Who is to say what is right...?

Today, I was strongly urged to switch from synthetic materials in my designs to natural ones. As I was asked to do this from one of my colleagues I remembered a chapter I had once read in Sustainable fashions and textiles, design journeys and decided to sit down and think if it is actually better to use natural materials rather than synthetic ones.

As I recall, before reading this chapter, I thought all organic, natural, non-manmade products were the right thing and there was no other alternative. However, after going through the chapter it was revealed to me that synthetic materials would save our planet. Now that she has brought this topic to my attention again I have put some thought into a major issue in our industry. What is the right material to use in our products in the apparel industry?

The chapter written by Karen Fletcher gives information about what is good about natural and synthetic fibers and what is not so good about those fibers. In my opinion, after thinking about both options, we might consider using both materials.

Cotton uses a lot of water and a hefty amount of pesticides to make (we know this by now…), but an alternative suggested to reduce water usage was low-water use cotton. The idea of low-water use cotton is as it is in parts of Africa and India. Here they rely mostly on rain to “feed” their cotton. However, as it was stated in the chapter, this produces less quality cotton. Drip irrigation is another alternative. In this type of irrigation piping is put underground after the ground is worked and then water is fed to the roots of the plants eliminating overwatering and in return reducing how much water is actually used during the phase of growing cotton. However, sprinklers are mostly used because it’s cheaper to run and you can fertilize through irrigation. However, this does have a much higher initial cost but drip irrigation has a high overall cost due to the laying of pipe after every time the ground is worked. We can stick to using conventional cotton by reducing water and chemical usage.

In the chapter most natural fibers use more water than those of synthetics. This makes sense. Synthetics are a good alternative not only for their reduce water usage but also because their chemicals can sometimes be left out or substituted for other less harsh chemicals.

Because natural and synthetic fibers both have pros and cons it really comes down to the designers opinion. I think I will continue to use synthetics, but maybe think more about which natural fibers could be used in substitute of environmentally harmful synthetics.