Page 1739 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 June 2022
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(v) the economic and employment opportunities that could be realised from the support of a circular textile economy in the ACT; and
(b) include actions to reduce textile waste as part of the draft circular economy strategy to be released before the end of the year.
There are many challenges that we face as a society when it comes to waste management and reduction, from organic food waste to household plastic, from old and broken whitegoods to the carbon dioxide produced through energy production. Australians have the second highest consumption and disposal of textiles per capita in the world. As my motion notes, on average, an Australian will acquire 27 kilograms of new clothing each year, and each Australian will, on average, discard around 23 kilograms of clothing. This is second only to the United States.
Fast fashion has become a phenomenon that has led to clothing becoming so cheap that it is viewed as disposable by a majority of the population. You can buy extremely cheap items both in-store and increasingly online, and one in three of these items will be discarded and end up in a landfill within a short time of being purchased.
Many, if not the majority, of these fast fashion items contain elements of plastic fibre that very quickly degrade into microplastics, particularly if they are dumped in landfill. As members will know, microplastics are an ever more concerning phenomenon and are being found in all sorts of places in our ecosystem—in the bodies of salmon and tuna and, in many cases, inside parts of our own body. They are toxic and not healthy to be stored in the bodies of any creature.
It is important to note the changes to the textile industry and particular impacts of the fast fashion movement on our environment. Consumer trends have changed and fast fashion is supported by consumers. The ability to buy lots of cheap clothing is very appealing to a consumer. People buy clothes for a particular occasion or event and then discard this clothing; thus it becomes a single-use item, often discarded to landfill.
Fast fashion has perpetuated an overwhelming sense of carelessness for sustainability. This is having a devastating impact on our environment. The textiles industry is one of the top five polluting industries in the world. It can take between 10,000 and 15,000 litres of water to manufacture just one pair of jeans. The nature of fast fashion also means that the clothing items that are created are of lower quality, resulting in these items of clothing being discarded quickly, and consumers preferencing replacing them rather than repairing them.
As noted by the Australian Fashion Council, in 2020-21 Australia’s fashion and textile industry contributed more than $27.1 billion to the national economy, representing about 1.5 per cent of our total economy. This shows how significant Australia’s textile industry is. As a government, we should help to work with the industry to implement better ways to reduce landfill waste.
We in the ACT have been particularly proactive over the years in reducing the production of our waste and facilitating re-usage where we can. For example, we have
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