Pretty clothes, ugly truth.

Byline: Amna S. Sandhu

It's only early spring but the adverts are already filled with upcoming branded lawn prints that are dime a dozen. No doubt these vibrant colourful prints are irresistible. But, before you deep dive into multiple volumes of lawn prints this spring/summer, spare a thought about the impact of this fast fashion on our environment.

A recent survey by Pew Research Centre, identified Climate Change as the biggest international threat. But when we think of climate change and pollution, the mind wanders to power plants, mining, plastic dumps and burning forests etc. However, fashion industry has started to play an enormous role in climate change with tremendous carbon footprint making it one of the dirtiest industries in the world. Recent rise of fast fashion trends is criticised for negative environmental effects majorly through water pollution, use of toxic chemicals in production process and increasing level of textile waste.

First step to understand the severity of this problem is to measure the environmental impact and identify areas that can be improved. Textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of clean water as according to the World Bank report, garment manufacturing is responsible for 20% of global industrial water pollution. New Textiles Economy Report highlights that washing clothes releases half a million tonnes of plastic micro fibres into ocean, annually. This contributes to the issue of plastic entering the ocean that has adverse environmental and health implications. Similarly, textile is also one of the biggest water consumers as it uses almost 5 trillion litres of water annually. According to WWF report, cotton accounts for one-third of total fibres in textile industry and to make one cotton shirt, 2700 litres of water is required that's how much a person drinks in 2.5 years, on average.

Globally, UNFCCC reports that fashion industry causes almost 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions that is more emissions than from shipping and flights combined. Synthetic garment is not as water intensive as cotton and thus, man-made fibres like polyester and nylon are considered to have relatively less negative environmental effect. However, their production process results in much higher pollution, as recorded in a report in 2015 by the World Resources Institute, the carbon footprint of polyester production was 1.5 trillion pounds in terms of greenhouse gasses, which is equivalent to how much 185 coal-fired power...