A Study Proposal On Waste Products

Food Waste is a major issue in the United States. It takes up much needed room in landfills, it is a financial burden, and it contributes to the rise in hunger.

How fast fashion is affecting the environment is a very serious topic since this type of consumerism in the United States is heavy on supply and demand, and because of that shoppers want it all and want it now which is basically fast fashions motto. The way to make these pieces of clothing heavily rely on cheap materials that can be made quickly, so that is polyester and cotton being made in big factories that emit out toxins into our earth. Cotton being one of the most used fabrics takes a lot to be made into a single garment. Uzbekistan which is the 6th biggest producer of cotton had faced many conflicts during production since cotton uses so much water to be made it has dried up the 4th largest lake the Aral Sea because of how much we need to produce cotton fashion. (Prospectjournalucsd) Buying these cheap garments that become unwearable after 5 times (Forbes) of wearing it usually gets thrown out after and producing more waste that gets put into our waterways since theses garments shed easy and through washing them can “find their way into oceans and on the shores everywhere.” (Sweeny) So with the help of shoppers, being able to cut down on the purchase of fast fashion can help aid in keeping the ecosystem in order.

The Indian textiles chart showed how India used machines to produce greater yarn and cloth amounts in 1914 as compared to the production in 1884. As well it demonstrated how the amount of people using machine made textiles had greatly increased opposed to hand made textiles (Doc 1). In 1916 Radhakamal Mukerjee, an Indian economist, explains how that handwoven textiles cannot keep up with the machine made textiles, and therefore is on a decline (Doc 6). This identifies how India is moving towards

TenTree has created a product with the positioning to give customers clothing options that are environmentally and socially responsible. They promise to plant ten trees for every item purchased and only use factories that are approved by WRAP. (TenTree, n.d.) They also have a large selection of t-shirts, hoodies, sweaters, tanks, hats, and toques, in a variety of different colours and sizes. (TenTree, n.d.) Satisfying the customer wants for a wide variety of socially and environmentally responsible clothing has created functional-instrumental value for their customers.

The process is just as important as the materials used in the production. Alongside production technology innovations, brands such as Adidas and Nike have begun to use recycled materials in their shoes. The way to ‘do more with less’ will involve innovations in the types of materials used in products. Adidas has prototyped Primeknit shoes made from recovered ocean fishing nets while Nike is using recycled polyester, diverting plastic bottles from landfills. Furthermore Nike has begun to implement sustainability metrics into their material choice and product design. This helps to ensure that there is greater transparency to the trade-off’s that designers are making between functional performance and environmental impact. To ensure continuous superior product performance a business must drive product innovation as well as

In the book, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, Elizabeth Cline, a journalist and the author, writes about the lack of ability of disposal we currently possess for the massive amounts of textile waste. She wrote, “The rate of disposal is not keeping up with the availability of places to put everything that we're getting rid of and that's the problem." Millions of tons of textile waste are generated globally per year. There are many efforts to cut down the amount of waste by recycling, shredding, and exporting to developing nations. According to the United Nations, The US is the leading exporter of second-hand clothes. Very poor nations like India benefit greatly from imported second-hand clothing. These methods to cut back on textile waste are proven to work, but they don’t solve the problem, they just lessen it. Part of the problem with fast fashion and textile waste is that many of the clothes being mass produced are made out of cheap petroleum-based fibers. H&M received a lot of backlash for this, spurring them to release a more eco-friendly line of clothing, using organic cotton.

There will always be that one or two patrons that are looking to save the environment and if the company can look to incorporate environmentally friendly designer clothing and accessories into the business, the business will be leading the future in clothing retail sales. For example, designer blue jeans become a designer purse; a designer silk shirt becomes a new designer pajama top. Reusing material is not a new idea however, creating new items from high-end designer clothing to create environmentally friendlier clothing or recycled designer clothing from the designer is, and if it is made exclusively for Christina’s Unique Clothing Store the company’s future is secured.

