theinsecticides. 20 Organic certified cotton (labeled as GOTS - Global Organic Textile Standard) is much less harmful to the environment, even though either way, “cotton is also a very thirsty crop, requiring 2,700 liters of water—what one person drinks in two-and-a-half years—to make one cotton shirt.” 21

What about the newer textiles such as modal and lyocell? These the grain as more sustainable since they are made in the is looped wood pulp, a renewable resource. These fabrics may use less water to produce than cotton, but the process still involves the use of harsh chemicals, so they are not necessarily the answer.

Traditionally, most fabrics have been constructed from either natural or synthetics fibers, but perhaps there are solutions in new technologies. For example, one of the latest innovations in this field is made from pineapple waste. “Piñatex® is a natural, sustainably produced textile that was developed for use as a sustainable alternative to both mass-produced leather and polluting synthetic materials. The raw material that forms the base of Piñatex® is a by-product of the pineapple harvest. The use of pineapple leaf fiber, an agricultural waste product, provides the opportunity to build a scalable commercial industry for developing farming communities, with minimal environmental impact.” 22 Other ideas such as this one are surfacing, as well.

Additionally, several organizations are attempting to provide more transparency and information so that consumers may make better choices. The NRDC has created Clean by Design, a set of Ten Best Practices for textile mills to help companies evaluate and reduce their environmental impact. Clean by Design has made great strides – and has collaborated with the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), another organization making improvements in this field. The SAC pioneered the Higg Index, “a suite of tools that enables brands, retailers, and facilities of all sizes — at every stage in their sustainability journey — to accurately measure and score a company or product’s sustainability performance.” 23 More than 200 companies from Walmart to Patagonia (this includes around 8,000 factories) belong to the SAC already. However, not all factories belong yet, so research your favorite brands and ask them to participate if they don’t already.

As you can see, producing the materials to manufacture clothing clearly has an enormous impact on the environment, and the worst part is much of that ultimately goes to waste, so choose carefully. Read more about the impact of producing your clothes in this publication.