[Soup] How much clothes do you buy at 'Fast Fashion'?

Hello dear readers.

The weather suddenly became mild like early spring.

It's January, the middle of winter, but it's been so long since it's been so warm...

Could this be the effect of climate change?

It is said that even in Europe, there is no snow at the ski resort due to the abnormal climate.

It's not that the seasons have changed, but the weather is getting better, so for some reason, I feel like I want to buy new clothes.

As you can see from the cover, this week's Mabu News has prepared a special feature of <Butterfly Effect>.

In case there are readers who are new to the <Butterfly Effect> special feature, I will briefly introduce it.

In the <Butterfly Effect> special feature, I will try to kindly explain to the readers how the items I have chosen affect the environment and what kind of typhoon a small flap of consumption can cause in a distant place with data.

It was the 5th before I knew it.

Today, we are going to take a look at the butterfly effect of fashion, what kind of typhoon the flapping of the clothes we buy and wear can cause on our planet.

So today, the question Mabu News throws to you readers is this.

You can buy it quickly, diversely and cheaply

Readers, where do you go to buy new clothes?

Usually, I would like to use SPA brands such as Musinsa, Topten, and ZARA.

Another word for a SPA brand, fast fashion.

Perhaps you, the readers, have heard of the term fast fashion.

Just like fast food that you can eat right after ordering, fast fashion refers to the fashion industry that reflects the latest trending designs and items right away, and even produces and distributes them.

Since it is a system that creates clothes of various designs and rotates them quickly, it is advantageous for consumers to be able to purchase a variety of trendy clothes at low prices.

Fast fashion companies such as H&M and ZARA are producing new products within three weeks at the longest and two weeks at the shortest.

However, there are brands that go beyond fast fashion and aim for 'ultra' fast fashion.

Have you, readers, ever heard of the brand SHEIN?

SHEIN reduced the existing 2-week cycle of fast fashion to 5 days (!).

Thanks to the overwhelming supply offensive, SHEIN's sales exploded during the corona pandemic.

Thanks to that, in June 2021, it has risen to the world's largest fast fashion company by beating zara and h & m.

SHEIN was the most downloaded fashion app in the US in 2021.

Beat Amazon.

Then, how much will SHEIN make new clothes?

Mabu News organized it myself.

The period was one week from January 3rd to January 9th.

After analyzing how many new products are uploaded on the SHEIN homepage in Korea, what is the result?

do not be surprised.

A whopping 38,025 new products were released by SHEIN in the past week.

At most, there were more than 7,000 in one day, and at least 3,500 new images were taken.

If 52 weeks are filled with this momentum, SHEIN will produce more than 1.97 million new products in one year.

It is synthetic fibers that make it possible to make such a huge amount of products.

Of course, one of the reasons SHEIN maintains the quantity is that it can utilize the whole of Guangzhou, China as a SHEIN manufacturing plant.

It is estimated that 30% of China's fashion production facilities are used to make SHEIN's products.

Anyway, synthetic fiber means fiber made using ingredients extracted from petroleum or coal.

Nylon, polyester and acrylic are typical.

When I first made synthetic fibers, it seemed like a new world had opened.

It required less water than cotton, and there was no longer any need to use the toxic pesticides used to grow cotton.

But the problem was that polyester fibers used a lot more fossil fuels in their manufacturing process.

A report from MIT in 2015 shows how much carbon is emitted in the production of polyester for fibers.

About 80% of polyester produced in 2015 was used for fibers.

A whopping 706 billion kg of greenhouse gases were emitted during the production of polyester for textiles!

This amount is equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of 185 coal-fired power plants, and equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of 149 million private cars.

Thanks to ultra-fast fashion companies like SHEIN, there are now far more synthetic fiber clothes coming out than there were 8 years ago...

Carbon emissions would have been even greater than that.

According to the United Nations, the global apparel industry accounts for about 10% of global emissions.

There are also reports that warn that if the fashion industry continues to roll as it is, it could increase to 26% by 2050.

Microfibers coming out of the washing machine

Another butterfly effect caused by the increasing number of clothes made of synthetic fibers appears in the washing process.

When you wash synthetic fiber clothes, microplastics come out.

Microplastics are very small pieces of plastic that are formed as plastic products break down.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the European Chemicals Agency see microplastics if the size is smaller than 5mm, but only smaller ones are considered microplastics according to the standard.

Synthetic fibers are plastics.

So even the tiny fibers that break off from the synthetic fibers are, of course, microplastics.

In particular, microplastics derived from synthetic fibers are referred to as microfibres.

Then, how many microfibres are produced in synthetic fibers?

Mabu News imported research data conducted in 2016 by a research team at the University of Plymouth in the UK.

The research team looked at how many microfibres came out with each cycle of the washing machine.

The standard is 6 kg of laundry.

For reference, since the average amount of laundry per household of 4 in Korea is about 7kg and the average amount of laundry per week in a single household is about 5kg, you will get a sense of how much 6kg is.

The amount of fine fibers produced when 6kg of acrylic clothes are washed is a whopping 728,789.

That's 5.3 times more than polyester and cotton blend fabrics and 1.5 times more than polyester.

Acrylic is a synthetic fiber that replaces wool, and is often used in blends with wool.

If you look at the label of warm and fluffy knitwear, you will find the name Acryl.

Of course, depending on the temperature of the water, the type of detergent, etc., the number of microfibers produced during the washing process can be affected.

You can think of the research team's figures above as calculating average predicted quantities based on 6 kg of laundry.

