Emma Watson: I would only wear sustainable fashion on the red carpet.
“I made a choice last year that I would only wear sustainable fashion on the red carpet,” said Emma Watson, famous Brittish Actress and United Nations Women Goodwill Ambassador when interviewed by CNN Style, May 5th 2016.
Emma Watson explains how fashion industry is the second biggest pollutant to fresh water on the planet; it has such a huge environmental impact that she wanted to make sure everything she wears does not leave a negative mark.
For the past few years, Watson has resolved that all of her red carpet appearances incorporate sustainable fashion. The majority of the fabric used for her Met Gala 2016 dress was made from Newlife, a yarn made from 100 percent post-consumer plastic bottles; and the detailing on the bustier was made with organic silk and cotton. “Changing the world one dress at a time,” she said.
Clothing Industry is 2nd Biggest Pollutant After Oil, According To Study
According to Alternet, one unlikely reason why clothing is such a drain on water and a source of pollution is because of cotton, the fiber found in about 40% of garments. Not only does this super-thirsty fiber need a lot of water to grow, but even though it only takes up less than 3% of the world’s cropland, cotton plants are the recipient of a disproportionate 10% of the agricultural chemicals and 25% of the insecticides used in farming across the globe. Furthermoe, more than a half trillion gallons of fresh water are used in the dyeing of textiles each year. The dye wastewater is discharged, often untreated, into nearby rivers, where it reaches the sea, eventually spreading around the globe.
Citarum River, Indonesia, is considered one of the most polluted rivers in the world due in great part to the hundreds of textile factories lining its shores. According to Greenpeace, with 68 percent of the industrial facilities on the Upper Citarum producing textiles, the adverse health effects to the 5 million people living in the river basin and wildlife are alarming.
Little care was paid to Indonesia’s water infrastructure when its textile boom began; proper framework for waste disposal was largely neglected. Clothing manufacturers dumped their chemicals into the river, making the Citarum nothing more than a open sewer containing with lead, mercury, arsenic and a host of other toxins.Greenpeace tested the discharge from one of these textile plants along the Citarum and found disturbing amounts of nonylphenol, an endocrine disruptor, which can be deadly to aquatic life.
Greenpeace also found the water to be high in alkalinity — equivalent to that of lye-based drain openers — and had apparently not even received the most basic of treatment. Greenpeace described the discharge as “highly caustic, will burn human skin coming into direct contact with the stream and will have a severe impact (most likely fatal) on aquatic life in the immediate vicinity of the discharge area.”
Having that knowledge in mind, turns out that the fashion industry is more harmful to the environment than we could imagine, but just because it has been running for a long time doesn’t mean there’s nothing that we can do to stop it. Emma Watson, for example, decided to do something about it through sustainable fashion.
What about you? What choice do you make to realize a sustainable world?
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