Water

One of the biggest reasons why the clothing industry have a negative impact on the climate is the usage of water.

In 2015 the clothing and textile industry used 79 billion cubic meters of fresh water in their production. On average an EU citizen used 9000 liters of water, 400 square meters of land, and 391 kg of raw material to cover their need of new shoes and clothing in 2020.

The clothing industry is responsible for 20 percent of the world's pollution of clean water.







Nadiia Koval - Ecoactivist

Nadiia Koval is an eco-activist from Dnipro, Ukraine. She is art and culture manager. Since 2019, she has been actively involved in eco-activism. She is also co-founder of Ksi Prostir (an artistic organization) in Dnipro, a coordinator of 15x4 (a popular science project) and an artist. She is a participant in an exhibition project about sustainable fashion as an alternative to the mass market and zero waste clothing.



Garbage

We use clothes for a shorter period of time than we used to. More than half of the used clothing ends up as garbage.

In Ghana they receive 15 million pieces of donated clothing every week. About 40 percent of the clothing ends up as garbage due to bad quality.

Every year 92 million tons of clothing ends up as waste in landfills.







We asked people about their recycling behavior

Vintage clothing

Bartek Strzelecki, born in Warscawa in 1992, opened the vintage shop, Bazar Miejski ("Bazar of the city"), in 2020. The trademark has been franchised and exists in Wroclaw, Warsaw, and Gdansk.

The vintageshop is a collaboration of different shops divided in commission sales and other vintage- and upcycling shops which includes everything that can be reused.







Fast fashion explained

A term used to describe clothing designs taken almost directly from the catwalk (or worn by celebrities) to stores.

Fast fashion allows the mainstream audience to purchase the hot new look at an affordable price.

The term became common because of cheaper, speedier manufacturing and shipping methods - often represented once or twice a week to stay on trend.

Brands like Shein (The world’s most popular fashion brand i 2022) comes with a high cost. In order to a report compiled by Money.co.uk, Shein has taken over brands like Nike and Adidas as the most searched clothing brand on Google. Rising from a low-cost Chinese apparel merchant to a global online-only fashion, climbing in sales from §10 billion in 2020 to $100 billion in 2022.

Rethinking fast fashion

A report from the Department of Design, Housing and Merchandising (2020) projects that the second hand clothing market will almost triple the value in the next ten years - from $28 billion in 2019 to $80 billion. Currently the market in the U.S is worth $379 billion.



The fast fashion industry emerged in in early 2000’s and has grown exponentially over the last two decades. Officially, fashion is divided into four seasons: Spring/Summer, Autumn/Winter, Resort and Pre-fall, but many fast fashion stores present 52-micro seasons.