Impact of Fashion

Water
We all know that the world is facing extreme freshwater scarcity - in fact over a billion people don’t have access to safe water.(1) Fashion is the second largest consumer and polluter of water due to the processing of raw materials, the amount of water used to manufacture clothes, and the microfibers that synthetics shed.(2)

Consumption
Manufacturing textiles is very water intensive. Processes like cultivating crops, extracting and cleaning fibers, spinning them into yarn and weaving yarn into textiles all require water. When reporting water savings in the production of our garments, we use data that evaluates blue water consumption and water scarcity.

Blue water consumption measures water consumed during the production process, including water that is incorporated into the product or evaporated as part of the production process. This includes net water use (water input minus water output) and does not include green water (rain water) or gray water (household wastewater, minus toilet water).

Water scarcity measures the potential of water deprivation, considering both water consumption and scarcity/region.(3)

Pollution
After the water is used in the manufacturing process, this often-polluted water is then sent back to our rivers, lakes and oceans. The World Bank estimates almost 20% of global industrial water pollution comes from the treatment and dyeing of textiles.(4)

Plastic pollution
Synthetic clothes are made with plastic and when you wash synthetics they shed small plastic pieces called microfibers. Microfibers are too small to be filtered out by waste treatment plants, so they end up in our waterways and oceans by the billions. Once in the ocean, they act as pollution magnets that marine animals mistake for food, and which can eventually end up in our food.

We use recycled synthetics to lessen our environmental impact, but these potentially shed microfibers too. That’s why we're working hard to phase out all synthetics, recycled or not, from highly washed garments like tops, bottoms, and dresses. While we can’t phase out synthetics in all categories like swim, we are trying to find solutions to help you wear and wash all your clothes without adding to this mess. Right now, our solution is to gently hand wash your clothes in cold water–including your swimwear. You can also use a GuppyFriend bag to capture microfibers when you hand or machine wash your stuff. They're available right here on our website.

Climate change
Contrary to what some of those crazies say, we think climate change is real and fashion is not making it better. From growing textile fibers to moving fabrics around the world, making clothes sadly fuels this global climate crisis.

Production emissions
Production processes emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases which pollute our atmosphere and contribute to climate change. Fashion production makes up 10% of humanity's carbon emissions.(6) For example, conventional cotton, leather and other raw materials grown in industrial farming operations create huge energy footprints. Also, polyester, nylon, and other petroleum-based materials emit harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas almost 300 times more potent than CO2.(7)

Chemicals & Pollution
The production of textile fibers requires an intensive use of chemicals. Approximately 43 million tonnes of chemicals are used annually to produce textiles.(8)

Runoff
Runoff from these dye houses can contain heavy metals, alkali salts, toxic solids, and harmful pigments. About 40% of colorants used around the world contain organically bound chlorine, a known carcinogen.(9) It can cause cancer like tobacco, asbestos and DDT. What a nightmare-factory.

Trashed clothes
Americans throw away over 16 million tons of textiles a year.(10) Over 95% of the clothing thrown away in the US can be recycled or reused, but sadly more than 85% ends up in landfills.(11)(12) Even in a landfill, these materials don’t just go away—nylon takes 30 to 40 years to biodegrade, while polyester requires more than 200 years.(13) Talk about a hand me down.

Cotton
We do not think conventional cotton is awesome. It has some of the most harmful environmental impacts of all fabric. Yet cotton made up about 25% of global fiber production in 2019.(14)

Pesticides
According to the World Wildlife Foundation, conventional cotton consumes 11% of the world’s pesticide sales and 24% of the world’s insecticide sales, despite the fact that cotton only uses 2.4% of total arable land. Terrible ratio if you ask us.

Water
Most cotton requires high levels of irrigation and water-intensive processes. The need for irrigation systems input and the use of chemicals have made cotton production one of the largest textile contributors to freshwater and soil toxicity in the world.(4) Conventional cotton can have a water footprint of up to almost 15,000 gallons of water per lb of fabric.(5) When calculating water footprints, we look at the potential of water deprivation by considering both water consumption and scarcity/region.

Other not awesome fabrics
Did you know most fast fashion is actually made out of oil? We were shocked when we found out, too. Polyester, acrylic, nylon, spandex, and acetate are all made from nonrenewable fossil fuels, which require a bunch of energy to produce and emit gross stuff from the landfill.

Shoes
Footwear represents about 1/5 of the total impact of the apparel industry and nearly 1/4 of the climate impacts.(15) 97% of the impact of shoes happens during material processing and manufacturing, so that's where we focused our attention with Ref Shoes.(16)

Production
The manufacturing process emits pollution into the air and waterways harming environmental and human health. For every ton of polyester, manufacturers emit over five tons of carbon dioxide.

After-life
These textiles take anywhere from 20 to 200 years to biodegrade.(12) When they do, they release chemicals like formaldehyde, heavy metals, BPA, and PFCs into the environment. So basically you wear it twice and it lives in a landfill with its formaldehyde and BPA buddies for 200 years.