Imagine this. You are just hanging out around the water cooler at work and are approached by a co-worker to choose whether natural materials or synthetic materials are better for sustainability reasons. Which makes me think... How do these compare? Which is better for the environment? Over the year the fashion industry has become so competitive with the use of different materials. The amount of water used to produce cotton is incredible, it is a lot more than the amount it takes to produce polyester. The article Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys said that these two combined are used for over 80% of textiles and this is where the focus should be.
The large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers used in order to speed up the growing process of cotton has made the output of cotton triple. Using these product to help speed the process is very harmful to the environment. So much water is used to help produce cotton, as much as 8,000 liters of water.
A lot of people are hesitant to switch to the alternative because of the demand for manual labor. Because so much water is used to producing cotton, I think that the solution to this problem should be to use low water use cotton. Polyester is the most popular synthetic fiber and uses hardly any water compared to cotton. This is such a huge positive compared to the alternative, cotton. Personally, I think that I will continue to use synthetics, but I will think about which natural fibers could be used instead of a environmentally harmful synthetic.
I fully agree that some synthetics are not as harmful as some of the natural materials, and I too will continue to wear them... But how do you know which synthetics and natural materials are the harmful ones? In the readings they compare and contrast cotton with polyester a lot because cotton requires more water and labor where polyester uses the most energy. How do you gauge which process is more harmful to the environment?
ReplyDeleteSuch a great question, I kind of addressed this on your blog that both are very misleading titles and that both are not very sustainable. I think it is hard to tell which more is harmful. I think that most people would think that the most harmful would be the one that used the most chemicals to hurt the environment. What is your opinion?
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