Tag Archives: plastic use

The Life Cycle of a Shirt

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Four months ago, if you asked me about the life cycle of any plastic product, let alone any product, I would have no clue. Something that has always interested me is fashion, and it is crazy how the production of clothes affects the environment. Fun fact fashion is the second-largest polluter!!! Any garment of clothing goes through at least five significant stages: material, production, shipping, use, and finally the disposal. A shirt usually starts on a farm in either America, China, or India, where cotton is made by farming. This means that things like fertilizing, harvesting, and irrigating are involved. Cotton uses more pesticides than other crops, and the pollutants are carcinogenic, which can affect the workers. Crazy, I know!

After the cotton is picked up, it is shipped to a facility where it is spun, knitted, bleached, dyed, cut, and sewed. This stage uses many dyes and bleaches, which contain toxic pollutants that can affect our water system. Once it turns into cloth, it then goes to factories where the shirt is sewn. These people go through horrible working conditions. They barely get paid anything and work long hours. Once the shirt is made, it gets transported to warehouses and retailers. This transportation causes a big carbon footprint which takes up 10% of carbon emissions.

Dhaka, Bangladesh – March 2010.
Garment factory in Dhaka Bangladesh in the Mohakhali area.
Dhaka counts more than 4000 factories producing for export only.
This factory produced garments for the dutch company Hans Textiel.

Once the shirt gets purchased and has a home, it is worn over and over. This means it was washed and dried over and over, and the average person does up to 400 loads of laundry each year. Think about that…lots of water is used. Last but certainly not least of a shirt’s life cycle is when it gets thrown away. Cotton takes years to break down in a landfill, which means harmful emissions are released into the air.

Luckily, you can do many things—starting with not throwing away your clothes and donating them or selling them. Buying second-hand is an excellent way to reduce your impact. Even just after writing this, I am thinking about every shirt that I have purchased, and now I feel guilty. Starting now, I will start buying from companies that aim towards sustainability and buy second-hand (which I already do sometimes), and If I were you, I would too! Recently, I also started selling and donating my clothes instead of throwing them away, so that’s a start.

 

Little Changes-Big Differences

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From 2 million tonnes per year to 381 million in only 65 years. Our plastic consumption is increasing immeasurably, especially in recent years. We can’t even imagine how our life without plastic would be because everything is made of plastic in our life’s as we saw in the last Blog. However, our life of plastic has disastrous consequences for the natural environment. Just 9% percent of our plastic will be recycled and only 2% will be recycled effectively the other 7% will be downcycled. The remaining plastic land in our environment especially in our oceans. Oftentimes the marine creatures think the plastic waste in the ocean is food but, plastic is indigestible, and the animal can thus no longer eat food and starves to death with a full stomach. And with the seafood, the plastic is landing on our plates. That is just one example of how plastic has catastrophic impacts on our environment, but it shows that we need to reduce our plastic use.

I began to think about how I can use less plastic in my daily routine, and I was surprised how many opportunities I have to reduce my plastic. The following table is showing some examples:

Type of Grocery item Brand I buy now Less Plastic Alternative
Waterbottle Vittel Reusable bottle made of glass or stainless steel
Cornflakes General Mills Cornflakes packed in a cardboard box (Mymuesli) or buy it in a Packaging free grocery store
Choclate Hersheys Packaging made of cardboard and compostable film cellulose

(Nucao)
Detergent Tide Packed in cardboard box (dropps)
   

 

 

From Plastic to plastic-free Care and Cleaning items

Type of Product Brand I Buy now Less-Plastic Alternative
shampoo Kérastase solid shampoo without plastic packaging packed in a cardboard box (Foamie)
Face mask Luvos Made it own your own
Brush L’ange Brush made of wood and has natural bristles (Aveda)
soap softsoap Packed in Cardboard (Dr.Squatch)

Those are just a few examples but there are various plastic-free alternatives especially in this to categories of items. Besides I found for the products easily and rapidly after searching on the Internet a plastic-free alternative which is more sustainable. In the Grocery store, it was more difficult and took more time to find the plastic-free alternative and there was not a wide of goods. Another disadvantage is that plenty of plastic-free items are much more expensive than plastic items. For example, my pack of Cornflakes General Mills costs 5$ whereas a pack of Mymuesli would cost 10$ which is the double price. Unfortunately for me as a student with not much money it is difficult to replace many items I use now and buy instead the expensive plastic-free alternative. However, there are as well fewer Plastic Alternative, which is cheaper especially if you focus on reuse, refuse, or repair the items. For example, if I use a reusable bottle and fill it up with tap water instead of buying always new water bottles, I would save money as well as if I made a face mask on my own instead of buying it in the store.

