PODCAST: Revisiting fashion’s misinformation problem

By Simon Glover
16 September 2020

WAKEFIELD – Our latest Big Closets Small Planet podcast revisits fashion’s misinformation problem which was highlighted by a special Ecotextile News investigation – Busting Myths – late last year.

Back then, we looked at some of the more widely-quoted statistics used to demonstrate the impact of the fashion and textiles industry on the environment.

These included the claims that it was responsible for a fifth of all water pollution, created more CO2 emissions than flights and shipping combined, and that a quarter of the world’s pesticides were used to grow cotton.

In each case, we showed how the claims just did not stack up – despite being quoted by leading news organisations and respected organisations including the United Nations.

That water pollution figure, for example, was quoted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2017 report, A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future, using a single academic paper as source.

That paper, by a researcher at Panjab University in India, merely said that the World Bank estimated that 17-20 per cent of industrial water pollution was down to textile dyeing and finishing. Yet, when we contacted the World Bank they told us the figure did not come from them.

The same Ellen MacArthur Foundation report figured in the GHG emissions claim. It said that 2015 CO2 emissions from textiles totalled 1.2 billion tonnes – “more than those of all international flights and shipping combined”.

It justified this by comparing an estimate of the textiles industry’s emissions – by the US consultancy firm McKinsey & Co and its own experts – with data for flights and shipping for 2014 – a different year – from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

But they were not comparing like with like… The IEA’s figures were for direct emissions only whereas the estimates for fashion and textiles included the entire supply chain going right back to the production of raw materials.

We approached the IEA which told us that they also had data for textiles and leather which revealed that industry emissions for 2015, the year quoted by the report, were just over 82.5 million tonnes – less than seven per cent of aviation and shipping’s combined total.

Now, our new Big Closets Small Planet revisits the issue of what our host Mike Schragger, from the Sustainable Fashion Academy, calls ‘factoids’ – information that is reported and repeated so often it becomes accepted as fact.

He speaks with Sandra Roos, head of sustainability at KappAhl, and Alden Wicker, freelance journalist and founder of Eco-cult, about the need for credible research and robust analysis.

Listen to the full podcast by CLICKING HERE.