Christmas jumpers are fuelling a global eco disaster

Fast fashion is one of the world’s biggest contributors to climate change and our buying habits have resulted in huge textile dumps in the deserts of Chile

Women search for used clothes amid tons discarded in the Atacama desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile. Picture: Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images

You may have seen images over the last few weeks of the Atacama Desert in Chile where unwanted clothes are dumped and left to rot very slowly in one of the driest places on earth.

These clothes, some 59,000 tonnes of them each year, arrive at Iquique port in the northern part of the country from Europe, the USA, and Asia.

Some are bought by shops and sellers to be sold around Chile and other parts of Latin America but at least 39,000 tonnes of them that cannot be resold end up in dumps in the desert.

The pictures and videos shared online show huge piles of clothes, some you might recognise from high street stores here, lying discarded in the sun and being picked through by the Venezuelan migrants who comb the desert dumps.

Much of the clothing is either synthetic or treated with chemicals and can take up to 200 years to biodegrade. As they do so they release chemicals and cause fires that pollute the air and underground water channels.

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There is every type of clothing imaginable here and in between the summer dresses and unworn jeans are the twinkling sparkles of Christmas jumpers.

In 2019, research released by environmental charity Hubbub showed that the festive sweaters were one of the worst examples of fast fashion.

Nobody is saying not to don the jumper but don't just wear it once.

Two out of five Christmas jumpers are only worn once over the festive period and yet they’re still bought in their millions each year. 

The charity's research also looked into 108 jumpers available from 11 different high street retailers and found that 95% of them were made wholly or partly of plastic materials.

The most common plastic fibre used is acrylic which was found in three quarters of the jumpers tested, with 44% of them made entirely from that fabric. That makes the typical Christmas jumper likely to add to the issue of plastic pollution in our oceans.

A study by Plymouth University found that acrylic was responsible for releasing nearly 730,000 microfibres per wash, five times more than a polyester-cotton blend fabric and nearly 1.5 times as many as pure polyester.

Sarah Divall, project co-ordinator with Hubbub, said: "W e don’t want to stop people dressing up and having a great time at Christmas, but there are so many ways to do this without buying new.

“Fast fashion is a major threat to the natural world and Christmas jumpers are particularly problematic as so many contain plastic.

We’d urge people to swap, buy second-hand or re-wear and remember a jumper is for life, not just for Christmas.

Of course, the Atacama Desert isn’t just filled with Christmas jumpers and it’s not the only place where fast fashion is dumped. 

According to Oxfam Ireland, Irish people dump 225,000 tonnes of clothing every year — a huge waste of water and energy considering that it would take 13 years to drink the amount of water needed to make one T-shirt and one pair of jeans.

The fashion industry makes up between 8% and 10% of all global carbon emissions and nearly 20% of wastewater.

And while the environmental footprint of flying is often discussed and you can pay to offset your flights, fashion actually uses more energy than both aviation and shipping combined.

Some 57% of all discarded clothing ends up in landfill and shockingly that includes unworn items that you may have sent back through a free returns service.

With online sales increasing dramatically over the course of the pandemic, free returns are turning out to be problematic for both the environment and the retailers.

While an average bricks and mortar store can expect returns in the single digits, online stores have return rates between 15% and 30%.

In 2019, a quarter of all fashion items bought online were returned, for in-store purchases that figure is less than 10%. In the US last year, retailers took back more than $100bn in online purchases.

Massive carbon footprint

There is a huge carbon footprint involved in returns that zip across countries but even starker than that is that fact that at least 10% of online returns are incinerated or end up in landfill.

The manpower, time, and cost of putting returned items back on sale is often too great for a company to spend and it is easier and more cost-effective (to them) to simply discard the returns.

Rebound Returns, a third-party reverse logistics company which deals with up to 40 million returns a year, saw its global volumes increase by 63% during the pandemic.

Free returns were initially seen as a way to entice customers new to online shopping but has become an industry norm that is crippling a lot of retailers. 

It is often fed by the demand for immediacy that goes hand in hand with fast fashion. That need for newness right now is, some believe, a by-product of social media where we’re being constantly sold to.

Longford-born journalist and editor turned sustainability entrepreneur, Anne-Marie Tomchak believes that there is a social cost to the constant newness of fashion that we see on Instagram and TikTok.

“I’m personally of the view that the advertising model around social media is contributing to climate change because it has led to the acceleration of fast fashion. The algorithm is serving you.

“We are used to an instantaneous world where we’re gratified straightaway.

I think there is a direct correlation between the ad model on social media and the rise of consumption, and consumerism.

