How you can help stop fabric waste

Fabric waste is a problem. This is because the world population has increased, but the amount of clothing produced is far more than it should be.

People can thank fast fashion. The trend that started in the 1990s has now taken over globally, as consumers insist on keeping up with the latest trends. People want the instant gratification of wearing what celebrities and catwalks deem The Next Big Thing – and they want it fast.

To produce this type of instant fashion, manufacturers are cutting corners. They are creating cheap garments that people only need to wear a few times before discarding them.

And the result is an incredible increase in the textile waste problem. All those fast fashion items that we throw away are ending up in landfills. What’s more, manufacturing this clothing and the resultant fabric waste is harming the planet.

Some sobering fabric waste statistics 2023

·    The United States Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA estimates that in 2018, America generated 17 million tons of textile. Of that, 11.3 million tons ended up in landfills. 

·    4 years later, in 2022, 21 billion pounds worth of products made from textile waste ended up in landfills. 

·    According to Earth.org, of the 100 billion garments people manufacture globally in a year, 92 million tonnes of textile waste ends up in landfills. 

·    Of that hefty 92 million tonnes, the UK is wasting 336,000 tonnes, throwing these garments away with their rubbish – that’s a lot of used clothing!

·    It takes more than 2 centuries for these fabrics to decompose in a landfill. While these textiles are decomposing in landfills, they generate methane gas.

·    What is the result? Toxic chemicals and dyes are landing up in our soil.

The saddest fact about fabric waste…

In the UK, each Briton produces 3.1kg of textile waste in a year. Of this amount of waste, people only recycle 0.3kg and reuse 0.4kg. And they incinerate 0.8kg.

Worst of all, they dispose of 1.7kg per person of textile waste in landfills.

What can we do to increase fabric waste recycling?

There are clothing brands that are trying to keep garments out of landfill. They are doing this by producing fabrics in a more eco-friendly manner. This way they make sure the fabrics have less environmental impact on the planet, which offers better ways for us to dispose of these textiles.

How you can reduce fabric waste UK

We’ve researched the most effective methods of doing this:

Reuse and recycle old clothes

It takes a lot of time and money for sustainable fabric productions. Methods to create fabrics that involve less water and more eco-friendly dyes to colour them don’t come cheap.

Spending the money on more sustainably produced new fabrics is worth it to save the planet. We're talking about using materials made from natural fibres. 

You can reuse and recycle old clothes; this will minimise fabric waste in the garment industry.

Textile recyclers collect old jeans, T-shirts and sweatshirts, even old socks (we all have some mis-matched ones in our wardrobes!). If we give these items a second life, they won't end up in landfills. 

Send them to be recycled, or look out for ‘new’ clothes made from old ones, produced by several brands including H&M.

A very popular way of recycling old clothes is to buy gently worn items. Many savvy stores now offer fabulous ranges of designer wear. People have worn this clothing just a few times or have looked after carefully.

You’ll find numerous treasures this way – clothes people have made with care using of beautiful, natural fabrics. These are slow fashion items that they are giving a second life and are well worth investing in.

Go for quality over quantity

No matter if your business manufactures clothes, or you are purchasing items made from fabric, always choose quality over quantity. Cheap clothes abound – fast fashion, which we will discuss in a bit more detail below, is one of the reasons for this.

Avoid using bad quality, cheap textiles to make any product in your range. And try not to purchase items for your home or business that people haven't made using quality fabrics. 

Remember: factories produce and dye good quality textiles in a more sustainable manner. They also use less harmful chemicals and dyes. If you choose sustainable textiles, that’s even better.

When you wash quality materials made from natural fibres like silk, cotton and linen, they don’t produce harmful substances. They are good for you and they are also good for the environment.

Don’t buy fast fashion 

By fast fashion we mean the clothing factories manufacture from inexpensive fabric. These garments don’t last. Worse, the factories make them in bulk, so there's lots of them. They often make this type of clothing in factories that don’t use sustainable methods of clothes production, and whose conditions for workers aren’t great, either.

Often factories employ children to do the work, and companies do not pay people fair wages, no matter their age. It’s a vicious circle, which is completely unsustainable. And we need to stop this.

The fast fashion industry is the reason that landfills are filling up with waste. They produce inexpensive fast fashion garments that don't last. So people discard them and they end up in landfill. This results in a massive impact on the environment and the planet.

The fashion industry dyes these cheap textiles using synthetic dyes that they manufacture from harmful chemicals. And the amount of water required to produce cheap fabric is extensive, too. 

Conserve water for future generations

That brings us to the next topic, which is saving water. As we’ve just said, manufacturing cheap fabric requires more water – and we should be doing our best to conserve water right now.

Eco-friendly manufacturers use processes that utilise less water and less energy. maake also conserves energy and water when we print on fabrics.

When we manufacture products, we try to create as little impact on the environment as we can. That’s what circular economy action is all about.

Be sustainable in every way you can

Whether you’re running a home or a business, you must think about how you can save the environment.

Like maake, create a sustainable environment to work in where being eco-friendly includes everything that you do, from the use of plastic in the kitchen to more sustainable methods of packaging for your products. Even a small change can make a big impact.

Follow our example: maake’s take on fabric waste management

At maake, we do things differently:

·      We work daily to make everything we do more sustainable.

·      This company sources the textiles we use to print on ethically from local UK-trusted mills where possible. This is the way we help our local economy and reduce our carbon footprint.

·      Sustainable innovation is our motto. Our aim is to minimise our impact on the environment.

·      maake's printing processes require 95% less energy than traditional textile printers. 

·      Our company uses only 100% renewable energy sources.

·      Production is eco-conscious, and we use virtually no water.

·      When we print on cotton and linen at maake, our printers produce less than a thimbleful of ink waste per 100m.

·      All our inks meet the Oeko-Tex 100 Class 1 and GOTS 5.0 requirements.

·      Fabrics we use are safe for kids (EN71-3 certified).

·      The focus at maake is on zero waste. We send excess fabric to charities, schools and other establishments.

·      Also, we have various sizes of upcycling bags that are available to all our customers – absolutely free! These are filled with use leftover textiles and come in 3 sizes: 1kg, 2.5kg and 15kg. 

·      Printing machines used have special energy-saving cut-off switches; this reduces energy consumption when the machines are not in use.

·      And we only print on demand – we print only what you order to minimise fabric and ink waste.

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