My plastic items and some alternatives

(My plastic items and some sustainable alternatives)

I believe that little changes in our daily routine can make a difference, particularly when everybody thinks like this. Therefore, I considered that I will replace, reuse and refuse some plastic items in my life (In addition to them I mentioned in the last section). The first item I will replace is my shower soap the same brand I use at the moment has a plastic-free alternative and costs just 2 euros more. Another thing I will refuse is the plastic cutlery and cups in the dining halls. Instead, always get new plastic forks, knives, and spoons I will bring my plastic-free cutlery, or I will reuse my plastic cutlery. And I will try to bring my reusable water bottle to the dining halls that I don’t need to use a plastic cup. An item I will reuse are bags then always when I purchase something I get new bags now I will try when I go to the grocery store to always bring my bag with me that I don’t need to get another one.

(plastic-free and “normal” shower soap)

Nevertheless, there are plastic items I can’t replace at the moment and one of the items is my laptop. I use it every day and depend on it for example to write this Blog. Furthermore, I couldn’t find a plastic-free option and if they are some, they are probably not financeable for me.

In conclusion, we must stop using so much plastic because it has already catastrophic consequences for our environment, and it will have huge impacts on the future of our planet. Therefore we need to reduce our plastic use. We don’t need immediately to live a plastic-free life because of plenty of necessary items we can’t refuse or replace at the moment, but we can try to take little steps to a more sustainable and plastic-free life. If everybody in the world just takes a little step and refuses a few items in his daily life it would be a big step for all of us and will make a huge difference for our planet.

Sleeping Among Plastic

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My plastic consumption is something I am not very proud of. Before this class, I would only pay attention to things like where I bought my clothes, bringing reusable cups to places like Starbucks or the dining hall, and trying to avoid using straws. This was the extent of me being a “conscious consumer”. Ever since I began this class and started reading Beth Terry’s book Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too, I have changed my perception of what it truly means to be conscious of my consumption. Before taking this class, every time I would bring a reusable cup to Starbucks or avoid buying from places like H&M or Forever 21 I would give myself a pat on the back however, when I have purchased my bedding, room decor, or have gotten my acrylic nails done I would feel unphased about my plastic consumption. I have since learned that although I try to avoid single-use plastics when I am shopping, multi-use plastics are truly my downfall. 

Over the past few days, I have been pretty sick which has limited me to staying in my dorm and leaving for the occasional City Bistro trip. Thus, I haven’t had the same interaction with plastic items that I normally would’ve on a healthier day. Brainstorming this post in my bed has led me to think a lot about the things around me. Looking up, I see fairy lights and tapestry which both contain plastic components. On my bedside table, there’s a lamp, diffuser, water bottle, AirPods, essential oil bottles, remote control, pill bottle, stuffed animal, and masks which all contain plastic. As I inspected my room for all of the plastic I started realizing that the majority of my room contains plastic. My “conscious consumption” that I had previously mentioned hardly even matters when comparing that to the plastic I have in my dorm. Although most of these plastic items in my room won’t be disposed of any time soon, they eventually will end up in a landfill after my college graduation or sooner. Unfortunately, after analyzing my room, this is in fact a very accurate representation of my lifestyle and plastic footprint. I have become conditioned to the consumer lifestyle where I care more about the aesthetic of my living space and less about where the things in my living space are coming from. In the photo below I have numbered out all of the items containing plastic in a corner of my dorm room.

As someone who claims to care a lot about the environment, I personally don’t do the best job following through with it. Like I mentioned before, I try to stay away from single-use plastics if I can, shop for my clothes second-hand, and avoid using plastic straws, but is that really enough? I try my best to educate myself and others around me on the little, yet still important, things we can do to help reduce our waste. Like Beth Terry has mentioned in her book “Guilt is not encouraged”. Because of this quote, I would like to remind the reader and myself that there is always room for improvement and even if we can’t personally see the difference we are making right now, it does have a larger impact than we know.