Extending the active life of a garment
To reduce the climate impact of Swedish clothing consumption sweeping changes to international systems are unavoidably needed, but there is also significant potential for changed user behaviour at the national level to reduce the climate impact. The figure below shows the climate gains in Sweden of combining measures in both the production and user phases, according to the recently published Mistra Future Fashion report Environmental assessment of Swedish clothing consumption: Six garments – sustainable futures.1 The results show that using garments twice as many times in their original form cuts the climate impact by almost 50 percent. This reduction is mainly due fewer new garments needing to be produced. If consumers also walk or ride a bike to the store, climate impact is reduced by a further 11 percent. In addition to changed consumer behaviour, a change in the type of energy used is also needed. In the diagram below solar energy and the best available production technology are used. Individual consumers may not be able to directly impact the choice of energy used in factories, but everyone can make more use of the garments they already have. Extending the active life of a garment is therefore an important and easy step towards more sustainable clothing consumption. Extending the active life of a garment also means reusing the garment in its original form, i.e. the garment’s intended use when it was designed. Reusing a garment in its existing condition also provides greater climate gains compared to fabric recycling because the recycling process requires the resources to go through the energy-intensive production chain again. According to the EU waste hierarchy, items should always be reused before they go to material recycling and energy recovery (see Figure 2). The fabric in a garment should only be recycled – through a chemical or mechanical recycling process – and used for other prod-
Figure 1: Climate gains from combining interventions to reduce impact, based on Swedish clothing consumption. Source: Sandin et al., 2019.
Current situation
2 x length of life
–49%
2 x length of life + solar powered
–67%
2 x length of life + solar powered production + consumers go to stores
–78%
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
Carbon footprint (1000 tonnes CO2-e)
ucts once the garment can no longer be used in its original form. It is important to point out that the “Minimise/prevent” step is at the top of the hierarchy. According to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency Swedes consume almost 14 kg of textiles per person per year, of which 10 kg consists or clothes. Personal importation, e.g. via online shopping, is not included in these figures and we can therefore assume that actual clothing consumption is somewhat higher. Meanwhile, Swedes throw away an average of 7.5 kg of textiles per person per year into unsorted household waste which goes to incineration.2 Random sample analysis carried out at the request of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency shows, however, that more than half of this – around 60 percent – is in satisfactory condition and could be used further in its existing
1
Sandin, G., Roos, S., Spak, B., Zamani, B. and Peters, G., 2019, Environmental assessment of Swedish clothing consumption: Six garments – sustainable futures (http://mistrafuturefashion.com/ wp-content/uploads/2019/08/G.Sandin-Environmental-assessment-of-Swedish-clothing-consumption. MistraFutureFashionReport-2019.05.pdf; accessed 10 March 2020).
2
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2019, Fakta om Textilavfall (http://www.naturvardsverket.se/Sa-mar-miljon/ Mark/Avfall/Textilavfall/; accessed 12 March 2020).
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