Despite the intention to reduce the fashion industry's enormous environmental impact, around half of the clothes sold by major online fashion brands, such as Boohoo and Asos, are made entirely from virgin plastic — that is, plastic produced using raw materials rather than recycled ones. This is revealed by a study by the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), which analysed around 10,000 garments found on sites such as Asos, Boohoo, Missguided and PrettyLittleThing, over the course of two weeks in May.

What the study on garments made from virgin plastic says

Of these 10,000 items analysed over two weeks, it was found that an average of 49 per cent were made entirely from new plastics such as polyester, acrylic and nylon. In some cases only 1 per cent of garments contained recycled fabric. The widespread use of synthetic fibres produced from fossil fuels is hardly surprising, given the boom that fast fashion has experienced over the past 20 years. It is a vicious circle: following the fast fashion explosion, the use of these cheaper materials has almost doubled, allowing throwaway fashion to continue to proliferate.

Will Grimond @WilllJG

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After a lot of number-crunching (and permanently destroying my targeted advert algorithm) super proud to be launching a new report today looking at the scale of plastics in fast fashion, the product of doing more data journalism @theRSAorg

thersa.org/reports/fast-f…

♥ 25💬 2 11 giu 2021 · Apri su X →

What many people do not know, however, according to Josie Warden, one of the report's authors, is that these fabrics require large amounts of energy during production and feed the petrochemical sector, which is responsible for a significant share of climate change and uncontrolled pollution. And what is worse, there is little awareness of how certain types of materials are made, particularly among young shoppers.

It is well known that the fashion industry is among the most polluting sectors in the world, not only with regard to the (over)production of clothes, but also and above all their disposal: in the United Kingdom 300,000 tonnes of clothing are burned or buried every year. Brands such as PrettyLittleThing and Missguided bear some responsibility for this problem too, adopting strategies that encourage unsustainable consumption, with tactics such as 8-pence garments and £1 swimsuits.

The measures taken by brands

"We can no longer use plastic to create poor-quality garments intended to be worn only a handful of times. These require large amounts of energy, cause environmental damage during their production process and can take thousands of years to break down," said Warden. But many natural materials too, such as cotton and viscose, have a considerable environmental impact, "so ultimately it is the scale of production that needs to change." Brands have begun to take action: following revelations of poor wages and working conditions in some of its suppliers' factories, Boohoo, which owns PrettyLittleThing, has launched a full review of its supply chain and has pledged that by 2025 the fabrics in its garments (80 per cent of which are made from cotton or polyester) will be recycled or otherwise more sustainable.

A spokesperson for Missguided then stated that the brand has drastically reduced its use of virgin plastic, but acknowledged that "there is more to do." The goal for now is to make products more sustainable, with 10 per cent using recycled fibres by the end of 2021 and 25 per cent by the end of 2022. Asos has encouraged the use of more recycled synthetic materials and sustainable cotton and has introduced a "Responsible edit", to guide customers towards purchasing garments made from sustainable materials. The RSA, finally, is calling for a "plastic tax" on every item made from virgin plastic imported or produced in Great Britain and, addressing consumers directly, is urging them to buy less and better.