At this month’s FashionSustain conference, fashion designers talked about how to make clothing more sustainable.
At the end of a garment’s life, if it is still in good condition, it can be given to a charity shop, but if it is in a bad condition, people usually throw their old clothes away. Speaking at FashionSustain, Alexander Nolte of STOP! MicroWaste talked about how clothes can be disassembled and their materials recycled.
Sometimes clothes are thrown away simply because of a small tear or a button falling off. This has led to some fashion manufacturers offering a service for their customers to return clothes for repair.
It was suggested at the conference that more garment manufacturers should take responsibility for their clothing after the sale of an item to a customer. There are logical issues in creating projects to deal with the returned end of life clothes. There have to be systems to sort clothes into those that can be repaired and those suitable only for recycling. Room for heavy duty garment rails to hold the returned clothes needs to be allocated in the warehouse or a separate building used for returned goods.
There has been a lot of talk about sustainability in fashion. Orsola de Castro of Esthetical/Fashion Revolution says:
“It’s not any longer about the conversation. We’ve had the conversation. We really need to move to action.”
She said that tackling fashion sustainability is the joint responsibility of the garment industry and governments.
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