By Paul Hamilton, technical director, Regenex
Earlier this month on the blog we talked about the environmental devastation of the Aral Sea – the world’s third largest lake that dried up after its water supply was diverted to cotton fields in leaky and wasteful canals for decades.
This sparked a lot of conversation among my business contacts – most of whom were well versed to what happened to this body of water between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
So I thought we’d shine the spotlight on another one of the world’s most devastating effects of fast fashion and overconsumption of linen in other sectors including hospitality.
That might seem very gloomy but it’s good to be reminded just why we try to hard to change bad habits and do right by the world’s resources. Every little bit of effort really helps.
I’ve seen and read about the textile waste problem in Ghana before but Abbie Morris, co-founder and CEO of Compare Ethics on LinkedIn, brought it into stark focus in my news feed recently.
(She absolutely knows her stuff – give her a follow if you are interested in textile and other retail waste. She will make you feel motivated to move towards circularity in your business and provide you with all sorts of good advice and insight on why you should just go for it.)
Mounds of unwanted, low-quality clothing dumped on shorelines, in rivers and on waste ground have been described as a public health disaster by Greenpeace. Take a look at this news report…
The situation in Accra comes about via imported bales of second-hand clothing that traders buy to sell on at a big local market.
Yet when they open the bale after wholesale purchase, to reveal its contents, they find a lot of the 15 million items that arrive every week are too poor to sell, and simply dump them – or they are burned for heating in a very un-environmental and air polluting practice.
As Abbie points out, this is why the advent of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is so important, as a way to get producers to take responsibility for their products, be they clothes, bedsheets, towels or tableware — even after they’ve been sold and used, by charging them for waste.
It is hoped this approach across the European Union, spreading to the UK, will dramatically reduce waste and hold companies accountable for the environmental impact of their goods.
It’s up to EU member states to apply EPR in a way that makes the best sense to them. In France, brands must recycle or give away unsold items. In Sweden manufacturers will need to collect and recycle used garments.
Other new legislative measures to make textile production and usage more sustainable are under way across the world and looking at the beaches of Acca it’s clear why we need them.