How recycling clothes can help the planet

But some fashion brands are adopting the ‘greenwashing’ approach.

Despite the current cost of living crisis and the slow economic recovery from Covid, consumers are still shopping and buying fast fashion products. The textile industry has an extremely important role to play in helping to fight climate change but not enough is being done even though around 95% of clothing is recyclable…with some exceptions, so don’t believe all you read.

So what is ‘greenwashing’?

“It’s the process of conveying a false impression or misleading information about how a company’s products are environmentally sound. Greenwashing involves making an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company’s products are environmentally friendly or have a greater positive environmental impact than they actually do. In addition, greenwashing may occur when a company attempts to emphasise sustainable aspects of a product to overshadow the company’s involvement in environmentally damaging practices. Performed through the use of environmental imagery, misleading labels, and hiding trade-offs, greenwashing is a play on the term “whitewashing,” which means using false information to intentionally hide wrongdoing, error, or an unpleasant situation in an attempt to make it seem less bad than it is.”

There is currently a bit of a clampdown on greenwashing within the fashion industry as the global regulators hunt down misleading environmental product claims, such as describing polyester products as ‘recycled’ when this is a particular material that cannot be reused again at the end of its life and in fact can take between 20 and 200 years to decompose!

The real issue in the UK is overconsumption; we buy too much and in turn, we waste too much and it ends up in landfill. With a bit of a shocking stat back in 2022 that we have almost reached landfill capacity, there has been a lot of positive work done to help cut textiles waste. Rather than viewing textiles as rubbish, we are now looking at them in a different light – vintage or pre-loved. This has a more romantic feel and is turning consumers away from the high street into the second hand market and there are now around 4,000 on and offline stores specialising in pre-owned textiles. 45% of adults would now consider buying recycled and pre-worn clothing.