Cosme

Cheap, throwaway clothes are adding to the UK's landfill

The government has launched a campaign to tackle the environmental impact of a "fast fashion" culture.

Around two million tonnes of unwanted clothing ends up in landfill every year and Defra is using the start of London Fashion Week to announce its scheme.

More than 300 High Street retailers, textile manufacturers and designers have signed up to its "sustainable clothing action plan".

The plan incorporates ethical issues, such as child labour and fair trading.

The initiative outlines commitments to make fashion more sustainable throughout its lifecycle: from design and manufacture to retail and disposal.

It hopes to draw attention to the environmental impact of cheap, throwaway clothes, which have become hugely popular on the High Street but are adding to the UK's landfill.

Taking action

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says the clothing and textiles sector in the UK produces around 3.1m tonnes of carbon dioxide, 2m tonnes of waste and 70m tonnes of waste water per year.

Gases such as CO2, emitted by fossil fuel burning, and methane, released from landfill sites, are widely believed to be contributing to global warming.

As part of the action plan:

• Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury's have pledged to increase their ranges of Fairtrade and organic clothing, and support fabrics which can be recycled easier
• Tesco is banning cotton from countries known to use child labour
• Charities, such as Oxfam and the Salvation Army, will open more sustainable clothing boutiques featuring high quality second-hand clothing and new designs made from recycled garments
• The Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion will be resourced to provide practical support to the clothing sector
• The Fairtrade Foundation will aim for at least 10% of cotton clothing in the UK to be Fairtrade material by 2012.

The Minister for Sustainability Lord Philip Hunt, said the plan represented a "concerted effort to change the face of fashion".

"Retailers have a big role to play in ensuring fashion is sustainable," he said.

"We should all be able to walk into a shop and feel the clothes we buy have been produced without damaging the environment or using poor labour practices, and that we will be able to re-use and recycle them when we no longer want them."

Complex challenges

Jane Milne, business environment director of the British Retail Consortium, said retailers should be "applauded, not criticised, for providing customers with affordable clothing, particularly during these tough economic times".

"They're raising standards for overseas workers, offering clothes made from organic and Fairtrade cotton and encouraging the re-use and recycling of unwanted clothes," she added.

The ASBCI, the forum for clothing and textiles, said the industry was "very cognisant" of the environmental issues it faced and "highly motivated" to find solutions.

Chairman Malcolm Ball said the challenges facing the industry and the consumer were "complex".

Taking cotton as an example, he said organic cotton is highly desirable but is only a fraction of world production, and growing it "requires vast amounts of the most precious resource on earth - water".

"There are many voices who argue the current Western model of fast and cheap fashion is totally unsustainable in the medium to long term," he said.

"The challenge is to reduce the amount of damage we are doing now, while a revised, sustainable model of consumption is created."

London Fashion Week runs from Friday 20 February to Wednesday 25 February.

Lord Hunt is due to announce the sustainable clothing action plan at Friday's launch of the sixth season of estethica, the world's leading showcase of ethical designer fashion.