What the well informed man is wearing

Deepavali is upon us. Traditionally, we have celebrated Deepavali with new dresses, fire crackers and lots of sweets and savories. For a while, I have been hearing about Microplastics and how synthetic apparels keep shedding them around. But given that more than 60% of all apparels in the market is made from synthetic, I decided to just research around this a bit.

Microplastics, as the name indicates are plastic fragments less than 5mm in size. A substantial source of primary microplastics that pollute are from clothing. As per Story-of-stuff (watch the video in this article, clearly educational), a single fleece jacket could possibly shed around 250,000 plastic fibers. Additionally the story-of-stuff article goes on to say that a single load of washing machine releases 1900 to 200,000 fibers. These are small enough that are not caught inside the washing machine and are often discharged to the home waste water system, eventually making it to the rivers and oceans. According to this article, there will be more plastic in our oceans than plastic by 2050. The situation sounds alarming.

So, what do we do. The easier solution that comes to the mind is to shy away from synthetic apparel and use ones from the natural sources, like cotton, wool etc. They also shed fibers, but these are bio-degradable. And everyone is happy. However, the truth is not that simple. The environmental impact of cotton cultivation is as ghastly, if not worse. It takes 2500 liters of water to make one cotton shirt. That is about the drinking water quota for a person for 3 years. The Aral sea has disappeared because of cotton cultivation. Add the pesticides used during cotton cultivation and this is a nightmare one can well afford to not have.

What then are our next steps? The Sustainable fashion wiki page provides some alternatives. But instead of going shopping for Hemp/Bamboo fiber apparels, I was wondering what I could do.

1. Use synthetic clothing (read dri-fit t-shirts and those running shorts) only for the workouts/running sessions.
2. Use cotton otherwise. I could possibly completely avoid using polyester/polycot or other synthetic stuff (most tracksuits, shirts) otherwise.
3. If I however work out every day (which I typically do), I am pretty much committed to doing one laundry load of a dri-fit set (Tee, Shorts) every day. In which case, should I just use this at other times too, instead of using cotton? Why incur a laundry load of cotton, in addition to this? There is also the issue of awareness. If I wear dri-fit dresses all the time, say including to office, I am sure I will be sending out the wrong messages to people around me. I am no great influencer, especially when it comes to fashion, but claiming that micro plastics are bad and we should minimize them and then be seen wearing synthetic dresses all time sounds too hypocritical.

There is no doubt that we should minimize synthetic apparel. However, for us to be overall responsible, we need to use each and every one of our cotton (or natural fabric) clothes to their full life. There is no point shedding synthetic material, but recycling our wardrobes with the latest cotton dresses several times a year. We should not discard them until they are totally unusable. We need to fix those small defects (say a broken zip or a small tear) and keep reusing them. If there is a need for a variety, we can consider buying second-hand cotton clothes (do not know how feasible this is in India) or just exchange with friends and family and recirculate the clothes. The 3Rs of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle seems to be the only viable solution here too!

The ultimate solution is of course not for the whole world to use less (though that might be ideal, but is not sustainable), but to ensure that the garment industry/washing machine industry all invest substantially in research which will possibly give raise to technological advances (newer eco-friendly, but economically viable fibers, advances in water treatment) that can get us an sustainable, acceptable solution. More the number of people that are aware and raise this, the more will be the chance that this will happen quicker.  So, the biggest contribution we can make is to raise awareness of people around us.

When we grew up, we were eligible for new clothes maybe thrice a year -- once on your birthay, once for Deepavali and once on other special occasions, like a wedding in the family. A lot of clothes were hand-me-downs from elder siblings and cousins. The new ones that we got were also duly passed on to the younger ones in due time. It is possibly time to get back to this tradition. If every one of us decide to reduce our consumption, may be there is some light at the end of the tunnel. And these are the kind of hopes that one harbors during festivals like Deepavali.

P.S: The title is of course inspired by Bertram Wooster's (P.G.Wodehouse) article titled "What the well dressed man is wearing" for his aunt's periodical Milady’s Boudoir. It does not appear that Berty wrote any other article and given my rate of updates to this blog, I thought this was the right title in more ways than one!