What Does Carbon Have to Do With Fashion and Climate Change?
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More and more fashion brands are announcing carbon-neutral pledges and setting ambitious targets for net-zero emissions, but why does that matter? What do carbon emissions have to do with fashion, and how does it relate to climate change?
While carbon dioxide (CO2) occurs naturally — circulating between the atmosphere, soil, plants, animals, and oceans — humans are drastically changing the carbon cycle by adding more CO2 and influencing how nature can remove and store it.
During the day, the sun warms the Earth, and the Earth's surface cools at night, releasing heat back into the air. Acting like a blanket, CO2 is a Greenhouse Gas (GHG) that traps the Earth's heat, increasing the planet's temperature (global warming) and consequently contributing to climate change.
In 2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cautioned that to avoid irreversible consequences that will undoubtedly affect water supply, food security, human health, and livelihoods, we must drastically cut GHGs before 2030. At our current trajectory, despite the pandemic middle of a pandemic, we will not reduce global warming to the 1.5˚C target set in the Paris Agreement.
What does global warming have to do with fashion?
From tremendous chemical and energy use to the extraction of natural resources and the high volumes of incinerated or landfill clothes, fashion is a significant source of CO2 emissions.
Researchers estimate that fashion is responsible for between four to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions every year. Due to the complexity of global supply chains, it's difficult to assign a specific number to how much CO2 fashion actually emits; however, what is clear is that fashion contributes a sizeable amount. As a multilayered global industry and a significant contributor to the climate crisis, the fashion industry can significantly reduce global GHGs.
As fashion works to identify solutions and create action plans to lower its carbon footprint, many fashion brands are turning to carbon offsets — planting and protecting trees in developing countries. While a step in the right direction, experts warn that carbon offsets are an imperfect solution and that brands must also reduce their direct emissions and the volume of clothing they produce in order to make real change.
