Sustainable Textiles for Fashion

Article in a special issue of the Journal of Physics.

The fashion/textiles industry presents enormous challenges in reducing energy consumption. Impacts from every stage of the garment’s lifecycle need to be considered—extraction, production, use and disposal—and these vary according to fibre type, textile/garment finishing and construction, retail/use contexts, and end-of-life options.

The sector has grown exponentially in the last few years and is predicted to continue to grow:
In 2019, global fibre production was around 111 million tonnes. Fibre production has more than doubled in the last 20 years and is expected to increase by another 30% to 146 million tonnes in 2030 if business as usual continues [301, p 6].

The volumes of fashion/textiles create multiple environmental impacts: waste—through overproduction, over consumption, and inefficient processes—as well as resource depletion, water usage, chemical pollution, exploitative labour practices, deforestation, endangered species, animal suffering and habitat destruction. The current linear system within the textiles industry is highly reliant on non-renewable materials and energy [301, p 4].

Clothing consumption around the world is equivalent to 62 million tons, being responsible for the annual consumption of 79 billion cubic metres of water and the emission of 1715 million of CO2 tons emitted [302, p 8]. Emissions are greatest in the fibre to yarn manufacturing stage [303, p 58]. Assessing fibre impacts is difficult as key factors—boundaries, assumptions and in particular geographical locations—can vary hugely. There is no one study that deals with the quantification of energy needs of different textile fibres. If such a study were available, then it would be possible to compare various fibres in terms of their energy needs [304, p 86].

Conventional cotton and virgin polyester are the two most commonly used materials within textiles industry today and account for around 75% of the global fibre production [301, p 6, 303, p 13]. Conventional cotton uses 60 MJ kg−1 of fibre to produce; organic cotton, 54 MJ kg−1. Polyester uses 125 MJ kg−1 [304, p 86]. If you include the other synthetics—nylon 66 (138 MJ kg−1), acrylic (175 MJ kg−1), etc—then together with cotton and polyester, this totals 89% of the market. These synthetic fibres are made from oil, using an estimated 342 million barrels every year [305, p 38]