Half of UK fast fashion is made from new plastic

Almost half the things for sale on the websites of UK fast-fashion companies including Asos and Boohoo were made entirely from new-as opposed to recycled-plastic-based materials, according to a new study.

The quantity rises to 80% when looking at the share of clothes containing some amount of virgin plastic fibers, which are generally blended with other materials such as for example cotton or wool.

The study (pdf), which analyzed more than 10,000 articles of clothing, originates from the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, or RSA, a London-based organization that seeks answers to social issues. It said in the report it's been researching fast fashion’s impact, a subject which has drawn increasing scrutiny as knowing of the industry’s tremendous influence on the environment is growing.

Synthetic fibers such as polyester-a staple of the industry whose rising volume is generally raised as a cause for concern-are basically a type of plastic. They have a tendency to be cheap and can-though don’t always-offer some performance benefits, such as for example durability or stretch, which explains why they’ve become so prominent in clothing. Other popular synthetics include nylon, acrylic, and polyamide.

But they’re all made from fossil fuels, making them reliant on a carbon-spewing industry. They don’t biodegrade, and they shed microfibers that are polluting the world’s oceans and even the air. One recent study by the Nature Conservancy together with Bain & Company warned that just generating synthetic materials creates microfiber pollution. For roughly every 500 t-shirts created from synthetics, one t-shirt’s worth of fibers (pdf) is lost into the environment, it concluded. The problem of microfiber pollution has made synthetics a lot more suspect to sustainability advocates, though natural fibers carry their own significant environmental footprint.

New polyester versus recycled
Over the course of a couple weeks in May, RSA looked specifically at women’s clothing on web sites of Asos, Missguided, Boohoo, and PrettyLittleThing, which Boohoo owns. The firms are recognized for their hyper-fast production and low costs. It opt for balance of items across different product categories and assumed any fabrics not labeled as recycled were made from virgin materials. The clothing was “awash” in new synthetics, the report said.

The finding also indicates the firms have been slow to look at recycled fibers, which the RSA suggested contradicts their sustainability promises.

In statements to the BBC, the companies said they feel they’ve made progress on these issues but recognize more work should be done. Missguided pointed to its commitment of ensuring 10% of its products use recycled fibers by the end of the year and 25% by the finish of 2022. Boohoo plans (pdf) to make all its polyester and cotton recycled or “more sustainable” by 2025. Asos disputed the report’s characterization of it as a fast-fashion retailer producing “throwaway” clothing.

Many fashion companies have pledged recently to increase their utilization of “sustainable” materials, a term which has no formal definition and gets found in a range of ways. It’s not yet determined that recycled synthetics are far better for the environment, though.

While it’s true they don’t use virgin resources, they have their own issues. Companies may boast they’re keeping plastic waste such as for example discarded bottles out of landfills by making it new clothing, nonetheless they may compete for that plastic with consumer packaged goods companies that could otherwise use it for packaging. As soon as the plastic is made into textiles, the technology and infrastructure don’t currently exist to recycle it at scale. Rather than being reused again, it still switches into a landfill.

However, RSA’s analysis shows how dependent fast fashion has become on synthetic materials and blends. Blended fabrics certainly are a particular problem since different fibers ought to be separated to be recycled and there’s currently no means of doing that at scale either. “We are not calling for the eradication of most new plastic from clothing,” RSA said. “But cheap, throwaway items, likely destined for landfill, are harming the environment.”