My recent post highlighted Ghana’s plight in waste colonialism related to the textile trade. This time we focus on Chile. Chile is Latin America’s biggest consumer of clothes and, in 2022, imported around 124,000 tonnes of second-hand textiles from across the world. In the same year, it was estimated that 300 hectares in northern Chile had been contaminated by textile waste. The world’s chronic overproduction of textiles and fast fashion culture are a big part of this story.

It is generally well known that microplastic particles are found all over our environment, including in the food we eat. Alarmingly, one of the biggest reasons behind that is the textile industry, the third-largest consumer of plastic, standing just behind packaging and construction. Clothing items from familiar fast-fashion brands have been found to contain plastic fibres which not only end up in landfills and oceans, but consequently in our food, seriously impacting our phy

According to the UN, clothing production doubled from 2000 to 2015 and the world produces around 92 million tonnes of textile waste every year, 89% of which contains synthetic fibres. If we continue with our throwaway fast fashion culture, this situation will only get worse. Sub-Saharan Africa is a major destination for the Global North’s unwanted clothing, receiving 70% of the world’s donated clothing. Shockingly, some of these clothes arrive in Africa having been slashed t

Millions of new clothes are produced every year for the $2.5 trillion global fashion industry. Many of these items are inexpensive fast-fashion pieces made of plastic fabrics derived from petrochemicals, such as polyester, acrylic, and nylon. Buying clothing made of plastic fabrics may seem like an affordable and harmless way to keep up with the latest trends. However, these clothes can have a major impact on your health. Every time you wash a polyester shirt or jacket, the p

UK consumers use 25 billion single-use bottles yearly, over 6.5 billion of which are not recycled. That’s over 17 million plastic, glass, aluminium or steel bottles daily, contributing to polluted beaches, oceans and a growing emissions problem. You might have heard of the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), a simple yet powerful environmental initiative that places a small refundable deposit - around 20p - on single-use drinks containers. Consumers can get their deposit back upon

The substantial water and energy consumption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) usage is acknowledged by many in the scientific community, yet public awareness of the ecological impact of AI usage is remarkably small. While certain social stigmas surround its usage - namely how it facilitates laziness or lack of creativity by the user - discussions around how AI damages the environment are rare outside of scientific debates. GenAI works by using large-scale machine

Take a look around on a busy day. Parks, offices, cars, backpacks. You'll spot them everywhere: plastic water bottles. They're convenient, sure, but that convenience comes with a cost we don't always see. Reducing plastic bottle use and choosing tap water instead is one of the simplest and most powerful changes we can make for both the planet and our health. Let's start with the environmental side. "Around 117,000 plastic bottles will have been used by the time you finish re

From bread bags to bubble wrap, crisp packets to cling film, we are still heavily reliant on soft plastic packaging despite the damage it does to the planet after use. Recycling has been shown to be largely ineffective . We need to reduce our reliance on soft plastics in the first place and encourage reusable packaging. The Role of Supermarkets Despite promising to phase out soft plastics, UK supermarkets have been failing to meet their own targets on reducing soft plastic

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France recently passed a groundbreaking law requiring all new washing machines sold in France to have filters that capture plastic microfibres released during the wash cycle. These microfibres are so small that they are not filtered out by sewage treatment plants. The problem of plastic microfibres from washing machines has become increasingly pressing in recent years. Synthetic microfibres are particularly dangerous because they have the potential to poison the food chai

Voluntary carbon offsetting has exploded into an industry worth more than $2bn per year and may grow to $40bn per year by 2030. But does...

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