User:Emilygabrielle/sandbox

Article: Environmental Impact of Fashion
Copied from [[Environmental impact of fashion]]

"Marine Pollution
Aside from  plastic pollution, textiles also contributes significantly to marine pollution. Unlike plastic, textile pollution's impact on marine life occurs in its various supply chain processes. One of the most prominent is how microfibers and microplastics from textiles leech into the environment through wastewater. This type of waste is most commonly found from washing machine cycles, where fibers of clothes fall loose during the tumbling process.

Plastic and textile are both created from a chemical structure called polymer. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines polymer as “a chemical compound or mixture of compounds formed by polymerization and consisting essentially of repeating structural units.” For plastic, the common polymer found is PET, polyethylene (PE), or polypropylene (PP), whereas for textile, the polymer found the most abundant in the collection of waste is polyester and nylon textiles.

The Ocean Wise Conservation Association produced a study discussing the textile waste. For polyester, it stated that on average, humans shed around 20 to 800 mg micro polyester waste for every kg textile washed. A smaller amount for nylon is found; for every kg of fabrics washed, we shed around 11 to 63 mg nylon microfiber waste to the waters.

The Association also released a study stating that on average, households in the United States and Canada produce around 135 grams of microfibers, which is equivalent to 22 kilotons of microfibers released to the wastewater annually. These wastewater will go through various waste water treatment plants, however, around 878 tons of those 22 kilotons were left untreated and hence, thrown into the ocean. For comparison, 878 tons of waste is equivalent to around 9 - 10 blue whales in the ocean. This is how much we pollute just from textile."

Outline
Gaps I plan to fill: I think that marine pollution is such a broad subject, and this article is severely lacking pertinent information. Rapid globalization is playing such a big role in how we consume clothing and fashion. The marine pollution section of this article just barely scrapes the surface of all the bad fashion plays in polluting the environment.


 * 1) Explaining why the chemicals that leech into water/the ocean are bad for the environment and us.
 * 2) Chile's Atacama Desert and how fast fashion ends up being dumped there.
 * 3) Eutrophication and why it is bad for the environment.
 * 4) Fashion industry massive water usage.
 * 5) Fresh water impacts (suggested by Professor Fulton - have not done research on it yet)

Draft 2
- I feel as if my writing so far sounds more of a personal paper I am turning in for a class. So would love to hear some feedback about how to make it more "professional" sounding, or as it belongs on Wikipedia.


 * 1) Improperly disposing of clothing, can be extremely harmful to the environment, especially to our water sources. Harmful chemicals from decomposing clothing can be emitted into the air, and can leach into the ground contaminating both groundwater and surface water. Methane gas, a main contributor to climate change, is released when clothes decompose, while adverse chemicals from clothing and dyes, infiltrate our water - exposing us to carcinogens and toxic chemicals that seep into our bloodstream. Chemicals are not the only thing that is harmful from our clothing. Fibers from clothing and shoes are also extremely detrimental to the environment. Increasingly, clothing is becoming more and more synthetically made, the fibers from this clothing are similar to micro plastic pollution in our waters. Infiltrating our water sources and beaches, they then can become bonded to toxic chemicals.  [plans to expand: talk more about specific chemicals/clothing fabric and their effects]
 * 2) Chile's Atacama Desert is said to be where fast fashion goes to die. The rampant consumerism in the clothing industry and its disastrous effects on the environment, is not well publicized and is less known than other effects. Clothing from all over the world arrive at the Iquique port in the Alto Hospicio free zone in northern Chile each year, an important center for trade in South America. Chile has long been a hub for  unsold clothing, that was made in China or Bangladesh and passing through Europe, Asia or the United States before arriving in Chile, where clothing merchants then resell it around the continent. What is not sold around South America or sent to other countries to be sold, stay in the Alto Hospicio free zone, because no one pays the necessary tariffs to take it away, it then ends up being dumped in the Atacama Desert. [plans to expand: more on how these clothing dumps are harmful]
 * 3) Clothing often contains non-organic, excessively farmed cotton which is grown with chemicals that are known to cause eutrophication. Eutrophication is a process in which fresh water sources such as lakes and rivers become overly enriched with nutrients. This causes a dense growth of plant life that is harmful to the ecosystem, which can eventually kill all living things in the local ecosystem. [this was not included in the article at all, so I deemed it important to include, even if it was a short section.]
 * 4) Pollution in our water sources, is not the only detrimental affect that the fashion industry has on the environment and our water. The fashion industry also consumes and uses a large amount of water to produce fabrics and manufacture garments every year. According to a study done by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an estimation that more than 90 billion cubic meters, or about 20 trillion gallons of water, is used every year in order to create our clothing each year. However, there is not an exact number because different garments, and fabrics require different water usage. It is impossible to calculate a global average of how much water is used because it depends on where the raw materials are grown and what practices are used.