"The price of a t-shirt, how would you know, Ramesh Babu? " And I'm not talking about how much money it costs. Watch this video carefully.
The country Chile in South America, has the world's driest desert in the North, the Atacama Desert. It hasn't rained for years. Once, it hadn't rained for 400 years.
Some parts of this desert are so dry, that it seems out of this world, as if it were some other planet. NASA tests its Mars rover here. But if you look at this desert from satellite images, you will find something strange.
You will see mountains of clothes in the sand. Thousands of tons of clothes are lying in the desert. An almost lifeless desert.
What are millions of clothes doing here? The answer to this is fast fashion. An industry that makes cheap, mass-produced, low-quality clothes.
An industry that brainwashes the public into buying new clothes every month. This is eating up our planet Earth. Just so that some billionaires can earn more profit.
The story begins in a small town in Spain, A Coruña. In 1975, a man named Amancio Ortega opened his first store called Zara. His idea was simple.
To make fashion fast. At that time, there were two seasons in the fashion industry. Summer clothes and winter clothes.
It took 6 months for a new design to reach the stores. But Zara changed the whole system. Amancio created a model where a new design could reach the store in 15 days.
In a year, 52 micro-seasons were introduced. This meant, new collection of clothes every week. Whenever customers came to the store, they would find something new.
This created an urgency that if they didn't buy it now, the design would be gone by next week. Obviously, the sales increased. People started buying more clothes.
And this model made Zara the world's largest fashion brand. Later, other companies joined it. H&M, Primark, Forever 21, all copied this model.
And it was named Fast Fashion. The concept was simple. According to current trends, making cheap clothes in bulk as soon as possible.
But this was just the beginning. The real game changer was China's Shein Company. Shein.
Sheen uses a software that, analyses millions of images, videos, and searches, to identify in real-time which design will be a hit or a flop. And orders are placed according to that. Using technology, Shein has made fast fashion ultra-fast fashion.
It takes only 3 days for the company to reach from design to ready-to-sell. And every day, 2,000 to 10,000 new styles are added here. The number of new designs Zara launches in a year, Shein does it within a week.
As a result, every year, 100 to 150 billion clothes are made. This number is so big, that there's 14 pieces of clothing for every person in the world. Do you understand what this means?
I might not have worn 14 new t-shirts over the last 10 years, but the world's clothing supply is so high, that every person in the world, can wear 14 new clothes in a year. "We are a society that likes to shop. " "I have a problem.
" "Oh my goodness, there's so much. " Today, there are so many clothes in the world that they are enough for the next 6 generations. But do you know how many times these clothes are worn?
On average, one piece of clothing is worn only 7-10 times. And then, it is thrown away. We are not talking only about countries like America.
In India too, 41% of clothes are thrown away after using it once or twice. But the biggest question here is, are people doing it on their own, or are they being forced to do it? Fast fashion companies have used psychology to turn shopping into an addiction.
First of all, FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out. People have this perception in their minds, that if they don't buy anything new every micro-season, they won't be part of the trend, and they will miss out. Then comes the dopamine factor.
When you see something online that you like, dopamine is released in the brain. This is exactly the mechanism that works in gambling, social media, and drug addiction. "According to analysis provided by the facial tracking company, Inviso, she is on a shopping high.
" When we get something for a low price, it gives us even more pleasure. According to Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist from Stanford University, the internet has made simple things like shopping, into something like a drug. It activates reward pathways like drugs and alcohol.
By throwing money at the social media influencers and ads, a culture is created that celebrates overconsumption. TikTok has 25 billion views on the hashtag Shein. A new category has been created for haul videos, in which influencers sit in front of the camera, unbox 10-15 clothes, and model them.
These aren't organic videos. Companies like Shein send free clothes to small influencers and ask them to make haul content in return. Influencers don't think to much about this.
It's an easy video, they have to wear those clothes, in return for free clothes. What better opportunity would there be? But through thousands of videos like this, overconsumption is glamorised.
Today, in India alone, 72% Gen Z shoppers take shopping inspiration from creators. The most toxic thing about this culture is that wearing the same clothes again is seen as a form of shame. It is an insult.
