Role of Materials for Sustainable Fashion and Textile - Coursework Example

The Role of Materials for Sustainable Fashion and Textile Introduction Nowadays, materials play an emphatic role in our current understanding of fashion and textiles sustainability. This is because, the major objective of sustainability is to reap the maximum benefits from products and services by prolonging or extending their life prior throwing them away. Due to dynamism and altruism, fashion and textiles sustainability has everything to do with the role played by materials. Most fashion designers and textile designers are transforming this industry by considering recycling and reuse of fashion and textiles waste. Therefore, this paper will seek to explain the emphatic role played by materials in our current understanding of fashion and textiles sustainability. Reclaiming Cognitively, both fashion designers and textile designers help make clothes and soft furnishings using materials. The fluent growth of fashion and textile industries over the past years has resulted to continuous development of different types of materials essential for manufacturing clothes. Fashion and textiles are big business in most countries around the world, which regularly provide employment opportunities in large numbers and produce clothes in large quantities, which in turn generate millions of money. Agreeably, the interdependence between materials and fashion/textiles is a connection that creates a win-win situation for material manufacturers and fashion and textile designers. This paper will seek to discuss the role played by materials in our current understanding of what makes fashion and textiles sustainable (Cuc and Vidovic. 2011:108-110). Materials play an emphatic role in the fashion and textile industries respectively. Textile and fashion designers are like scientists or artists. This is because; materials and procedures they exploit while creating color, pattern and shape makes their work look like alchemy. However, their ability seen through turning recycled materials into aesthetically superb pleasing fabrics requires training and artistry. According to Mintel Online Fashion Report, those fashion and textile industries that made the most millions of money in the United Kingdom credited their success on materials. The report also elaborated that, most fashion and textile designers said that, it is the quality and value of materials that makes both fashion and textile industries sustainable, ethical and inclusive. In the recent years, the growth of fashion and textiles industries has not only transformed the role of materials they use, but also evolved both fashion and textile industries. Therefore, in order for designers of fashion and textiles to make enormous amounts of money out of their work, they must ensure they have the best type of materials that will ensure uniqueness, value, and class. This is because, apart from fashion and textile designers making plenty of money, there is also statement that they make using their designs. Designs such as emo, goth, punk, and retro fashion says very much about the person who is wearing it. Generally, fashion designers like to shout loudly while addressing ethics, attitude, and origin of their innovations and creations. According to fashion analysts, these designs cannot come up without the correct materials. Hence, it is clear that, without materials fashion and textiles cannot exist (Vidovic, and Ratkovic, 2010:246-252). Textile designers create lots of patterns for fabrics as well as materials used by fashion designers in making clothes. They also make patterns for furnishing, woven, printed, and knitted materials. Apparently, all these patterns created by textile designers have different properties of materials only understood by their designers since they employ several crafts coupled with production skills, strategies, and techniques that include embroidery, hand printing or block printing. As a result, materials play an emphatic role in the way we understand fashion and textile. Thus, in order to sustain the business, fashion designers and textile designers have a crucial task of choosing not just material, but the best material with the most outstanding properties essential for making distinctive fashion and textile products. This shows that, materials are the basic building block for our current understanding of fashion and textiles sustainability (Klose and Drexl, 2005:4-29). Environmental Sustainability Currently, the most burning issues relating to environmental problems arise from continuous increase in volumes of material production and consumption worldwide. Cognitively, manufacture and supply of goods correlates to natural resources such as raw and renewable materials. There are also other congruent requirements associated with production and essential for fashion and textiles such as energy, land, and water. Nonetheless, the accelerating growth of populations and ever-increasing urbanization are factors contributing to massive waste generation. These issues are mounting excessive pressure on environment and the possibility of containing the situation is steadily fading away. However, fashion designers and textile designers worldwide are making remarkable efforts to achieve environmental sustainability through recycling waste fashion, textile, and extending life of products before throwing them away. This is because, recycling programs is cheaper than waste disposal programs, provides employment, and is financially rewarding (Cuc and Vidovic. 2011:112). Recycling and Sustainable Development In USA, recycling activities sustained close to 56,000 operations employing more than 1.1 million people and consequently generated an annual payroll amounting to $ 37 billion. In addition, recycling grossed annual revenues surpassing $236 billion as well as providing indirect impact on recycling support industries such as supply firms and accounting companies. Agreeably, recycling activities comprise of many income-generating operations, which in turn promote sustainable development. Another study showed that, the reuse and recycling of waste fashion and textiles help people band together and build community depicting a sign of development and sustainability. According to environmental researchers, many countries are currently facing water scarcity due to over consumption of water in industrial purposes and agricultural activities. Moreover, companies are using huge amounts of energy in the manufacture of products. Unlike in other circumstances, recycling of waste fashion and textiles conserves the environment, saves energy since manufacturing new products uses less energy compared to manufacturing raw materials, and saves natural gas. Significantly, recycling of waste fashion and textiles helps achieve both financial and environmental sustainability (Cuc and Vidovic. 2011:113-114). Textile Recycling Finally, recent study shows that, sustained environmental development has become a constituent part of economic policies. As world’s population continues to grow, the level of worldwide environmental issues continue to rise steadily. As a result, the recent place of unwanted and wasted items in contemporary fashion design is in recycling industries. This is because, the rising awareness concerning eco-fashion is stressing on recycling of unwanted fashion and textiles due to environmental reasons. Recycling conserves environment that provides humans with natural resources that include natural gas, water, and oil. From a sustainability perspective, recycling of waste fashion and textiles reduces the amount of land used in textile production hence preventing future land related conflicts. In Europe, fashion, design, and textiles account to rough a third of the total market share. Worldwide, textiles and fashion have a relevant place in the industrial landscape since these sectors provide large numbers of employment opportunities and distinguished turnover (Cuc and Vidovic. 2011:115). Conclusion In conclusion, there are benefits associated with materials’ role in fashion and aspects defining textiles sustainability. The emphatic role-played by materials in fashion and textiles sustainability highlights solutions to numerous environmental problems. In addition, it also highlights the current role materials play in developing the country’s economy. Thereby, these advantages draws our current understanding of the role played by materials in this industry since we currently quantify material benefits through potential ecological effects and economical impacts of textiles and fashion waste recycling. Presumably, this paper has given all the insights regarding the emphatic role played by materials in our current understanding of fashion and textiles sustainability. Bibliography Cuc and Vidovic. 2011. Environmental sustainability through clothing recycling operations and supply chain management.ent 4 (2/3) pp108-115. Klose, A. and Drexl. A. 2005. Facility location models for distribution system design. European journal of operational research, 162, pp. 4-29. Vidovic, M., and Ratkovic, B. 2010. A multi level approach to sitting textiles waste treatment resources, annals of the Oradea University. “Fascicle of textile- Leatherwork”, issued on proceedings on CD-ROM of International Sceintific “Innovative solutios for sustainable development of textiles industry”, Oradea Romania, 28-30 May 2010, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 246-252. Read More