Less waste
In Mexico City, researchers at the UAM-Azcapotzalco calculate that each day some 300-500 tonnes of clothes and fabric go to landfill. This is only counting domestic waste, without considering textile factory pre-consumer waste. Even worse: most of the clothes and fabric that are thrown away are practically new.
Zurciendo el Planeta invites you to transform unwanted clothes and fabric into something else. We can’t transform 300 tonnes of fabric a day, but when we start to reflect on how much we consume and throw away, transforming them into something else is an act of resistance. They can still be beautiful and useful, artful and communicative.
Lower carbon footprint
If you make your own bag out of repurposed fabrics (or buy one made by Zurciendo el Planeta with fabrics that we have intercepted on their way to landfill), you are avoiding all the carbon footprint associated to a creation with new materials. The carbon emissions of manufacture have already been “accounted for” in the original use the material had. The new creation with upcycled fabric also has a footprint (a bit of energy for the electric sewing machine, new thread, some notions like zips, if necessary) but it is much lower, because the highest footprint is associated with the production of fabric.
You can review this news item from the BBC to learn more about the carbon footprint of new cotton bags vs paper and plastic bags, according to life cycle assessment.
Why cotton and paper bags can be as bad for the environment as plastic bags. From the BBC – bbc.com, 19 January 2019.
Pollution
The textile industry is considered the second most polluting industry on the planet, in part due to the high emissions associated to the production of synthetic fabrics (50 % of all fabric globally is now plastic based), partly due to the energy required to operate factories and transport materials and products, but also because of the pollution and over exploitation of land, air and water associated to the whole chain of production.
Some examples
- The Aral Sea, one of the largest inland seas in the world, has disappeared due to the over exploitation of the two great rivers that fed it in order to irrigate the fields of cotton in Uzbekistan. Read more about the impact of cotton:
The impact of the textile industry – cotton (in Spanish) - The pesticides used in the cultivation of cotton poison soils and destroy the microorganisms that maintain soil fertility on agricultural land. The run off from fields also contaminates rivers and ground water sources.
- Many of the agrochemicals that are used to process and dye fabric in the global South are dumped untreated in rivers and lakes, killing wildlife and impacting all the human communities living downstream who have depended on these water sources sometimes for hundreds or even thousands of years.
An act of resistance
When you create or use things made from upcycled fabric, be these utilitarian or artistic creations, you are participating in an act of resistance against an industry that is destroying life at every level.