In Britain, one in three young women think that the clothes they wear once or twice, are old. And one in seven women believe that taking a photo in the same outfit on multiple occasions is shameful. This mentality has been completely normalised on social media.
Once an outfit has been posted, it cannot be repeated again. This culture did not come up by itself. A large amount of money has been invested into creating it.
The book, Consumer Engineering, from 1932, written by the well-known American advertisers, talks about artificial obsolescence. How things can be sold to consumers before they've used their new things properly. Why would you want to use the handbag from last year, when this year's handbag is more attractive?
To attract people, fashion magazines were created, in which celebrities wore new clothes every month. People gradually began to realise that wearing the same clothes repeatedly is a bad thing. New trends emerge.
And you need to keep up with the trends. You need to wear the clothes that are in trend. This has led to the creation of industries.
People are advising today, that this is the trend of the summers in 2026. This will be the trend of the winters in 2026. One influencer has literally told the truth in this article, that they get paid for every post, to wear new clothes.
So why would they wear the same clothes? The entire culture was made and promoted by these companies. Just like it was done with diamonds.
If you remember my video on diamonds, the line "Diamonds Are Forever," where diamonds are marketted to last a lifetime, "Diamonds are forever. " The whole thing was a marketing campaign by diamond companies. People were shown that if they were getting engaged, they need to gift a diamond ring.
By giving money to celebrities, by publishing it in magazines, by propagating this through the news. If you want to know more about that, watch the video on diamonds. But, this happened in the fast fashion industry as well.
And because of this, people are buying more clothes than they need. This doesn't affect your pocket alone, it affects your health too. Today, 60% of clothes are made of plastic.
Polyester, nylon, acrylic, all of these are plastic. When you wash such clothes in a washing machine, in a single wash, 700,000 to 6 million micro-fibers of plastics are released. These are called micro-plastics.
These are very small pieces of plastic. Smaller than 5 mm. So one thing is certain, you should stay away from these plastic materials.
You should not buy their clothes. But the question is, which material is the best for clothes? To answer this exact question, I have made this free PDF guide for you.
In which, 28 clothes are ranked. They are all scored from the perspective of the environment and health. So that you can easily know the benefits and losses of the material.
Plus, in this fabric scorecard guide, I have told you which symbols you should keep in mind when buying clothes. Which marks show the quality, and which are just marketing terms So don think too much It is 100 free to download It is available in and Hindi The link is in the description below And you can get it in the pinned comment Now let learn more about microplastics They are so small that even water treatment plants are unable to filter them. They go straight into our rivers and oceans.
According to a study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the clothes made of plastic are the biggest source of microplastic pollution. they are responsible for about 35% pollution. And about 5 lakh tons of microplastic fibres go into the ocean every year from laundry.
Do you know how big this number is? It's equal to 3 billion polyester shirts, or 50 billion plastic bottles. These microplastics don't just live in the ocean.
Scientists have found them in human lung tissue, blood, liver, kidneys, stomach, human breast milk, and even the placenta of unborn babies. Because of this fast fashion industry, plastic has reached your blood. Microplastics can cause oxidative damage, DNA damage, and genetic changes.
Although not much research has been done on it, but it has been found to be linked to cancer. It's not just the environmental damage caused by the polyester or plastic clothes. In Central Asia, between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, there is the Aral Sea.
which was the world's fourth largest lake. It had 24 species of fish, thriving fishing communities, green forests, but today, it's a desert. Carcinogenic dust flows from here to the villages.
It spreads throat cancer and tuberculosis. And the reason behind all this is cotton. All the water in the Aral Sea was diverted for cotton farming in Uzbekistan.
which has made this place a desert today. You might wonder, is this much water really needed for cotton farming? , making a single cotton t-shirt costs 2,700 liters of water.
Which can fill a person's need for drinking water for 2. 5 years. Making a pair of jeans takes about 7,500 liters of water.
Which is enough for a person to live for 7 years. And the water used, returns to the rivers as poison, due to pesticides and industrial pollution. Do you know that 20% of the world's global industrial water pollution only comes from the fashion industry.
