Emissions of the Fashion Industry

This post is based on an article by Morgan McFall-Johnsen in Business Insider on Oct 21, 2019:

• Fashion production makes up 10% of humanity's carbon emissions. That's more emissions than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
• 85% of all textiles go to the dump each year.
• Washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibers into the ocean each year — the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.
• 35% of all microplastics — very small pieces of plastic that never biodegrade — in the ocean came from the laundering of synthetic textiles like polyester. Microplastics are estimated to compose up to 31% of plastic pollution in the ocean.
• The fashion industry is the second-largest consumer of water worldwide. Cotton is a highly water-intensive plant. It takes about 2'600 liter of water to produce one cotton shirt. and about 7'500 liter of water to produce a pair of jeans. That's more than enough for one person to drink eight cups per day for 10 years.
• Fashion causes water-pollution problems. Textile dyeing is the world's second-largest polluter of water, since the water leftover from the dyeing process is often dumped into ditches, streams, or rivers. The fashion industry is responsible for 20% of all industrial water pollution worldwide.

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