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Comment by softwaredoug

10 days ago

Fashion production is responsible for 8-10% of all carbon emissions

https://www.ifc.org/en/insights-reports/2023/strengthening-s...

17 comments

softwaredoug

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throw3e98  10 days ago

And in pre-industrial societies, peasants (almost entirely women, ranging from children to the elderly) commonly spent around 100 hours of labor to produce a single square yard of fabric to clothe their families (fabric was too expensive for peasants to buy, so most spun it at home).

So yeah, considering how necessary fabric is to human life, that isn't a terribly surprising figure.

Citation for the 100-ish hours: https://acoup.blog/2025/09/26/collections-life-work-death-an...

peterfirefly  10 days ago

Fashion? No, absolutely not. Textiles in general? Maybe, but almost certainly not.

This is the actual quote on the page you cite:

"Today, the combined textile and apparel sectors contribute as much as 8–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions."

Notice the unusual way they spell "fashion"...

  • throw3e98  10 days ago

    Right, textiles are much bigger than fashion - bedding, furniture upholstery, curtains, some types of shelter, practical items like footwear, protective equipment, medical equipment and dressings, vehicle interiors... pretty much all aspects of human life depend on textiles. It ain't just cheap t shirts and dresses.

Sol-  10 days ago

Cheap clothing is a civilizational achievement and good for human welfare.

So carbon emissions are bad, but then we should price carbon and not micromanage clothing inventory.

  • nicbou  10 days ago

    Clothing everyone is an achievement, but fast fashion is overshooting that target.

    A bit like feeding everyone vs. having an obesity crisis.

  • 1718627440  10 days ago

    Getting common goods less expensive is good, making them too cheap is not. Imagine you are optimizing a math model, but nothing actually has prices. You just get a garbage point as optimum. You need to have scarcity, so that a system that optimizes the allocation of scarce goods actually works.

  • 8note  10 days ago

    is it actually?

    i think its made people less independent than when we could maintain and produce our own textiles, and treat them well. Now we're dependent on markets and slave labour