Tamil Nadu's Tirupur city, is India's largest ready-made garment export centre. But its value? Here, the water level in this city, is dropping by 15 meters every year.
The Noyal River, which used to be a clean water source, has become a toxic sewer today. Because clothes factories have been releasing crores of litres of waste water directly into this river for years. Due to this toxic waste water, the land in the 2 km radius of the river has become barren.
and the groundwater has also been contaminated. In 2011, Madras High Court ordered to close these factories. But the locals say that these factories still spill chemical waste in the rivers during the night or during the rain.
And Tirupur is not alone. The pink chemical foam seen in the Yamuna River near Delhi, is due to the phosphates of textile waste water. The Valdhuni River near Mumbai, is red due to the waste of textile dyes.
And the fast fashion is not limited to water pollution alone. the fashion industry produces 8-10% of global carbon emissions. The amount of waste and the proportion of carbon pollution that comes from the fashion industry is extraordinary.
It's about 10% of global carbon emissions. This number is even higher than international flights and maritime shipping. According to the environmental organization Stand.
Earth, today, this single company, is emitting as much carbon pollution as Lebanon every year Think about it because of one single company the carbon emissions are as emissions as the entire country And so far I have only talked about the losses caused by the making of clothes What's next? What about the clothes that are dumped into waste? Let's come back to Atikama, which I talked about in the beginning of the video.
Where waste clothes are found in the mountains. Every year, 9. 2 crore tons of textile waste is produced from the clothes that are used and not sold in the world.
is equal to the weight of a truck every second. Imagine a truck in front of your road, and the truckload of waste is dumped there. Every second.
87% of all this waste is either dumped or burned in the landfill. Only 12% is recycled. And that too for low-grade uses like insulation or rags.
Less than 1% of the old clothes waste is used to make new clothes. Many clothes are sent to poor countries for second-hand use. Like the Atacama Desert in Chile.
But no one wears them there. The supply of waste is so high, that it is dumped in the desert. Every year, 39,000 tons of clothes are dumped in the desert.
The synthetic materials of these clothes will not decompose for 200 years. And when they are set on fire, toxic smoke will come out of the desert, which can make people very sick. There's a similar location in Africa, Ghana.
Where second-hand clothes are called obroni wawu. It means dead white man's clothes. The clothes of dead white men.
This name was given because the people of Ghana didn't understand why would someone throw away so many clothes until they died. In Ghana's capital, Accra, there's a market called Canta Manto. It's one of the world's largest markets for second-hand clothes.
Every week, 1. 5 crore clothes are sold in this market. But around 40% of the clothes are of such poor quality that they are not worth wearing.
We reach the Chorkor beach of Accra. Here, a 6 feet high layer of clothing has been formed. It is so solid that it has been used as a hut.
Thousands of people live in it. But the problem is that 89% of the material in this waste is made of synthetic fibre. That is, plastic.
This means that it won't decompose for hundreds of years. Like Ghana, in Cambodia, leading brands like Nike, Ralph Lauren, and Next, have so much waste that they burn it and use it as a fire. In India too, Western countries have second-hand clothes in shipping containers.
Some of which are used and the rest are dumped. So think about it. Next time you go to a shop and buy a T-shirt for Rs.
300, keep in mind what its actual price is. How many rivers have been turned into sewers for that T-shirt? How many mountains have been made of clothes in deserts?
And how much damage has been done to the environment? The United Nations has declared fast fashion environmental and social emergency. The good news is that some countries have started taking this problem seriously.
Last year, France passed the first anti-fast fashion law in the world. According to the ecological score, this law charges 5 euros per item for fast fashion products. The European Union has also banned the destruction of unsold clothes.
Because many clothing companies deliberately destroy their unsold clothes. So that people would have FOMO in their minds. If they don't buy it now, they won't get it again.
And why won't they get it again? Not because the rest of the people will buy it. But because these companies will destroy their own unsold clothes.
Along with this, in the coming years, the European Union is preparing to bring digital product passports. In which every piece of clothing will have its complete environmental history. Where this cloth is made, how the material is used what impact it will have on the environment all these things will be reflected in one place This law will be in force in the EU from next year 2027 But on an individual level, we don't need to wait for the government to take action.
