Waste in the Fashion Industry - The Dirty Secret!
Waste is a massive problem for the clothing industry, but the greatest problem of all is that it has remained hidden from the public for far too long!
'What we don't know won't hurt us right?.... I wouldn't be so sure'
- A Beginner's Guide
For fabric to be cut into clothing in industry, a stencil or 'pattern' of each section of the clothing must be made a mapped out on a sheet of fabric to plan how to make the most efficient use of the fabric, this fabric is then cut into pieces, and the sewing begins!
But there's one problem here; we humans are not made of straight lines, we need our clothes to curve and hug our bodies; we need more space around our shoulders to move, but less around our wrists (unless huge kimono sleeves are your thing!). Simple, right?
So the easiest way to add shape and fit to a design is to make a stencil with these curves, (like the one you see above) a factory would put these on top layers of fabric, cut out the pieces they need and throw away the excess fabric. Easy!
But let's Imagine that for a moment; thousands of factories all over the world, cutting and throwing all the excess fabric away, what a HUGE waste!
More than that- what an irresponsible way to do business; shipping material across the world
only to throw away what you don't need!
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THE FACTS
- It sounds pretty worrying right? Well bear with me, it gets better...
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How is ZERØ London different?
- Im glad you've asked
So ok, you've heard the bad news, now here's the good news...
ZERØ LONDON do not feature in ANY part of that horror story you've just read about! we've said NO to waste from the start; it's something we are extremely passionate about! All of our products are made using our own unique zero-waste approach to design.
What does that mean?
It means you can rest assured that any item made by us is made guilt-free! We don't send any fabric to landfill.
'How do we do that?' I hear you ask, well... let us worry about the boring mathematics, but in short; we construct our products specifically to be zero waste- that means we take a completely different approach to manufacturing, if a design cannot be engineered in such a way to fit and work like a piece of clothing should without creating waste, we don't use it. Waste is our first consideration. Let's take the example of the stencil we used earlier; we don't cut fabric and throw away excess, we don't have excess!
Instead, our patterns are designed like a jigsaw puzzle made of fabric, all the pieces fit perfectly together leaving no room for waste- that means you could take apart every piece of your ZERØ London products and fit them back together again....of course.... we don't advise you doing this, you paid for it, and some lovely person in our factory in London spent a while making it too!
It's the future of fashion! Join our revolution!
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