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Environmental Impact Of The Fashion Industry

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Here’s some bad news for all the clothes horses out there. The fast fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world, after oil. It seems hard to believe that a store full of affordable sheath dresses and slouchy tees could be almost as bad for the planet as an oil rig in the gulf, but here we are.

The Environmental Impact of a “Closet Purge”
The average American throws away 70 pounds of clothes each year. The problem doesn’t lie solely with the fact that textiles are a material that we’re still working towards large scale recycling, the production of clothing in and of itself is far from environmentally friendly. For example, to make one cotton t-shirt, it takes 1,083 gallons of water.

Given the negative environmental impact of the fast fashion industry, it’s great to see brands launching ostensibly eco-friendly collections like H&M’s “Conscious” right? Well, it’s not quite that simple.

What Is H&M’s Conscious?
H&M’s Conscious collection is a line of clothing within H&M’s other offerings that uses only sustainable materials, including a synthetic material that H&M touts as being made from plastic recycled from shoreline waste.

On their website, H&M states, “H&M’s Conscious Exclusive collection shows how the best style can be mindful of the planet, to help protect it for the future. It’s such a desirable collection, with pieces made from sustainable materials that you want to wear for seasons to come.”

Green initiatives are wonderful, and at Swell, we

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