An analysis carried out in 2021 by the Lombardy Region, showed that on average, in the world, a garment is worn only 7 times before being thrown away. The advent of fast fashion, which began during the first decade of the 2000s, has caused an inevitable emotional detachment from clothing, encouraging people to buy more and more, leading to inevitable environmental problems deriving from this mode of purchase. Fast fashion companies offer attractive prices to consumers by convincing them to buy much more than necessary. This production exploits non-renewable resources and has enormous negative effects on the environment. The obligation to recycle fabrics, currently in force in Italy, will certainly help to reduce the waste of textile products that will be recycled rather than thrown away, but is this really enough to eliminate the damage caused by the diminished use of clothes? The answer is not so simple, in fact, the first step to succeed in this enterprise is to favor clothing brands attentive to sustainability such as Colorful Standard, Haikure, and others that Queen Studio represents. All the garments of these international brands are made with recycled fabrics and 100% organic cotton produced without the use of harmful chemicals during the process. By using organic cotton for production, greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by up to 94%, and pesticide use is virtually non-existent.
What Italy does for the environment
To combat excessive clothing abuse, a partnership was created between the Lombardy Region itself and several Italian companies, from which P.E.A.S. – The Product Environmental Accountability System was born, the first intelligence system that integrates environmental and social traceability and gamification. P.E.A.S., with a simple application for smartphones, processes scientific data starting from the labels of the clothes, clearly showing how wearing a dress several times leads to a positive reduction of the environmental impact, encouraging long-term use. The estimate of the application is absolutely accurate in fact, the company Process Factory has calculated in detail the environmental impact deriving from the entire production chain necessary for the production of a simple cotton sweatshirt, and returns a tracking of the dilution of the environmental cost dividing it into 13 different areas. This technology, through a simple game, aims to motivate as well as to raise awareness, to push users to a more careful reflection before a drastic look change.