Clothing waste: how is it Affecting our planet?

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Waste is produced in all levels of organization and industries. it's not possible for an organization or industry to run without producing waste.

Apparel industry is a huge consumer of resources and produce waste in a tremendous amount. here's 10 facts on Apparel industry and it's impact on our planet.


1. Need of high resource intensity for production of clothes makes it a prime source for      environmental degradation in clothing life cycle.it affects environment heavily, due to it's voluminous use of water, energy and chemicals.

 2. According to UN projections for 2050 we will require 3 planets to provide natural resource to support current lifestyle with estimated population of 9.6 million people.

3. Huge amount of clothing wastes are land-filled every year. in which, 45% of waste can be used as secondhand clothing, 30% can be cut into pieces and used as industrial rags and 20% can be degraded after land-filling. only 5% of clothing wastes are useless.

4. In developed countries like UK and US nearly 40% to 60% of textile and apparel waste end up in land-fills and in south Africa 62.1% of apparel waste end up in land fills.

5.Large amounts of production and post consumer fiber waste have been amassed with the growth of the world’s population and rising living standards. It is predicted that global fiber consumption will reach 110 million tonnes in the year 2020.

6. In USA 10.5 million tons of  post consumer waste is produced every year while in UK, it's 350,000 tons per year and in turkey 287,000 tons per year that go to landfills.

7. According to UN(2015) data CO2 emission has been increased almost by 50% since 1990 and affected oceans by 40% due to waste pollution, it has caused reduction in fishing and loss of coastal habitats.

CO2 emisson of fashion industry are projected to be increased by more than 60% (nearly 2.8 billion ton per year) by 2030 which is equal to nearly 230 million passenger vehicles driven for a year, assuming the average pattern.

8. A world bank predicted that there would be a global increase of  70% in municipal solid waste by 2025, estimated to be between 1.3 billion ton per year to 2.2 billion per year. more over, solid waste of developing countries are predicted to be more than double.

9. the volume of freshwater consumed by fashion industry is estimated to be around 79 million cubic meter, which is enough to fill nearly 32 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. it is predicted to be increased by 50% in 2030.

10. it is considered that it requires 2720 liters and 10,850 liters of water to produce one T-shirt and one pair of cotton jeans, respectively.

Around 1.2 billion pair of jeans are produce every year.


 Referred articles and papers:

Ipek Yalcin-Enis, Merve Kucukali-Ozturk, and Hande Sezgin, January 2019, Researchgate, “Risks and Management of Textile Waste: The Impact of Embedded Multinational Enterprises”

 John Kerr, John Landry, 2017, Global Fashion Agenda & The Boston Consulting Group, “Pulse of fashion industry.”

Statisticbrain.com (2016), Denim Jeans Industry Statistics; Levi Strauss & Co. (2015), The Life Cycle of a Jean (Redress uses the figures from the LEVI’s report and Statisticbrain.com, multiplied 1.2 billion pair of jeans by 2912 liters of water) 

WRAP (2017), Valuing Our Clothes: The Cost of UK Fashion 

 K.L.A.K.T. Liyanage and Nayanthara De Silva ,December 2019, Research gate, “ZERO LANDFILL FRAMEWORK FOR APPAREL INDUSTRY SOLID WASTE”





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