In my previous post, I talked about Chinese New Year and its effects on the environment, particularly the atmosphere. While I was searching for articles regarding this festive holiday, I came across this opinion piece by CNN Style. The author, Christina Dean, is the founder of a Hong Kong-based NGO aiming to reduce fashion waste. The article provides important information regarding the waste generated during CNY and effectively conveys the pressing need for a switch to more sustainable fashion practices, albeit having a rather pessimistic tone throughout. The author criticises the Chinese consumers' practices during CNY of spring cleaning, throwing away old (sometimes unworn) clothes and splurging, and calls out textile industries for their environmental violations. She also discusses the wastefulness of luxury brands such as Gucci and Luis Vuitton basing the designs of their garments specifically off of the Chinese zodiac animals, as these very quickly go out of trend (the following year, when the zodiac animal changes). Despite the critical tone, she also cites some numbers to highlight the detrimental impacts of the behaviours of fashion consumers and producers.
Source: https://www.chinawaterrisk.org/resources/analysis-reviews/can-fashion-be-green/
The infographic above summarises the key points made by the author. She mentions that clothing accounts for '10% of the world's carbon emissions', and that production of garments contribute 'up to 20% of all industrial water pollution', with chlorine and arsenic being one of the many pollutants contaminating water bodies. Something new I learned from this article was the term "cancer villages", which refer to villages around China that see exceptionally high rates of cancer, commonly associated with the contamination of water sources from the fashion industry waste. Dyeing of clothing in particular negatively affects the water quality of rivers around the industrial regions, impacting populations and ecosystems nearby.
In a more positive light, she also discusses the change in consumer attitudes, with current increasing ethical awareness and more trends/ stores promoting sustainable fashion practices. While she notes that it may take a long time for China as a whole to reduce its consumption during CNY, I am more optimistic about Singapore. Last week, when I asked around my friend group of their shopping plans for CNY, most of them said that they would be wearing the clothes they already own in their wardrobe, some of which were unworn due to the pandemic last year limiting visitations. Other reasons include the fact that nobody would care or notice if they wore the same outfit they wore from past CNY celebrations. This also made me realise that lately, Singapore has seen a trend towards thrifting clothes as well. For example, several accounts on TikTok are dedicated to promoting smaller thrift stores around Singapore, such as @chinchilla.vintage, @luckyplazabazaar and many more. Their videos have relatively high engagement, indicating a positive attitude to thrifting and upcycling amongst youth. However, it is also understandable that CNY is a festive occasion that calls for dressing up and 'treating yourself' to fancy goods, thus it may be difficult to curb fashion waste during the season, which is why I thought this article was an important one to review.
References:
China Water Risk. (2011, December 13). Can Fashion Be Green? CWR. Retrieved January 30, 2022, from https://www.chinawaterrisk.org/resources/analysis-reviews/can-fashion-be-green/
Dean, C. (2019, February 5). China ushers Year of the Pig with annual fashion binge -- and the environment is picking up the bill. CNN. Retrieved January 30, 2022, from https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/lunar-new-year-china-fashion-waste-consumption/index.html
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