There are many things that we can do ourselves, from now on. The first and the simplest thing, buy clothes only when you need them. This may seem obvious, but if you think about it honestly, out of the last 10 purchases, How many actual things have you bought that you needed?
And how many things have you bought that were impulse buys? For this, there's a simple 30-wear test rule, that you can follow. Before buying any clothes, ask yourself, will you wear this at least 30 times?
If you feel that you won't wear it that much, then there's no need to buy it. Second, normalize outfit repeating. The idea that you can't wear the same clothes again.
is a completely manufactured idea. It was created by Instagram and TikTok, and by fast fashion companies, and by influencers and celebrities. In real life, it doesn't matter whether you are wearing the same clothes again or not.
It's true that some people make fun of me on the internet, that I wear the same t-shirts again and again. But it shouldn't matter, because I know that I am doing the right thing. If you watch my 5-6 years old vlogs, or any of my old videos, you will see that I am always wearing the same T-shirts.
Because I keep using these T-shirts until they are completely torn. That's why I still have many clothes in my wardrobe, that are 12-15 years old, and I still wear them. Third, buy the clothes that you are buying.
Care for them. Wash them well, repair them, and run them for a long time. No torn button, small stitching, or loose fitting, is the end of any clothes.
Go to a local tailor and get it repaired. The record of a big misconception is that once they wear clothes, they have to wash them. Shirts and jackets are not needed to be washed after every use.
If there is no dust in the clean air, one can wear jeans for a week without washing. The clothes should be washed according to the need. Now, what is the best material for buying clothes?
I would like to give some advice on this. Because on one hand, there are clothes made of fossil fuels, plastic. It contains polyester, acrylic, nylon.
These release microplastics. and how harmful microplastics are, and how much pollution they are spreading in the environment. I have already told you about that.
But on the other hand, cotton. And cotton, as you saw, consumes a lot of water. And toxic waste is polluting its rivers.
So the question is, which material is best here? I rank it in different tiers. First is Tier C, which is the most useless.
It contains all your plastic materials. Then comes Tier B, where I will place cotton. In Tier B, you can also add recycled polyester.
Because recycled polyester clothes are slightly better to use. Because they don't use as much fossil fuel directly as the original plastic. Other than this, the material of traditional viscose will also be in this category.
Because to make it, the jungles are cut down. The old rainforests are cut down. Then comes Tier A, which is actually a good category.
It has organic cotton. Normal cotton spreads a lot of pollution. but organic cotton does not use pesticides.
It does not use toxic fertilizers. So organic cotton is better. In the same way, it has organic wool and organic silk.
Even alpaca, found in South America, the wool of these clothes is environmentally friendly. Another popular material in this category is Lycosel. Also known as Tencel.
Tencel is made of wood pulp and releases very little waste But above all these materials there is the category of Tier S Which includes recycled cotton or recycled wool Because in the case of recycling there is no need to farm, so the water consumption and waste water, gets eliminated in this case. But there are two other materials in this category. First, organic linen.
The whole plant is used to make linen. It doesn't require much water, and it is easily biodegradable. And above all, there is organic hemp.
The special thing about hemp is that it uses almost negligible water. It doesn't need pesticides. It regenerates soil.
It is a very durable material and biodegradable. Moreover, it yields a lot per acre while growing. So the clothes made from it use very little soil.
From almost every criteria, it is the best material for clothes. But the problem is that it is not easily available in India. Now, you want to know which materials are easily available, but are also good for the environment and health, you can download the free PDF guide for the Fabric Scorecard below.
The link is pinned in the comments below. And share this guide with your family and. It has explained in-depth about the good and bad of a material.
If judged based on different criteria. I just want you to remember all these things when you buy clothes next time. Remember that we are more than 3 crore people connected to this channel.
If we collectively, and implemented all these small things, then think about it, how much impact will it have on the Earth, on environmental pollution, and on all people. Together, we can change this psychology. We can end these fashion trends.
And lead people on the right path. If you liked this video, then do watch this one too. Thank you very much!
