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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>I like Uniqlo, but one thing that has annoyed me about them is the environmentally unsound practice of packaging each individual item (T-Shirts, etc) in a thick plastic wrapper.

The environmental costs of production, transporation, storage, promotion, and display of each of their t-shirts would dwarf 1000 times the environmental cost of the plastic wrapper. So much so that removing it would be a moot point -- like optimising a function that the code spends 0.01% of its time in. Removing it would be just the environment theater / token gesture companies love.

What's worse, the "fast fashion", "consume clothing/throw it away/don't hand it down/don't keep it longer" mentality necessary for Uniqlo and others to show growth year after year has even worse impact on the environment.

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I wouldn’t classify UNIQLO as fast fashion.

The majority of their products are unbranded essentials with far greater durability and build quality than your typical “fast fashion” retailers.

Maybe "disposable fashion/clothing" is a better term?

True, they are not fast fashion but their environmental and employment practices are definitely way worse than what you could hope for.

https://goodonyou.eco/how-ethical-is-uniqlo/

From the article, I got impression that they are way better than most fast fashion brands and provide great value for reasonable price. If you can afford, on some principles there are better options.

Better than the worst (fast fashion is truly terrible) is not a very high bar.

And true, there are worst clothing companies than Uniqlo.

Although, from the uniqlo website, I can find "Our commitment to making great clothing begins with sourcing ethically produced materials, minimizing environmental impacts, putting workers first, and developing new materials and technologies with better futures in mind."

Sadly, I don't think any of it is true.

I don't have anything against Uniqlo though. They make affordable basics (and some nice collab releases). It is just shameful that it has high environmental and human costs.

> If you can afford, on some principles there are better options.

Absolutely, whether you are after quality, ethical sourcing, treating your worker correctly or even style, there are some awesome alternative. Unfortunately, you have to be able to afford it.

Might not be fast, but sure isn't durable

Kinda funny though because they're owned by Fast Retailing Co.

They're a step above the likes of H&M, but they're still fundamentally shipping mass-produced clothing from Asia made from mass-produced material.

It's not exactly fast-fashion, but not the opposite of it.

Not all environmental costs are in energy used and CO2 produced though. Microplastics are spreading all over the planet and we don’t know what the long term effects on biological processes will be. Maybe the bag is harmless but maybe its not.

> we don’t know what the long term effects on biological processes will be

When the short-term effects are bad, is it really necessary to wait to figure out the long-term effects?

I am not aware of any solid info on the short term affects either but even without that we could justify action to reduce it based on the precautionary principal.

Roughly a third (by weight) of primary microplastic emissions to oceans comes simply from the laundry of synthetic textiles. "Primary Microplastics in the Oceans", p. 21, https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documen...

Primary contrasts with secondary; the former is emitted directly as microplastics, the latter become microplastics by degradation of larger pieces. According to that report, "in some countries benefitting from advanced waste treatment facilities, primary microplastics releases even outweigh that of secondary microplastics." p. 5.

All of which is to say, if that plastic bag is properly disposed of (and perhaps even if not), the primary concern might be to avoid synthetic fabrics. That's increasingly difficult considering that so many brands are replacing all-cotton fabrics with blends.

I wonder how microplastic emissions are measured. Probably just some random sampling and estimation, but it would be interesting to know how they account for things like irregular pollution patterns (think about that huge garbage pile in the Pacific). I’m sure they can get pretty sophisticated with their methods... even accounting for things like tidal patterns.

You can read about a study here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/27/revealed...

Microplastics are not just in the ocean, this is in London air.

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