While tags on garments can cause a headache, the rectangular piece of cotton or polyester that is inside your T-shirt is actually required by the law of consumer protection in many countries. It must tell you certain details about the item you just purchased, such as the material it’s made of, how you can take care of it, and the place it was produced.
The fashion industry is struggling to reduce its environmental footprint and also communicate these efforts to customers. There are calls for labels on clothing, to be more specific. “We sort of really need a garment nutrition label,” the chief executive officer of the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel, Edwin Keh, says.
The labels for garments in the near future could have scannable information. Some already use it, and a consumer will be able to trace the entire process of making the garment, from the place where the cotton or wool was cultivated and what chemicals, dyes, or finishing were employed in the production process.
However, until high-tech tags for garments are available to the public, we consulted some experts to discuss what labels like the “made in” brands of today could reveal about a garment’s environmental footprint.
Do not rely on only the made in’ label.
In certain ways in some ways, the “made in” label can be a false equivalence about the origins of a garment. It’s because it indicates where the previous process took place; that’s the place where it was cut and stitched.
If you’re dependent on the clothing’s production location to determine the impact on the environment, There is “a lot of room for error,” Keh says. Keh.
Additionally, according to the United Nations’ Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, the assembly process is responsible for around 9 percent of the garment’s greenhouse gas emissions, whereas the production of fabric accounts for about 31 percent.
As per the vice president for the Higg Index, Jeremy Lardeau, the main environmental impact of clothing are the ones that occur before the final assembly, “namely creating the raw materials (farming cotton or extracting crude oil for synthetics), material processing (fibre spinning, textile dyeing and finishing) and the consumer use phase (washing and drying).”
However, the type of garment could provide more details
With a little experience, the style of clothing you wear can reveal the efficiency with which it was constructed.
For knitted objects, for instance, Keh says, “you have to process the yarn close to the point of final assembly.” This means the final destination for manufacturing offers an indication of the source of the yarn.
This is not the case with knitwear, such as suits or shirts. “They might just come from some tailor shop in country A, which is getting materials from country B, which are grown in country C,” the man says.
Keh also mentions high-performance sportswear that can be difficult to create and, consequently, more labor-intensive to develop – however, it could be more energy efficient in its manufacturing process.
He claims that China has “just faster and better” in the production of these items due to the fact that the manufacturing industry in China can make sporting apparel at a mass scale. “The entire supply chain from the growing of cotton to the processing of materials, to the assembly is so efficient [and] they have leveraged the scale to use water efficiently, process wastewater more efficiently and reduce energy consumption.”
In the same way, he explains that even though France and Italy make some of the more gorgeous products in the world, “if you try to make a high-performance sports products in those countries, it just wouldn’t be that good.”
What are the countries that have green energy?
Some countries have made the transition into renewable energies at quicker rates than others, including Costa Rica, Sweden, Iceland, and Uruguay, as well as nations like Germany, Italy, Japan, and Sweden, which are hubs of innovation for modern eco-friendly technology. Don’t believe that clothes manufactured exclusively in these nations are less carbon-based. footprint.
Lardeau states: “There are manufacturers in countries with a large fossil fuel-based electric grid which are using on-site rooftop solar for their production processes. Many even export excess solar energy back to the grid.
“The reality is that the environmental impact is determined by specific factory-level practices and product design features,” claims Lardeau. “This is why supply chain traceability and whole product life-cycle assessments are so important.”
Is it better to buy locally?
It’s tempting to choose local-made products, hoping they’ll have fewer air miles and consequently less carbon footprint. However, this isn’t always the situation.
“The challenge with the apparel industry is that it operates in probably the most globalised supply chain of any industry in the world,” Keh says. Keh. “We grow things somewhere, make things somewhere and consume things somewhere [else].”
For instance, despite producing most of the world’s clothing, wool Australia is a bit sluggish in its capability to convert fleece into finished products. About 80% of fibers harvested in Australia are sent abroad – primarily to China as well as Italy and India for washing and then processing. Therefore, a sweater created in Australia made from Australian wool is likely to have traveled at least twice over oceans like the Pacific Ocean.
However, there are some environmental reasons to shop locally because your purchase helps local farmers, business owners, and other sectors that are part of Australian manufacturing.
What are the rights of workers?
Because the last stage of assembly involves a substantial quantity of work and time, this “made in” label might provide some insight into the amount (or how badly) the workers on the garment could have been compensated.
Lardeau says: “There are countries and regions that have a higher risk for human rights abuses … however, ultimately, the impact on workers is based on the individual management of factories and is not dependent on a specific country’s environment.
“Even supposedly ‘safer’ countries from human rights violations, like the US, have been shown, even very recently, to harbour human rights violations.”
Become supply-chain literate
To get an accurate understanding of the impact of a clothing item on the environment, customers require precise and accurate information regarding the chain of production – and many of the players within the industry haven’t yet figured out how to present this to consumers.
“While there are plenty of readily available measures that consumers can look for to give an indication of a garment’s impact, few get to the level of specificity that we believe is necessary,” Lardeau says. Lardeau.
“Consumers investing in their own education and literacy in regard to sustainability in fashion is one of the most important steps that they can take.”
Resources such as Good on You and Eco-Cult aren’t ideal. Still, they’re an excellent place to begin, and podcasts such as Wardrobe Crisis or The Green Dream are engaging methods to discuss issues of style and sustainable development.