"The price of a t-shirt, how would you know, Ramesh Babu? " And I'm not talking about how much money it costs. Watch this video carefully.
The country Chile in South America, has the world's driest desert in the North, the Atacama Desert. It hasn't rained for years. Once, it hadn't rained for 400 years.
Some parts of this desert are so dry, that it seems out of this world, as if it were some other planet. NASA tests its Mars rover here. But if you look at this desert from satellite images, you will find something strange.
You will see mountains of clothes in the sand. Thousands of tons of clothes are lying in the desert. An almost lifeless desert.
What are millions of clothes doing here? The answer to this is fast fashion. An industry that makes cheap, mass-produced, low-quality clothes.
An industry that brainwashes the public into buying new clothes every month. This is eating up our planet Earth. Just so that some billionaires can earn more profit.
The story begins in a small town in Spain, A Coruña. In 1975, a man named Amancio Ortega opened his first store called Zara. His idea was simple.
To make fashion fast. At that time, there were two seasons in the fashion industry. Summer clothes and winter clothes.
It took 6 months for a new design to reach the stores. But Zara changed the whole system. Amancio created a model where a new design could reach the store in 15 days.
In a year, 52 micro-seasons were introduced. This meant, new collection of clothes every week. Whenever customers came to the store, they would find something new.
This created an urgency that if they didn't buy it now, the design would be gone by next week. Obviously, the sales increased. People started buying more clothes.
And this model made Zara the world's largest fashion brand. Later, other companies joined it. H&M, Primark, Forever 21, all copied this model.
And it was named Fast Fashion. The concept was simple. According to current trends, making cheap clothes in bulk as soon as possible.
But this was just the beginning. The real game changer was China's Shein Company. Shein.
Sheen uses a software that, analyses millions of images, videos, and searches, to identify in real-time which design will be a hit or a flop. And orders are placed according to that. Using technology, Shein has made fast fashion ultra-fast fashion.
It takes only 3 days for the company to reach from design to ready-to-sell. And every day, 2,000 to 10,000 new styles are added here. The number of new designs Zara launches in a year, Shein does it within a week.
As a result, every year, 100 to 150 billion clothes are made. This number is so big, that there's 14 pieces of clothing for every person in the world. Do you understand what this means?
I might not have worn 14 new t-shirts over the last 10 years, but the world's clothing supply is so high, that every person in the world, can wear 14 new clothes in a year. "We are a society that likes to shop. " "I have a problem.
" "Oh my goodness, there's so much. " Today, there are so many clothes in the world that they are enough for the next 6 generations. But do you know how many times these clothes are worn?
On average, one piece of clothing is worn only 7-10 times. And then, it is thrown away. We are not talking only about countries like America.
In India too, 41% of clothes are thrown away after using it once or twice. But the biggest question here is, are people doing it on their own, or are they being forced to do it? Fast fashion companies have used psychology to turn shopping into an addiction.
First of all, FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out. People have this perception in their minds, that if they don't buy anything new every micro-season, they won't be part of the trend, and they will miss out. Then comes the dopamine factor.
When you see something online that you like, dopamine is released in the brain. This is exactly the mechanism that works in gambling, social media, and drug addiction. "According to analysis provided by the facial tracking company, Inviso, she is on a shopping high.
" When we get something for a low price, it gives us even more pleasure. According to Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist from Stanford University, the internet has made simple things like shopping, into something like a drug. It activates reward pathways like drugs and alcohol.
By throwing money at the social media influencers and ads, a culture is created that celebrates overconsumption. TikTok has 25 billion views on the hashtag Shein. A new category has been created for haul videos, in which influencers sit in front of the camera, unbox 10-15 clothes, and model them.
These aren't organic videos. Companies like Shein send free clothes to small influencers and ask them to make haul content in return. Influencers don't think to much about this.
It's an easy video, they have to wear those clothes, in return for free clothes. What better opportunity would there be? But through thousands of videos like this, overconsumption is glamorised.
Today, in India alone, 72% Gen Z shoppers take shopping inspiration from creators. The most toxic thing about this culture is that wearing the same clothes again is seen as a form of shame. It is an insult.