On a global scale, what is the scale of microfibers?

From 1950 to 2016, the cumulative microfibres from synthetic fibers around the world amount to a whopping 5.6 million tons.

In 1950, it was only about 122 tons, but in 2016, the size increased to 360 tons.

Of course, the more synthetic fibers are used, the more fine fibers will be produced.

By 2016, nearly half of the cumulative amount of microfibres had been made in the last 10 years.

Does not rot if buried, toxic gas if burned

It's easy to put clothes that you bought easily according to the trend into the closet after you wear them a few times.

Fast fashion is very sensitive to trends and the turnover rate is fast.

As fashion changes rapidly, it is often thrown away without being worn a few times.

In addition, because of the perception that clothes are relatively cheap, there is less burden on throwing away clothes.

As a result, clothing waste is increasing worldwide.

Of course, the same goes for our country.

Let's take a look at the status of waste clothing from Korea from 2007 to 2020.

As you can see from the graph below, is the scale increasing compared to the past?

In 2007 alone, about 122 tons of old clothes were produced every day.

Of course, this amount of more than 100 tons is considerable, but the amount of waste clothing has continued to increase since then.

In 2014, daily emissions exceeded 200 tons for the first time, and in 2020, it recorded an average of 225.8 tons per day, the highest ever.

On an annual basis, 82,423 tons of old clothes were produced in 2020 alone.

Among the discarded clothing waste, clothes that are resold as second-hand are around 10%.

Except for clothes that are partially buried or incinerated, the rest of the clothes are exported to developing countries.

As of 2019, Korea ranks 5th as an exporter of used clothes.

From the perspective of developing countries, it can be seen as an advantage because they can import clothes that are discarded in developed countries but can still be used more cheaply and distribute them to their own people.

The problem is that among the used clothes that have been imported, unsold clothes are just thrown away.

In effect, developing countries are serving as landfills for used clothes in developed countries.

Besides, synthetic fibers do not rot easily.

It takes 200 years for polyester fibers to completely decompose!

And if you incinerate it, additional treatment is needed because of the toxic fumes that come from burning the plastic.

If so, it would be nice to recycle, but even if you try to recycle, if synthetic fibers are mixed with natural fibers, you have to sort the materials one by one.

Even if you make it into yarn and try to recycle it, you have to remove the dye from the fiber one by one.

As a result, it is difficult to 'recycle' synthetic fiber resources as they are usually recycled to the extent of making new products such as bags or eco bags using old clothes.

It's not just the old clothes we wear and throw away, but also the remaining stock after the fashion companies sell them.

With fast fashion, if you print new clothes several times a month, inventory is bound to pile up.

In fact, looking at the year-end inventory trend of the domestic fashion industry, it increased from 4 trillion won in 2007 to 7.5335 trillion won in 2019.

Most of these remaining stocks are incinerated, and additional environmental pollution occurs in the process.

Are fashion companies changing?

Voices for a sustainable fashion industry are coming from everywhere.

As we have seen above, the fashion business is in a situation where the voice of awareness is loud because it damages the environment in all the processes of producing, consuming, washing, and discarding clothes.

So what are companies doing?

A lot of clothes are still being overproduced.

Readers, please scroll up for a moment and remember our country's clothing waste graph.

"In 2020, more than 220 tons of waste clothing come out every day."

However, there is data that has not been included here.

It's waste fiber waste.

Waste fibers are those that are discarded in factories during the process of producing clothes. Take a look at the graph below.

Huge, right?

There is no comparison with waste clothing.

The amount of waste fiber produced per day is 1,089.7 tons, which is close to five times the amount of clothing in the lungs.

If you look at it on a yearly basis, more than 390,000 tons of waste is generated from waste fibers alone.

Of course, the notoriety of overseas multinational companies is higher.

That's why we are urging fashion companies to wake up all over the world.

One of the results is the promise of the 'Fashion Industry Charter for Responding to Climate Change' in the UN Climate Convention.

Global fashion brands we know well are putting their names on the charter.

A total of 110 companies, including Nike, Kering, Levi's, ZARA, H&M, and others, have pledged to work towards a sustainable fashion industry.

Companies that have signed the charter are aiming to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050.

As an interim goal, I said I would reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2030...

It's still a long way to go.

An environmental organization called STAND.earth has verified 10 companies with high sales worldwide, and only Levi's has shown a trend of reducing emissions

.

In the EU and the US, fashion companies, especially fast fashion companies, came out with a club.

The EU announced a policy to regulate fast fashion in March last year.

The European Commission, which initiates the legislation of the EU community, has proposed a regulation that mandates the use of a certain percentage of recycled fibers by 2030 and prohibits the disposal of unsold inventory.

Textiles that emit microplastics are also subject to strict regulations, such as limiting their use.

In France, from 2025, all new washing machines are required to install a fine fiber filter net.

The US is on a similar trend.

The US state of New York is promoting a bill that requires fashion companies with annual sales of more than $100 million to disclose greenhouse gas emissions from all production processes.

Rather than simply regulating direct and indirect carbon emissions at the production stage, it aims to analyze how fashion companies affect society throughout the entire process, including shipping.

what can we do?

We buy more clothes than we wear, and companies make more clothes than they sell.

It's unfortunate, but it's a reality.

As the impact of the fashion industry on the environment is more serious than we thought, change is necessary.

In order to create a sustainable fashion market, the first thing that needs to change is the company.

Changes in the government that make changes in the system so that companies can move like that must also follow.

The pace of change in Korea is slow compared to developed countries.

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