THE I:CO STORY
Bargain alarm in the retail trade: The trendy jeans for only 25 euros, a cool shirt for 15 euros and matching shoes for an unbeatable 18 euros. When textile discounters put their products on the market at the lowest prices, the heart of the spendthrift jumps for joy! However, one man´s pleasure is another´s grief.
For those of us living in industrial countries to be able to clothe ourselves from head to toe at bargain prices, other people in the world have to work hard. In order to sell clothes and shoes so reasonably, they must be produced cheaply. This only works in typically low wage countries like China, Thailand, Bangladesh or Romania. There the people often children as well work for very little money under poor working conditions, a lot of pressure and unpaid overtime. No one is interested in labor protection laws or trade unions.
Beside the social aspect, the financial aspect should also be considered. By the time clothes are hanging in our shop-windows, they have already travelled far and wide. The high energy and transportation costs involved can skyrocket into the 5-figure area. A pair of jeans, for example, consists of up to 80 percent of African raw cotton; for a better fit, 20 percent spandex from Asia is added. Both materials are interwoven in Germany, then shipped to North Africa where they are tailored and sent back to Europe to be sold. Before we wear them, the popular leg dress has traveled nearly 20,000 kilometers that’s about half the circumference of the earth! More than 150,000 kilowatts per hour of energy is used for one ton of the material for the transport alone. This is what six households would get for one year or theoretically one could use an electric razor every day for 50,000 years.
The environment also suffers from the mass production of clothing and textiles. Cotton is very sensitive to frost and wind; it also needs plenty of sunlight and above all, a lot of water. The water requirement for one kilo of raw cotton varies depending on the irrigation system from between 7,000 and 20,000/28,000 liters. In some cases the plant is grown in arid countries such as Egypt or Africa! In order to fight pests, the sensitive cotton plant is literally drenched with dangerous chemicals before being harvested. The result is pollution to the soil, fauna, and populace. Estimates calculate that 28,000 people 77 per day die from pesticide poisoning.
While in poorer countries people are principally focused on their daily existence, people in industrialized countries are firmly in the grips of consumption. In Switzerland 90,000 tons of clothing are sold yearly which is equal to the unloaded weight of 497 jumbo jets or 3,000 freight trains. A mere one third of this is taken to recycling centers; the rest ends up being thrown out with the domestic waste. In Germany, 300,000 tons of used clothes and shoes are thrown away. These discarded clothes are important raw materials. The pants, jackets, sweaters, underwear, purses and shoes that you do not like anymore or don’t fit anymore can be recycled. There are various utilization possibilities depending on the material or fabric type: Wearable clothing is delivered to Second-Hand retailers; that which is no longer wearable, is transformed to industrial products like cleaning cloth, paper, insulating materials and textile fibers.
Rather than producing completely new products from plant farming, it is better to recycle, and return readily available clothes, purses and shoes to the cycle of consumption. This spares our resources, reduces garbage and creates as well as protects jobs. The next time you stand in front of your closet and have nothing to wear, simply sort this "nothing" out recycle it.
I:CO even rewards such environment-awareness! The professional environmentally-friendly recycler wants to motivate people not to heedlessly throw away their used clothes and shoes, but to deliver them to their collection points with their coupon system. This is the only way valuable raw materials from clothes and textiles can be kept within a closed loop of recycling for us to maintain lasting improvement of our environment.