In Britain, one in three young women think that the clothes they wear once or twice, are old. And one in seven women believe that taking a photo in the same outfit on multiple occasions is shameful. This mentality has been completely normalised on social media.
Once an outfit has been posted, it cannot be repeated again. This culture did not come up by itself. A large amount of money has been invested into creating it.
The book, Consumer Engineering, from 1932, written by the well-known American advertisers, talks about artificial obsolescence. How things can be sold to consumers before they've used their new things properly. Why would you want to use the handbag from last year, when this year's handbag is more attractive?
To attract people, fashion magazines were created, in which celebrities wore new clothes every month. People gradually began to realise that wearing the same clothes repeatedly is a bad thing. New trends emerge.
And you need to keep up with the trends. You need to wear the clothes that are in trend. This has led to the creation of industries.
People are advising today, that this is the trend of the summers in 2026. This will be the trend of the winters in 2026. One influencer has literally told the truth in this article, that they get paid for every post, to wear new clothes.
So why would they wear the same clothes? The entire culture was made and promoted by these companies. Just like it was done with diamonds.
If you remember my video on diamonds, the line "Diamonds Are Forever," where diamonds are marketted to last a lifetime, "Diamonds are forever. " The whole thing was a marketing campaign by diamond companies. People were shown that if they were getting engaged, they need to gift a diamond ring.
By giving money to celebrities, by publishing it in magazines, by propagating this through the news. If you want to know more about that, watch the video on diamonds. But, this happened in the fast fashion industry as well.
And because of this, people are buying more clothes than they need. This doesn't affect your pocket alone, it affects your health too. Today, 60% of clothes are made of plastic.
Polyester, nylon, acrylic, all of these are plastic. When you wash such clothes in a washing machine, in a single wash, 700,000 to 6 million micro-fibers of plastics are released. These are called micro-plastics.
These are very small pieces of plastic. Smaller than 5 mm. So one thing is certain, you should stay away from these plastic materials.
You should not buy their clothes. But the question is, which material is the best for clothes? To answer this exact question, I have made this free PDF guide for you.
In which, 28 clothes are ranked. They are all scored from the perspective of the environment and health. So that you can easily know the benefits and losses of the material.
Plus, in this fabric scorecard guide, I have told you which symbols you should keep in mind when buying clothes. Which marks show the quality, and which are just marketing terms So don think too much It is 100 free to download It is available in and Hindi The link is in the description below And you can get it in the pinned comment Now let learn more about microplastics They are so small that even water treatment plants are unable to filter them. They go straight into our rivers and oceans.
According to a study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the clothes made of plastic are the biggest source of microplastic pollution. they are responsible for about 35% pollution. And about 5 lakh tons of microplastic fibres go into the ocean every year from laundry.
Do you know how big this number is? It's equal to 3 billion polyester shirts, or 50 billion plastic bottles. These microplastics don't just live in the ocean.
Scientists have found them in human lung tissue, blood, liver, kidneys, stomach, human breast milk, and even the placenta of unborn babies. Because of this fast fashion industry, plastic has reached your blood. Microplastics can cause oxidative damage, DNA damage, and genetic changes.
Although not much research has been done on it, but it has been found to be linked to cancer. It's not just the environmental damage caused by the polyester or plastic clothes. In Central Asia, between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, there is the Aral Sea.
which was the world's fourth largest lake. It had 24 species of fish, thriving fishing communities, green forests, but today, it's a desert. Carcinogenic dust flows from here to the villages.
It spreads throat cancer and tuberculosis. And the reason behind all this is cotton. All the water in the Aral Sea was diverted for cotton farming in Uzbekistan.
which has made this place a desert today. You might wonder, is this much water really needed for cotton farming? , making a single cotton t-shirt costs 2,700 liters of water.
Which can fill a person's need for drinking water for 2. 5 years. Making a pair of jeans takes about 7,500 liters of water.
Which is enough for a person to live for 7 years. And the water used, returns to the rivers as poison, due to pesticides and industrial pollution. Do you know that 20% of the world's global industrial water pollution only comes from the fashion industry.
