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Clothing Disposal and Sustainability

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Sustainability in the Textile and Apparel Industries

Abstract

Use phase of apparel has many sustainability issues from laundry to disposal. In every activity, a fashion product produces a significant amount of carbon footprints and environmental impacts. One of the major issues in the use phase is frequent disposal of fashion clothing. As the trend changes, the consumers’ preferences also change and so the disposal becomes inevitable among the twenty-first-century consumers. The main reason for the unsustainable practice is lack of knowledge about the environmental impact of that practice.

Hence, this study is aimed to analyze the knowledge of the consumers regarding the environmental impact of the disposal phase of apparel and clothing. A survey was conducted among the consumers in order to evaluate their knowledge of sustainable disposal behaviors. The questions were mainly focused on the consumers’ sustainable practices and also aimed to investigate the consumers’ disposal behavior and their impact on sustainability. The results were analyzed and validated, and the knowledge level of the consumer was detailed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Fashion Technology, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

    R. Rathinamoorthy

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  1. Head of Sustainability, SgT and API, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu

  2. Centro de Estudios para el Lujo Sustentable, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Miguel Angel Gardetti

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Rathinamoorthy, R. (2020). Clothing Disposal and Sustainability. In: Muthu, S., Gardetti, M. (eds) Sustainability in the Textile and Apparel Industries. Sustainable Textiles: Production, Processing, Manufacturing & Chemistry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38532-3_6

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