Product Manufacturing

Have you ever thought about where the mobile phone you are using comes from? Where will it go after it is broken? A mobile phone weighing more than 200 grams was originally made with two kilograms of raw materials, which means that 90% of the materials were thrown away. Old mobile phones are usually discarded or put in a drawer to take up space when not in use. Therefore, based on the example of mobile phones, we only focus on enjoying daily necessities without caring about what to do with these daily necessities after they are not used. The following is the example of the daily necessity – the clothes we wear every day, which enables everyone know the waste of resources and pollution caused by manufacturing:

The pathways of microfibers into the ocean and their toxicity.

Water consumption, electricity consumption, and carbon emissions are even more shocking

Almost everyone has several T-shirts, but only a few people know how much water it takes to make a cotton T-shirt, from planting cotton, weaving, dyeing, and finishing to production. The answer is 2720 liters. Assuming that each person drinks 2.5 liters of water a day, such an amount of water is sufficient for a person to drink for 3 years. According to the 2017 Copenhagen Fashion Summit report, the fashion industry consumed nearly 80 billion m3 of water in 2015, which is 38.46 times the effective total capacity (about 2 billion m3) of 94 reservoirs in Taiwan (including those on outlying islands). Moreover, it also produced nearly 1 million tons of carbon dioxide and 92 million tons of wastes. If the production, transportation, consumption, washing, drying, dry cleaning and other processes are also included, the annual carbon emission of the fashion industry is even more astonishing, producing approximately 850 million tons of carbon dioxide, accounting for 3% of the total global emissions.

The water consumed for making a T-shirt is enough for you to drink three years.

A lot of electricity is consumed in the garment-making process too.

Dye wastewater contains 72 toxic chemicals

According to a research paper published in Natural Science by Professor Rita Kant at Panjab university Institute of Fashion Technology, 17 to 20% of the global industrial wastewater pollution comes from the textile dyeing and finishing industry, and the dyeing and finishing wastewater contains about 72 toxic chemicals, of which 30% species cannot be removed. Professor Kant further stated that, currently, there are more than 3600 dyes in the textile industry, and more than 8000 chemicals are used in the process of dyeing and printing fabrics. Textile wastewater is one of the causes of environmental degradation and human disease, and approximately 40% of colorants contain known carcinogens. As a matter of fact, over the past 60 years, the materials of clothes have undergone tremendous changes. In 1951, DuPont in the U.S. produced the world’s first Polyester suit. Polyester is a plastic extracted from crude oil and can also be used to make PET bottles.

Manufacturers dump a lot of dye waste directly into the river.

In recent years, FREE has significantly increased the proportion of naturally dyed clothing using plants as dyeing raw materials.

The carbon emission of polyester is 3 times that of cotton

Since then, polyester has gradually replaced cotton as the most commonly used fiber, and fashion brands have continued to rely on polyester. Between 2000 and 2016, the use of polyester fibers in the global garment industry increased from 8.3 million tons to 21.3 million tons, with an increase of 1.57 times. Polyester-based synthetic fibers account for more than 60% of garments. Currently, polyester is ubiquitous, and more and more clothes are made of plastic, which creates even heavier environmental burden. In 2015, polyester fibers used in clothing produced 28.2 billion kg of carbon, which was almost three times the carbon emissions of cotton, 98 billion kg.

Some of the materials used in clothing, such as polyester or nylon, are products derived from the petroleum and fossil industries.

The garment industry is the second most polluting industry in the world, after the oil industry.

Microfibers are polluting rivers and harming marine ecology

In 2016, the international journal Scientific Reports first published scientific evidence that deep-sea animals ingested microplastics and discovered that microplastics within 5 mm in length exist in the deep ocean thousands of kilometers away from land. The researchers further analyzed these microplastic components and found that they all came from the fibers that fell from the washing of synthetic fibers, including polyester fibers, nylon, and acrylic fibers. While we are doing laundry, tens of thousands of microplastics have entered the sewers along with sewage. Some have accumulated on the beach, some have flowed into the sea to become food of plankton, fish and marine mammals. As the food chain continues, microplastics eventually are very likely to appear on the human dining table. Unfortunately, most people do not know that while washing their clothes, they have created pollution to the environment.

The "brushed" clothing that is advertised as comfortable and pleasant to the touch is loaded with microfibers that cannot be treated by existing sewage treatment plants.

Microfibers can be found in both fresh and sea water.

References:

CommonWealth Magazine https://www.cw.com.tw/article/5068927

Global Views Monthly https://www.gvm.com.tw/article/41730

Image Source:

vision magazine
https://www.gvm.com.tw/article/41730

https://www.gvm.com.tw/article/41731

https://www.gvm.com.tw/article/36959

Environmental Information Center

https://e-info.org.tw/node/217783

https://e-info.org.tw/node/116560

Material World Networkhttps://www.materialsnet.com.tw/DocView.aspx?id=47298

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