Tamil Nadu's Tirupur city, is India's largest ready-made garment export centre. But its value? Here, the water level in this city, is dropping by 15 meters every year.
The Noyal River, which used to be a clean water source, has become a toxic sewer today. Because clothes factories have been releasing crores of litres of waste water directly into this river for years. Due to this toxic waste water, the land in the 2 km radius of the river has become barren.
and the groundwater has also been contaminated. In 2011, Madras High Court ordered to close these factories. But the locals say that these factories still spill chemical waste in the rivers during the night or during the rain.
And Tirupur is not alone. The pink chemical foam seen in the Yamuna River near Delhi, is due to the phosphates of textile waste water. The Valdhuni River near Mumbai, is red due to the waste of textile dyes.
And the fast fashion is not limited to water pollution alone. the fashion industry produces 8-10% of global carbon emissions. The amount of waste and the proportion of carbon pollution that comes from the fashion industry is extraordinary.
It's about 10% of global carbon emissions. This number is even higher than international flights and maritime shipping. According to the environmental organization Stand.
Earth, today, this single company, is emitting as much carbon pollution as Lebanon every year Think about it because of one single company the carbon emissions are as emissions as the entire country And so far I have only talked about the losses caused by the making of clothes What's next? What about the clothes that are dumped into waste? Let's come back to Atikama, which I talked about in the beginning of the video.
Where waste clothes are found in the mountains. Every year, 9. 2 crore tons of textile waste is produced from the clothes that are used and not sold in the world.
is equal to the weight of a truck every second. Imagine a truck in front of your road, and the truckload of waste is dumped there. Every second.
87% of all this waste is either dumped or burned in the landfill. Only 12% is recycled. And that too for low-grade uses like insulation or rags.
Less than 1% of the old clothes waste is used to make new clothes. Many clothes are sent to poor countries for second-hand use. Like the Atacama Desert in Chile.
But no one wears them there. The supply of waste is so high, that it is dumped in the desert. Every year, 39,000 tons of clothes are dumped in the desert.
The synthetic materials of these clothes will not decompose for 200 years. And when they are set on fire, toxic smoke will come out of the desert, which can make people very sick. There's a similar location in Africa, Ghana.
Where second-hand clothes are called obroni wawu. It means dead white man's clothes. The clothes of dead white men.
This name was given because the people of Ghana didn't understand why would someone throw away so many clothes until they died. In Ghana's capital, Accra, there's a market called Canta Manto. It's one of the world's largest markets for second-hand clothes.
Every week, 1. 5 crore clothes are sold in this market. But around 40% of the clothes are of such poor quality that they are not worth wearing.
We reach the Chorkor beach of Accra. Here, a 6 feet high layer of clothing has been formed. It is so solid that it has been used as a hut.
Thousands of people live in it. But the problem is that 89% of the material in this waste is made of synthetic fibre. That is, plastic.
This means that it won't decompose for hundreds of years. Like Ghana, in Cambodia, leading brands like Nike, Ralph Lauren, and Next, have so much waste that they burn it and use it as a fire. In India too, Western countries have second-hand clothes in shipping containers.
Some of which are used and the rest are dumped. So think about it. Next time you go to a shop and buy a T-shirt for Rs.
300, keep in mind what its actual price is. How many rivers have been turned into sewers for that T-shirt? How many mountains have been made of clothes in deserts?
And how much damage has been done to the environment? The United Nations has declared fast fashion environmental and social emergency. The good news is that some countries have started taking this problem seriously.
Last year, France passed the first anti-fast fashion law in the world. According to the ecological score, this law charges 5 euros per item for fast fashion products. The European Union has also banned the destruction of unsold clothes.
Because many clothing companies deliberately destroy their unsold clothes. So that people would have FOMO in their minds. If they don't buy it now, they won't get it again.
And why won't they get it again? Not because the rest of the people will buy it. But because these companies will destroy their own unsold clothes.
Along with this, in the coming years, the European Union is preparing to bring digital product passports. In which every piece of clothing will have its complete environmental history. Where this cloth is made, how the material is used what impact it will have on the environment all these things will be reflected in one place This law will be in force in the EU from next year 2027 But on an individual level, we don't need to wait for the government to take action.
There are many things that we can do ourselves, from now on. The first and the simplest thing, buy clothes only when you need them. This may seem obvious, but if you think about it honestly, out of the last 10 purchases, How many actual things have you bought that you needed?
And how many things have you bought that were impulse buys? For this, there's a simple 30-wear test rule, that you can follow. Before buying any clothes, ask yourself, will you wear this at least 30 times?
If you feel that you won't wear it that much, then there's no need to buy it. Second, normalize outfit repeating. The idea that you can't wear the same clothes again.
is a completely manufactured idea. It was created by Instagram and TikTok, and by fast fashion companies, and by influencers and celebrities. In real life, it doesn't matter whether you are wearing the same clothes again or not.
It's true that some people make fun of me on the internet, that I wear the same t-shirts again and again. But it shouldn't matter, because I know that I am doing the right thing. If you watch my 5-6 years old vlogs, or any of my old videos, you will see that I am always wearing the same T-shirts.
Because I keep using these T-shirts until they are completely torn. That's why I still have many clothes in my wardrobe, that are 12-15 years old, and I still wear them. Third, buy the clothes that you are buying.
Care for them. Wash them well, repair them, and run them for a long time. No torn button, small stitching, or loose fitting, is the end of any clothes.
Go to a local tailor and get it repaired. The record of a big misconception is that once they wear clothes, they have to wash them. Shirts and jackets are not needed to be washed after every use.
If there is no dust in the clean air, one can wear jeans for a week without washing. The clothes should be washed according to the need. Now, what is the best material for buying clothes?
I would like to give some advice on this. Because on one hand, there are clothes made of fossil fuels, plastic. It contains polyester, acrylic, nylon.
These release microplastics. and how harmful microplastics are, and how much pollution they are spreading in the environment. I have already told you about that.
But on the other hand, cotton. And cotton, as you saw, consumes a lot of water. And toxic waste is polluting its rivers.
So the question is, which material is best here? I rank it in different tiers. First is Tier C, which is the most useless.
It contains all your plastic materials. Then comes Tier B, where I will place cotton. In Tier B, you can also add recycled polyester.
Because recycled polyester clothes are slightly better to use. Because they don't use as much fossil fuel directly as the original plastic. Other than this, the material of traditional viscose will also be in this category.
Because to make it, the jungles are cut down. The old rainforests are cut down. Then comes Tier A, which is actually a good category.
It has organic cotton. Normal cotton spreads a lot of pollution. but organic cotton does not use pesticides.
It does not use toxic fertilizers. So organic cotton is better. In the same way, it has organic wool and organic silk.
Even alpaca, found in South America, the wool of these clothes is environmentally friendly. Another popular material in this category is Lycosel. Also known as Tencel.
Tencel is made of wood pulp and releases very little waste But above all these materials there is the category of Tier S Which includes recycled cotton or recycled wool Because in the case of recycling there is no need to farm, so the water consumption and waste water, gets eliminated in this case. But there are two other materials in this category. First, organic linen.
The whole plant is used to make linen. It doesn't require much water, and it is easily biodegradable. And above all, there is organic hemp.
The special thing about hemp is that it uses almost negligible water. It doesn't need pesticides. It regenerates soil.
It is a very durable material and biodegradable. Moreover, it yields a lot per acre while growing. So the clothes made from it use very little soil.
From almost every criteria, it is the best material for clothes. But the problem is that it is not easily available in India. Now, you want to know which materials are easily available, but are also good for the environment and health, you can download the free PDF guide for the Fabric Scorecard below.
The link is pinned in the comments below. And share this guide with your family and. It has explained in-depth about the good and bad of a material.
If judged based on different criteria. I just want you to remember all these things when you buy clothes next time. Remember that we are more than 3 crore people connected to this channel.
If we collectively, and implemented all these small things, then think about it, how much impact will it have on the Earth, on environmental pollution, and on all people. Together, we can change this psychology. We can end these fashion trends.
And lead people on the right path. If you liked this video, then do watch this one too. Thank you very much!
