Old clothes, scraps from the fashion industry and leather pieces make up the more than 4 million tons of textile waste discarded per year in Brazil.
The quota corresponds to 5% of all waste produced in the country. The numbers are from the new survey by the Brazilian Association of Public Cleaning and Special Waste Companies (Abrelpe), first released to the CNN .
In addition to the amount of discarded items, the environmental concern extends to the materials used in the production of clothes, which are mostly derived from oil.
According to the Fashion on Climate report, by the Global Fashion Agenda organization with the consultancy McKinsey and Company, companies in the fashion world emitted, in 2018, about 2.1 billion tons of greenhouse gases worldwide.
“There are tissues that can take five to ten years to decompose in nature, there are tissues that can take hundreds of years to degrade. When this discard is done, you have pigmentation. This dyeing will contaminate one more type of soil, while others will contaminate less”, explains civil and environmental engineer from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Júlio Cesar Silva.
However, the apparel sector continues to grow. Data from the Brazilian Textile and Apparel Industry Association (Abit) indicate that the textile and apparel industry recorded growth of 20% in 2021, which represents a movement of 194 billion reais.
In 2021, the Modefica Institute, in partnership with the Center for Sustainability Studies of Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), released the Fios da Moda report, which analyzed clothing production in Brazil.
According to the research, in 2018, about 9 billion pieces were produced in the country, which represents more than 40 units per inhabitant.
For the expert, reducing consumption alone is not enough to mitigate the environmental effects of discarding clothes.
However, he points out that even though there are already more sustainable options in the production line and in the fashion world, it is still little compared to the global movement that aims to reduce costs.
“If we reduce consumption, we often reduce employment and there is a whole chain behind it. That’s why it’s not so simple, that we can say ‘stop producing’.
We have to replace some options with more sustainable, less environmentally incorrect ones. There are already actions of this type within fashion, but due to the volume we have, they are still very small in relation to global production, so the pollution is still very high”, defends Silva.
However, for the CEO of Abrelpe, Carlos Filho, the numbers identified in Brazil are still reversible.
‘Upcycling’, the process of transforming unused products, scraps and clothes into new pieces and with different functions from the initial ones, is one of the trends for the reuse of waste.
The thrift stores, according to Sebrae data, grew by 48.58% between 2020 and 2021.
“What we noticed is that the more developed countries have numbers much higher than those we see in Brazil, mainly because of the fast fashion industry and an accelerated disposal of clothes. This percentage, abroad, can reach 10%, 12%, which shows practically double what we have in Brazil, but this is a fraction that should be paid attention because it has the potential for recovery, reuse”, highlighted the director of the Association.
Source: CNN Brasil
