A new study has found that waste from the global clothing industry is leaking millions of tons of plastic into the environment each year, an overlooked source of pollution that could get worse over time.
According to findings from a team of researchers at North Carolina State University, global clothing consumption generated more than 20 million tons of plastic waste in 2019. About 40% of this waste may have been improperly managed and become environmental pollution, in a process known as “plastic leakage.”
Textile waste was divided into two sources: clothing made from synthetic materials, such as polyester, nylon and acrylic, and clothing made from cotton and other natural fibres.
The researchers looked at plastic waste generated across the “value chain” of a clothing product, which refers to the entire life cycle of a product, including, for example, not just the garment itself, but the plastic materials used to package it.
“We analyzed data on imports, exports and apparel production in countries around the world,” said Richard Venditti, professor of paper science and engineering at NC State and co-author of the study. “Then we compared that to existing global information on different stages of the apparel value chain to estimate how much plastic is leaking into the environment at each of those points.”
“A lot of the plastic waste that enters the environment comes from discarded clothing, especially synthetic clothing. There is also waste from manufacturing, packaging and even tire wear during transportation, as well as microplastics that are drawn into the water when we wash our clothes,” he added.
Synthetic clothing (made from synthetic materials) was by far the largest source of plastic waste, the researchers found. The synthetic value chain accounted for 18 million tonnes of waste in 2019, or 89% of all plastic waste generated by the global clothing industry that year. The researchers estimated that around 8.3 million tonnes of that was released into the environment.
Meanwhile, cotton clothing accounted for 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste, of which 0.31 million tonnes came from fibres other than synthetic textiles or cotton.
Unlike the end-of-life plastic waste from discarded synthetic clothing, the plastic waste from cotton and other fibers came almost entirely from plastic used in packaging.
The researchers found that where clothes are sold is not necessarily where plastic waste is leaking into the environment.
For clothing originally sold in high-income countries, such as the United States, Japan, and many other countries, most of the resulting pollution occurred in low-income countries where these pieces of clothing could be sold on the secondary market.
This finding raises serious concerns about how people in high-income countries consume clothing.
“What we’re seeing is that in countries like the United States, we have a ‘fast fashion’ culture where we buy a lot of clothes and don’t keep them for long,” Vendetti said. “When we throw away those clothes, they either go to landfills or, more often than not, end up in thrift stores. Some of the clothes that go to those stores are sold in the United States, but they often end up going to other countries that don’t have waste management systems robust enough to handle that kind of volume. That’s where a lot of the plastic ends up leaking into the environment.”
The study concludes that major changes are needed in the clothing sector so that materials are recycled and do not become waste. The study also recommends increasing the use of renewable, non-synthetic textiles.