“I think the other thing we must remember is that anything that you get very cheaply, comes with a cost. There’s some kind of a social cost or environmental cost to that.

“It’s either been overproduced, and there’s all this extra deadstock that needs to be shifted. It’s not being produced in terms of supply and demand, it’s being produced to create extra demand so that that can be then supplied to or people have been exploited along the way.

“It makes us very uncomfortable to think about these things. It’s a bit of an uncomfortable reality, and I don’t know if people are quite ready, or ever will be ready to really look into that mirror and see what that represents.”

Tipperary based fashion designer Heidi Higgins agrees. She changed her business model just before the pandemic hit when she closed her physical store and moved her business entirely online.

Heidi Higgins: Changed her business model just before Covid hit.

She now operates on a made-to-order model where the item you purchase is made after the sale. It means that she is not left with stock at the end of a season and in fact doesn’t need to adhere to the traditional fashion seasons at all. It’s a model that is working well for her.

Her clients are happy to wait the two weeks it takes for a garment to be hand produced and know that they’re buying something unique, Irish and made to last.

“Even when you see a T-shirt for just a few euro it’s like you’re taking part in a criminal activity. You just know that it’s so wrong.

“How can it be that it’s €5 for such something that you know has come all the way from China, you know something has happened somewhere along the chain that allows it to be sold for so little.

“I think that the respect for the craft of making a garment has been lost. We all appreciate the art of making a good coffee these days and are happy to queue for it to be made in front of us with skill and this type of appreciation needs to be brought into fashion.

Fast fashion or not, a garment still needs to be cut and sewn together!

“It’s just the educational side of it for people. The more we all understand and start to change our spending habits the more the big brands will hopefully change. I’m glad to be doing it my way and I know I’m not going to change the world but I’m very happy to do my part.”

Another Irish designer doing her part is Faye Anna Rochford who owns the Wexford based FéRí label. As well as designing truly beautiful clothes, Faye is committed to creating them in a sustainable way.

She uses two types of fabric, hand printed organic fabrics produced in small quantities and dead stock and vintage fabrics.

Men work at a factory that recycles used clothes discarded in the Atacama desert.

Deadstock is fabric that hasn’t been able to sell or is left over from a company who ordered too much or can even be pieces left over from cutting.

For Faye, sustainable fabrics and design models are important but not as much as changing the way that people buy.

“I think that the content of fabric is obviously really important especially when you look at those photos from Chile and know that it’s 90% synthetic fabrics that are just going to take years and years to decompose.

"But the ultimate thing for me is that people start buying pieces that they really love.

"Clothing has become so cheap. I could double or triple my fabric orders and get my prices down but they’re never going to be really, really cheap and you’re paying for more than the fabric.

People can’t afford to buy 10 or 15 garments that are a couple of hundred euro but they can if they’re €5 or €10 and it all adds up.

Faye would like to see a change in how we see our clothes and who makes them.

“A lot of the time people are just buying stuff that they think they need immediately without putting any kind of value on it.

“In the past, we would have put deposits on pieces that we really loved, thought about them for weeks and then eventually gone in to buy them. But now it’s just buy, buy, buy.”

She questions the value of free returns and only offers them on her own site if there’s a fault and has had discussions with platforms where her clothes are sold about the ethics of offering them.

“I’m with a retail platform where they do free returns and I’ve actually questioned them about it. They do worldwide delivery and there’s a footprint to get pieces over and back from all over the world.”

But as we approach Christmas and are asked to wear festive jumpers for charity initiatives or office drinks or Zooms how can we take part in a more sustainable way?

Hubbub suggests making your own using a sweatshirt or jumper you already have, you can check your local charity shops for ones that are new to you (and don’t forget to donate your own pre-loved jumper).

Sustainable sources

Or you can buy from a sustainable source like All Things Fiona Lily in Donegal, a slow fashion brand that has gained a massive online following for their sustainable Christmas jumpers.

Fiona McIntyre buys deadstock from British and Irish websites to make her witty collections. She has saved over 10,000 units from landfill since she started her business.

And what about those desert dumps in Chile. Some entrepreneurs are trying to put the tonnes of textile waste to better use.

EcoFibra is using it to make thermal insulation panels, while Ecocitex is a social enterprise that recycles them into yarn and sells it through more than 250 women-led businesses across Chile.

There are steps in the right direction, but they are baby steps.

Christmas is a consumerist holiday but this year, before you buy from the high street, shop your own wardrobe or buy from an Irish business putting design, craft, and sustainability first.

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