IGNYTE Magazine Issue 03 | Page 29

the repercussions of fast fashion

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Fashion is what we do every single day when we get dressed. The choices we make by wearing our clothes should be viewed as political choices and, quite possibly, game changing choices.

When I grew up fast fashion did not exist, and I used to save up my money to buy clothes, which I still have today. In the last twenty years, everything has changed – fashion has become disposable as we are used to buying cheap clothes and discarding them at an incredibly fast pace. The repercussions fast fashion has on the planet and people are disastrous, so much so that today fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world and one of the biggest employers of slave labour.

Right now, we are the cusp of a new moment in fashion. From an environmental point of view – there are so many new fibres and technologies being developed. For example, at Eco-Age, we work with Aquafil, the creators behind ECONYL® – a regenerated nylon yarn made entirely from waste such as recovered fishing nets or carpet scraps that would otherwise pollute oceans or end up in landfill.

Fishing nets collected from the sea which will be combined with other waste to create ECONYL regenerated nylon