Taiwanese throw away 5.2 million pieces of clothing and 5.4 million pairs of shoes every year, which, coupled with the fast turnaround in the fashion industry, has a dramatic impact on the environment, Greenpeace Taiwan said yesterday.
The environmental group yesterday revealed what it said was the first survey on clothing disposal behavior in Taiwan.
People aged 20 to 45 own an average of 75 garments, of which 20 percent are hardly worn at all, Greenpeace pollution prevention project manager Chen Ling-yao (陳玲瑤) said.
One out of two people interviewed said they have clothes in their closet that they have not worn in two months, Chen said.
RECYCLING
“While 73 percent of interviewees said they recycle used clothes, it does not help reduce the amount of garments thrown away every year,” Chen said.
“Thanks to fast fashion, the amount of clothes discarded every year has increased. A similar investigation by Greenpeace in Hong Kong observed the same phenomenon,” she said.
Clothes used to be designed and made at a three-month intervals, but they are now being designed, manufactured and sold in a few weeks, which has led to environmental problems and labor issues, Chen said.
Showing photographs of a highly polluted river in Indonesia, the group said the textile industry has caused dramatic damage to the environment with chemical dyes and mass production.
However, not all people know about the adverse environmental impact and human right violations of the fashion industry.
Nearly 60 percent of respondents said they know that chemicals used in producing garments are harmful to the environment and the body, Greenpeace’s survey showed.
UNINFORMED
About 46 percent of respondents said they know about unsatisfactory work conditions at textile factories, and 38 percent said they are aware of the issue of child labor in the fashion industry.
The public is not well-informed about environmentally friendly clothing and products, as more than half of respondents had never purchased environmentally friendly clothing because they either did not know where to buy them or that such products exist.
In addition, 60 percent of respondents said they had never bought second-hand clothes, and 72 percent said they had never bought clothing made of recycled materials.
The organization called on the public to lead a more minimalist lifestyle by purchasing less and throwing fewer clothes away.
Consumers are advised to purchase “green” textile and fair trade products that cause minimal damage to the environment and worker’s welfare.
The survey was conducted in January, and 1,000 valid samples were collected, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching