Sustainable fabrics of the future 既环保又耐用的未来服装面料

陈小将

“快时尚”（fast fashion）产业的兴起让消费者们能以低廉的价格买到紧跟潮流的时装，但这也意味着新的衣服往往没穿多久就会被送往垃圾场填埋或被焚烧。这一现象推动了人们对长久、耐用的纺织物的需求。“随身英语” 介绍这些新型的服装材料，并探讨怎样才能让追求时尚这件事变得更环保。
Vocabulary: fashion 词汇：时尚
Choosing what to wear can be a tricky problem, especially if you’re a fashion victim. Trying to keep up with the latest styles involves regular visits to the shops and sometimes forking out for expensive designer clothes. But when the fashion changes, these clothes languish in the back of cupboards gathering dust, or just get thrown away.
There are many stores that now offer cheap ‘fast fashion’ – low-price items that imitate the styles of more expensive designer brands. Environmentalists are angered by the amount of energy involved in making these clothes and that many of them are made from non-recyclable materials. This means that items are just incinerated or go into landfill.
Writing about this for the BBC, Eleanor Lawrie says that people in the UK are the worst in Europe for doing this - with a million tonnes of unwanted textiles a year being discarded. And she says “on top of often poor labour conditions for garment workers, the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of the world's waste water, and 10% of carbon emissions.”
This is something the fashion industry is becoming more aware of and has led to a new crop of biomaterials that replace wasteful textiles like cotton and leather. Examples include Piñatex, a leather-like substance made from discarded pineapple leaves. It's been used in collections by Hugo Boss and H&M. And there’s mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, that’s being used to create food, packaging and textiles.
Cotton is a very resource-intense crop to grow. Eleanor Lawrie says “about 15,000 litres of water [are] required to make one pair of jeans.” So, buying organic cotton is a better choice. And there is also Tencel, also known as Lyocell, a natural product that's now growing in popularity. It's made by extracting cellulose fibre from trees; its manufacture is thought to use 95% less water than cotton processing.
But creating sustainable textiles is only part of the battle – buying ethically, buying second hand and buying fewer clothes are the obvious environmentally friendly choices. Dr Richard Blackburn from Leeds School of Design told the BBC that “I don't think you should consider buying any item of clothing unless you commit to 30 wears. Unless you can do that you're not even starting to be sustainable.”

陈小将