How is textile industries damaging our environment?
Answers
Textile industries can be really harmful to our environment. The farms that grow raw materials used to make fabrics, including crops like cotton, flax, and hemp, require a lot of water. In fact, cotton is an especially thirsty plant. In addition, to protect these valuable crops, some farmers use lots of pesticides and herbicides that end up in the environment. Again, cotton is a big culprit, being one of the most pesticide-intensive crops in the world.
Now consider synthetic fabrics, or man-made fabrics like nylon and polyester. These textiles are made from petrochemicals and fossil fuels, and manufacturing them requires lots of water and energy. Nylon manufacturing also creates greenhouse gasses that harm the air we breathe. Additionally, synthetic fabrics are not biodegradable, which means that something made of nylon can take decades to decompose.
Making textiles also involves activities like bleaching, dyeing, and washing that use lots of water. Such processes produce salts, surfactants, which help dyes penetrate fabrics, and other surface-active agents, like detergent, that don't decompose, so they end in our water. Dyeing and printing also involves dangerous chemicals like arsenic, mercury and lead.
Hope it helps...