Bio-degradability of Fabrics

[vashah39]

When we talk about sustainable fashion, one important thing that is used to distinguish between sustainable and unsustainable fabrics is their ability to Biodegrade.

The fashion industry has become ultra affordable. Earlier people used to wear donated clothes, but with new clothes now so affordable, it’s inevitable that most used clothes will end up in landfills.

I have a few questions with regard to clothes bio degrading:

1. Does anyone ever put their clothes for composting/ bio-degrading? People usually compost kitchen waste but never heard about clothing.
2. Is there any service which takes clothes away and gets it Biodegraded? If there is no service existent, does it make sense to have one? This would mean that atleast 30% of the fabrics made today (cotton, viscose, linen, jute, etc) could have an end of life.

Would love to know your thoughts.

[Mari]

Thanks for starting this thread. Textile waste is indeed a huge part of the larger waste problem, and extremely overlooked…
As consumers, what we can do is perhaps adopt a #FashionFasting approach, esp for online and offline sales when we tend to buy too much cause its too cheap.
And be mindful consumers - some simple steps:

Don’t know what you mean by composting clothes… but folks at Goonj and Clothes Box Foundation repurpose used clothes into bags and blankets, and shredded clothes are turned into mats/dhurries. A new org Reti Ecotech is turning pre-consumer textile waste into building blocks for construction.