Wool Meets Fast Fashion
As environmental crises penetrate more global communities, concerned citizens are looking for ways to act responsibly. Despite all the good that comes from embracing LED lightbulbs and rejecting single use plastic bags, a main offender still lurks in our closets. The fashion industry remains among the most polluting industries in the world [1]. Although I could go off about the environmentally and socially destructive practices inherent in the global manufacturing of clothing [2] and I could also wax poetic about the unique qualities of renewable fibers, that’s not why I’m here (I do hope, however, that you explore these topics through other sources, including LocalFiber!). Instead, in this series I am shining a light on one particularly destructive behavior in the fashion industry: the marketing of synthetic fibers in clothing. I hope to make it fully clear that by combining educational outreach with a sustainable marketing campaign, wool producers, clothing manufacturers and retailers, and citizen-consumers can work together to expedite a culture shift away from synthetic fibers and towards a better alternative for people and planet.
The Breakdown: Plastic Clothes
The most common materials used in today’s fashion industry are markedly unsustainable and must change if the industry expects to remain profitable. Plastic-based synthetic fibers—polyester, nylon, acrylic, elastane, and rayon—initially made our current “fast fashion” system possible, since unlike natural fibers, synthetics are not beholden to a growing season or a life cycle and can be produced to specifications on a tighter deadline.
This efficiency, however, comes with grave environmental costs that are not reflected on the price tag at the point of sale. Synthetic clothing sheds over 500 000 metric tons of microfiber into the world’s oceans annually [1]. Washed into the environment at every laundering, these easily-ingested plastic particles accumulate up the food chain, all the way to the top [3]. (Seriously, humans are pooping plastic [4].) An additional 22 million metric tons of microfiber pollution is predicted to be added by 2050, meaning more plastic than fish by weight will exist in the oceans if the status quo persists [1]!
If the $1.3 trillion global fashion industry [1] is to remain profitable, it must act quickly to secure biodegradable and renewable raw materials to prevent further destruction.
Marketing Matters
Microfiber pollution is a relatively new problem, of course; its roots lie in the symbiotic relationship between plastics and advertising in the 20th century. By Word War II, the fashion industry discovered it could increase profits by marketing the obsolescence of last season’s clothes (i.e. convincing people to wear the ‘latest trends’ down to the minute), and soon the common practice of mending and upcycling clothing within the home nearly faded to oblivion [2]. Supported by a growing oil-based economy and a new demand for low-priced easy-care trends [3], by the end of the 20th century polyester had quickly displaced cotton as the dominant textile fiber, accounting for 55% of all fiber production compared to second-place cotton at 27% [1].
The marketing of synthetics directly to consumers has been profitable for decades. In the mid-20th century, spokesmen for American sheep farmers forewarned “this ancient and honorable occupation in the United States is doomed to extinction unless the government comes to their aid,” as the increased demand for synthetic fibers was crushing the demand for wool [5, p. 185]. At the same time, however, the Australian wool industry seemed to be thriving, and the contrast was attributed in part to great marketing [5]. Australians expressed the value of their high-quality wool in a way that Americans didn’t, and the difference in consumer education was thought to be a major stumbling block for American wool.
Tragically, global wool industries were only temporarily immune from the effects of fast fashion. In addition to positing that wool might become “as redundant as the draught horse” in competition with synthetics, in 1970 Vines & Vines wondered if “wool producers, at the price the world is willing or can be persuaded to pay for their product, will be able so to increase their revenues and/or contain their costs as to be able to remain in business” [6, p. 21]. At the end of the last century, the answer to that query could be interpreted as a resounding “no;” the tragic reality is that wool now accounts for less than 2% of global fiber feedstock [1].
While all of this is a massive downer, there’s no time to despair. Yes, our vibrant wool industry has been wounded, but sheep, shepherds, and mills are still here and working hard; we need to increase the demand for wool in fashion or risk losing even more wool industry infrastructure. Luckily, we have a clear path, which harnesses the potency of marketing. Tune in next week for how to save the planet through wool!
[1] | Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future,” http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/publications, 2017. |
[2] | L. Claudio, “Waste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry,” Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 115, No. 9, pp. A448-A454, 2007. |
[3] | A. Brooks, K. Fletcher, R. A. Francis, E. D. Rigby and T. Roberts, “Fashion, Sustainability, and the Anthropocene,” Utopian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 482-504, 2017. |
[4] | L. Parker, “In a first, microplastics found in human poop,” National Geographic, 22 Oct. 2018. |
[5] | R. V. McNally, “The American Wool Problem,” The American Journal of Economics and Sociolgy, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 185-203, 1948. |
[6] | A. W. Vines and W. J. Vines, “A Future for Wool,” The Australian Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 19-32, 1970. |
Anna
Anna is a knitter extraordinaire who lives in Mecklenburg NY, who prefers using wool and other natural animal fibers in her work. Inspired by her love of textiles she is now looking forward to pursuing a Graduate degree in Museum Studies starting the fall of 2019.
