Greenhouse gases, climate neutral, fossil fuels, rising sea levels, emissions and global warming are not words and phrases one would necessarily associate with clothing and a glamorous lifestyle. Yet approximately 10% of global emissions are produced by the fashion industry, which is neatly concealed behind attractive models, shiny fashion magazine pages, chic photoshoots and intriguing public relations.
It is not difficult to understand why the reality of the fashion industry using 2.5% of the world’s farmland to produce cotton, synthetic materials requiring up to some 342 barrels of oil every year to produce and the reality of fashion production utilising some 43 million tons of chemicals per year (many of which are toxic) is easy to ignore.