Stacey Dooley travels the world to uncover the hidden costs of the addiction to fast fashion. She sees for herself how toxic chemicals released by the garment industry pollute waterways that millions of people rely on. She witnesses the former Aral Sea, once one of the largest bodies of fresh water, now reduced almost entirely to dust.
First shown: 9pm 8 Oct 2018
I’m ashamed to admit I love having the latest fashion trends. Sometimes I don’t even enjoy shopping anymore, living in a city means I have my favourite shops such as Zara, French Connection, All Saints and Topshop on my door step. Going away for a weekend shopping trip is no longer the luxurious trip I use to look forwards to. I blame this on fast fashion and the amount of new trends per season, I often find my self in Zara once a week looking at new trends and new products available. This is a problem. Since studying textiles since the age of 15 where I picked it as a GCSE option to now, my second year studying fashion design I’ve always heard sustainability being mentioned. Its came to my attention how I’ve started to hear the word word more frequently within the past 5 years. It’s scary and its worrying.
I decided to research further into this, whilst making and designing, doing something I love, I don’t want to be killing something I need. For me, it was important I made the efforts to further educate myself.
BBC showed a documentary by Stacey Dooley who decided to investigate into the dirty secrets behind the production of all our clothing.
Stacey starts the documentary on the streets of Glasgow asking shoppers about their purchases questioning them about the amount of water they think has been used in the process of the textiles manufacturing behind the garment. A staggering amount of water is used and wasted within the manufacturing process, especially in cotton which completely surprised me. Every single person Stacey interview were shocked by the results, the results even reduced one woman to tears.
Aproximatley three years worth of drinking water for one t-shirt! That’s a lot of water which is 2,700 litres to be exact. The fashion industry is a massive consumer and polluter of our fresh water. And one of the biggest culprits is cotton. Despite only occupying 2.4% of the world’s cropland, cotton accounts for 24% of the world’s insecticide use and 11% of pesticides. Toxic chemicals washing into waterways and entering the ecosystems, is becoming a major source of pollution, especially in developing countries. Stacey mentioned many facts and statistics throughout the documentary which really hit me. She told us the garment industry is the second worst polluter in the world falling just under the coal and oil industry.
British journalist and writer Lucy Siegle who focuses on environmental issues agrees to do an interview with Stacey.
Lucy has been researching fashions growing environmental foot print for a few years.
“Garment apparel is one of the top 5 polluters in the world, its not sustainable and its on borrowed time” says Lucy. Because were producing 100 billion new garments from new fibres every year and the planet cant sustain that.Cotton is incredibly impeccable, it uses more water than any fibre, it also has a lot more pesticides than most fibres which damages the land and soil it grows on,
“Its one of the biggest environmental catastrophes we see today on the planet”.
During the documentary Stacey visits the Aral Sea.The Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth largest lake, home to 24 species of fish and surrounded by fishing communities, lush forests and wetlands. While the lake was salt water, the rivers that fed it were fresh water. In the 1950’s the Soviet Union began using the rivers to irrigate the surrounding agricultural area, a process that has been continued to this day by Uzbekistan’s brutal dictator Islam Karimov.
The exposure of the bottom of the lake has released salts and pesticides into the atmosphere poisoning both farm land and people alike. Carcinogenic dust is blown into villages causing throat cancers and respiratory diseases.
Cotton production has a massive impact on the climate and environment causing the
seabed to turn into sand and form land. The damage doesn’t stop there, the climate can no longer support the eco system resulting in drastic changes in the weather.
Above are satellite images taken between 1990 and 2010. Its heartbreaking that without any explanation the damage and change is visible. The first images shows the sea in 1990, this photograph is customarily used to see how much water has been lost. As the years progress the accelerating drop of the sea is evident. In 2000 the Aral Sea splits into North and South, not only has it lost most of its water, the fishing is also nearly gone.
As a result of the large sea loss the fishing industry was wiped out which ended 10,000 of jobs and caused problems with food and drinking supplies. The disappearing of the sea has also affected the health of the locals, people suffered, a lot of diseases, such as Tuberculosis, strokes, blood pressure and cancer because of the low quality of life.
From watching the documentary its clear to me one of the main reasons for this environmental catastrophe is fast fashion, not only the production system its self but the possessive obsession we have towards it. I’ve decided to look into fast fashion and consumerism to further develop my research and knowledge on sustainability.
