Best International Clothing Brands for Climate

 Clothing is more than just the outfit we put on our backs - it helps us to keep warm, makes a presentation about our personality and can be a status indication. Clothing is something we have to think about daily, but we don’t always think about how our clothes impact this environment. From growing or manufacturing textiles, to sewing and transporting outfits across the world, the clothing industry overall releases more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide each year – contributing around 5.5% of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s about as much as roughly all of Russia’s emissions or aviation industry. That’s awful - but there are many ways to be fashionable and environment friendly at the same time. The ways we make clothes and how quickly we throw them away end up having a huge impact on our environment. Take, synthetic materials, for example, Polyester – the most commonly used clothing fabric – is made by combining alcohol with petroleum by-products and acid at high temperatures. Basically, heating some fossil fuels with some more fossil fuels. In 2015, polyester produces as many greenhouse gases as 185 coal-fired power plants. But other materials also have a huge impact on the environment. Leather production means methane emissions from cows. Rayon production means cutting down trees. And, growing cotton uses a lot of water. We also burn a lot of fossil fuels transporting clothes around the world, from where they’re netted to where they’re dyed to where they’re stitched together to the person who finally wears them. Or sometimes, doesn’t wear them. In the US, 65 pounds of clothes per person get to throw in a landfill each year, and a mess of that happens before anyone buys them. So, what can be done to make fashion more eco-friendly? So, the goal is to make clothes that are fashionable and sustainable, ethical labor aspect is important, too and environmentally friendly shipping is important, too. There are so many aspects. It's not just, like, getting organic cotton, it's also giving profit the person right, saving on labor, not throwing away the rest of the stock and so on and so on. Ethical and sustainable clothing is not new. For most of human history has a wardrobe full of clothing wasn’t really a thing. Before the 18th century, textiles were woven, cut, and stitched by hand - an incredibly lazy and expensive process. Clothes were the main purchase, and people didn’t purchase that many of them. Even well into the twentieth century, long after we invented machinery that could stitch and weave fabrics, the average person was still spending between 12 and 16 percent of their yearly budget on clothing. But today we spend just 4.5 percent. So, why would we start spending much less on our clothes? In the 1960s clothing started costing lesser thanks to more advanced manufacturing technologies and synthetic fabrics. Also, around this time, expanding clothing production to countries and regions with lower labor costs became most popular. Since then, clothes have just kept getting cheaper day by day. You can buy a pair of jeans from H&M for 10 to 15 dollars only. 10 to 15 Dollars! I’ve had juice more expensive than that. And all these inexpensive clothes have led to us making and buying more and more clothes than ever before. In 2014 we made more than 100 billion new clothes which are sufficient to give every single person on the planet 15 new pieces of clothing. Today, we’re purchasing, on average 60 percent more fabrics than we did 20 years ago, but we're only wearing it for half as long. As a consumer, if you decide to buy from a fast fashion brand, an inexpensive garment, it seems like a great deal. But, two reasons 1 - It won't look good for long and 2 - The person who made it, somewhere far away overseas is not getting paid or treated well. So, you can change that by consciously determining to buy style instead of trends. And by only choosing items that go with what you already have in your wardrobe. It's the idea of a capsule wardrobe. You buy fewer items, but they're more combinable and so you get more wear out of each fabric. So, it's about to compute quality before quantity. So, what we need is more options - more brands that are in between that environmental hippy side and that mass-market super inexpensive production side. Because the demand is there. 

Let’s take the example of some brands: Ecoalf, a Spanish company that makes swimming trunks from recycled fishing webs, bags from coffee grounds and flip flops from old tires. Yes, they’re a smaller business than the Zaras and Forever 21s of the world, but they’re making their tag on the fashion industry by association with big players. And zealously, many brands have also gotten on board this sustainability train.

Knitted sneakers like the Adidas Ultraboost and Nike Flynitare lighter and use fewer materials than the average sneaker - a lighter shoe is easier and cheaper to transport, requiring fewer fossil fuels to form. And fewer materials in the production process means less waste use. Plus, the point is much of Nike’s Flyknit sneakers is made of recycled plastic rather than directly from petroleum. Of course, looking great and what’s fashionable is all relative but it doesn't have to mean cycling through dozens of materials every season. It also doesn't mean wearing a vegetable sack. 

sustainable brands

There are lots of sustainable and stylish options out there. If you purchase clothes that are sustainable or high quality, it's not necessarily more expensive. It's a question of choice and of the option you got. So far, sustainable fabrics tend to be a bit rougher, they're - not feel as good on the skin, or you just have fewer colors. It's not as resistant when you wash it. So, there is a drawback to it. So, the question is - how much good feeling you want, how much sustainability do you want? Exquisitely you are somewhere in the middle. Ideally, you want both. None of these solutions are perfect. The sustainable fabric still has some impact on the planet, and a lot of it is really expensive. But now trends are moving in the right direction. The thing is, people are more aware of what's going on in the fashion industry and they are more informed to make better buying decisions. So, the thing is, changing. It's evolving - slowly but surely. And the demand for ethical and sustainable clothing is growing and there is space for many more labels. It's really inspiring stuff! And as more and more people and brands start considering how clothes are made, the more fashionable this whole idea will become.