Are certain clothing brands and designer items wants or needs? After looking at the different categories of things that make up your carbon footprint, a big part of the total carbon emissions came from clothes and fashion-related items. After doing research I found that clothes and fashion take up 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (Wallen, 2022). This amount is catastrophic. Because clothes and extra accessories are not necessities it is important to find ways to cut down to help our planet. Some of the reasons why the footprint for fashion is so big is because of some of the textiles used, water, and unethical companies. Textiles are used to make clothing and other accessories. These textiles take up 79 billion cubic meters of water that were used for cotton growth and dying fabrics. Through this dying process, more than 15% of the world's wastewater comes from this type of fabric dying and other clothing production. Another way that carbon is emitted into the air through fashion is through fast fashion. Fast fashion is brands that mass produce trends and popular clothes in unethical ways and sell them at a cheap price to encourage people to buy more. This causes the consumption of clothes to be bigger since the price is lower causing people to not feel like they spent a lot of money and a large amount of clothing. These fast fashion brands are bad for the environment because they use cheaper textiles which take up many thousands of liters of water. These cheap materials cause the quality to go down causing people to throw it away faster and end up consuming more because of the limited amount of wear. After looking at these statistics I have realized that clothing and accessories are less of necessities and more of things people want. There are many ways to cut down on clothing consumption and more ethically make clothes. Some ways that we can do this is by selling clothes, donating, or giving them to friends and family. This could be beneficial because one can take clothes they no longer wear or like and give them to someone in need. Another way people can cut down on the amount of clothing consumption is through thrifting. Thrifting is buying second-hand clothing or lightly worn clothes. This recycles clothes for people in need or people to want new clothes without buying them brand new. In conclusion, it is important to take action on ways to limit our clothing consumption and help reduce water to save our planet.

https://acespace.org/2022/06/17/fast-fashion-101/