The kinder clothes

With some thought put into buying fashion, your clothes can become less harmful for the environment

In the Garden of Eden, figuring out what to wear was easy and the fig leaves were environmentally friendly. Today, it’s much harder to find clothes that don’t have some kind of negative impact on the planet.

Textile manufacturers use complicated chemical and industrial processes to make clothing materials, from cotton to synthetic fibres. And while the environmental consequences aren’t always clear, consumption is growing. Americans spent 14 per cent more on clothing and footwear in 2016 — around $350 billion total — than they did in 2011, and the trend is similar or greater in much of the rest of