Fashion is one of the highest polluting industries in the world. According to several reports, studies conducted on buying habits suggest 39 million tonnes of clothing waste is generated every year. While a majority of the waste will go to landfills and incinerators, only one-fifth will be separated for recycling, upcycling, and to make second-hand clothes.
Apart from the waste generated post-buying, during manufacturing processes, immense cloth-waste is generated by factories. For a garment that requires only four metres of cloth, the cuttings will be made from a 6-meter cloth. The two metres are disposed of as waste.
15-year-old Tanay Jain, a class X student of St James school in Kolkata, witnessed this first-hand at his father’s textile manufacturing factory.
“In 2018, when I visited my father’s factory, I saw big machines, many labourers, and a lot of small pieces of clothes thrown around the floor and stocked inside boxes. When I asked him what would happen to all that…