Judge a dress by its cover

Why is packaging in fashion so polluting?

Fashion uses plastic for most, if not all, of its packaging. This includes the more visible plastic such as plastic bags that individual items are wrapped in, mailer bags that are used to ship items, and plastic hangers. The less obvious plastic usage comes from the wires and clips that are used to attach various tags to the garments and from the labels and tags themselves, which are usually crafted from polyester, a plastic. Each garment comes with 2 – 3 tags on average and atleast 2 labels.

Fast fashion in particular – through the continual buying of cheap clothing items and discarding after few uses – has taken plastic packaging pollution from the fashion industry to an unprecedented level. A 2020 report by WWF-SG highlights some very alarming facts and figures1: The fashion industry, globally, uses 180 billion polybags and 100 billion hangers each year. Of these, less than 15% of polybags are recycled, while 85% of hangers are discarded after a single use. In Singapore, consumers’ apparel purchases translated to about 190 million polybags – in one year.

The vast majority of this plastic packaging is single use and ends up almost exclusively in landfills and the world’s oceans. And since plastic does not degrade or breakdown, it remains there for thousands of years.

How can fashion’s plastic packaging pollution be stopped or atleast reduced?

The fashion industry will ultimately need to remove all single use plastic from its packaging. This, however, is a long and arduous journey, and one that is unlikely to be completed in the very near future. More realistic initial steps can include using mailer bags made of recycled plastic, using biodegradable poly mailers and not including hangers in purchases.