Throughout the mid-19th century, many cities across America were becoming industrialized and growing in size. As a city develops and grows, the city uses resources such as food, raw products, and energy. All these resources are consumed by a city. The outcome of all this consumption is the production of waste (Tarr 15). In the mid-19th century, a massive migration of Americans and wave of migrants from different countries in Europe and other parts of the world begin to settle in urban settings across America. Many were seeking better job opportunities and better lives in American cities. As a result, industrial cities grew dramatically and became heavily congested. As cities grew and began to emerge, many more resources were consumed

With manufacturing moving overseas, we should realize that with it moves the dyed chemical water. Countries such as Bangladesh dump their wastewater in ditches that can be see when driving to textile mills and manufacturing plants (Cline, 2012, pg. 123). With environmental forces such as global warming, we are overlooking the waste the fashion world is creating. Instead of donating to The Salvation Army or Goodwill, “a tremendous amount of clothing is in fact not getting recycled but getting trashed” which means consumers aren’t realizing where their used garments are really going (Cline, 2012, pg. 123). Cellulosic fibers seem to be environmentally friendly because they come from cotton, flax, and bamboo. Even though these fibers start off

When you talk about animal waste from agriculture farms being a health hazard to the public and to the environment you are not talking about the type of farms I grew up on and still live by to this day. Animal waste from your average livestock farm is not harmful at all, but when you start talking about mega farmers then that is a different story. I don't consider mega farmers to be farmers at all, they are nothing more than an animal factory that does not treat the animal humanely in any way. These type of animal factories produce animal waste at levels that are potentially dangerous to the public and the environment. Animal waste can contaminate water supplies such as rivers,ponds, and groundwater, with phosphorus making the water not safe

Fashion today may seem as it’s not using much water, consequently it’s one of the most water wasted issues in the world, conversely it comes very close to water pollution. 2,700 litres of water produce just one t-shirt that we may wear once and just abandon a couple weeks in the time to come. You may not know, but many noxious chemicals are used to create the fabric that is discarded into our clothes but once it’s reached the fabric’s limit, people dump the chemicals into rivers which lead to water pollution without a care. On a sadder note, citizens in poor countries waste their lives making our clothes for at least 50 cents per hour just to feed

In 1993, Patagonia was the first company to make plastic soda bottles into fleece, as well as other materials. As many other brands are following in their footsteps, this new technology is a new way to make an Eco-friendly material and that is durable and well made. Patagonia has changed how people view recycling. They are focused on reducing the amount of pollution in the environment. They needed 20,000 barrels of oil to make raw materials, but as they started recycling plastic bottles there was no need for that. Now, there is space in the landfills by keeping millions of bottles out, which eliminates harmful air emissions, making the environment a better place. While Patagonia strives for environmental improvements and to make their products, sustainable, there are now expanding to other fabrics. It has been over

Waste Management, Inc., incorporated in 1968, had become a leader in the industry of waste management services ranging from industrial operations to curbside collection. This company had become synonymous with many different kinds of disposal services that allowed for the company to grow and grow with a solid base over the course of twenty-eight years. Finally in 1996, the company reported total assets of almost $20 billion with net income close to $200 million. However, even with this growth and solid base, the company was feeling competitive pressures and net income was on the decline.

Generations ahead of us only had a tiny wardrobe, where clothes were not washed every day. In our generation, fast fashion is in. It’s ok to have multiple shirts or shoes of the same color. It’s actually ok to throw away unwanted apparel. Apparel companies are beginning to focus on sustainable fashion, also known as eco fashion. Apparel, fashion, and textiles is the most polluting industry in the world. Every stage, that a garment goes through, uses up and threatens our resources.

Recycling is the process of reusing old clothing fibers and textiles to make something new in the textile and apparel industry. (Kunz, Karpova, & Garner, 2016) In the textile industry, recycling is one of the major issues in the industry. “The necessary steps in the textile recycling process involve the donation, collection, sorting and processing of textiles, and then subsequent transportation to end users of used garments, rags or other recovered materials.”(Leblanc, 2017, page 1) The environmental benefits of textile recycling are that recycling decreases landfill space, foreign fibers are not being used, reduction of water and energy used in the production of textiles, prevents pollution and there is a lesser demand for toxic dyes. (Leblanc, 2017)