Fabric re-use and recyling for our environment

Along with many other Bucks WI members I have been spending time during lock-down sewing.  Many members set to, making the Scrub Laundry Bags requested by Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust reusing all kinds of cotton fabric that came to hand or which was donated by friends and neighbours.  I decided to use up my growing store of bright patterned gent’s cotton shirts purchased from the charity shop bargain rail to make fabric face masks, first of all for the family and more recently for friends and neighbours.  According to the internet a close weave fabric is best and the cotton or poly-cotton of shirt fabric is most suitable for hot washing.  I have also been mending and altering garments which had been waiting for me to get around to them for ages. Even my teddy bear got a new pair of trousers so he was respectable to sit in the window as part of the teddy bear exercise in lock-down action.
 
Reusing this accumulated fabric is good for the environment so we can all feel appropriately proud of our activities.  I had a search around the internet to see if I could find out a measure of exactly how much CO2 might be saved by reusing cotton fabric but it is hard to get a simple measure or specific amount. The nearest I could find was in a WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) case study report where it calculated that reuse of a cotton T shirt produced a saving of 2.5kg CO2-eq per T-shirt.  This methodology is outlined in www.wrap.org.uk/benefitsofreuse.  And there are other environmental benefits too; saving energy and resource.  
The Benefits of Reuse Case Study: Clothing can be found here
http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Clothing%20reuse_final.pdf
 
The WRAP organisation was set up in 2000 to promote sustainable waste management and I found lots of other information on their website about textiles including a new Sustainable Clothing Action Plan (SCAP)  which I need to have a good look at. see http://www.wrap.org.uk/sustainable-textiles/scap
 In autumn 2019 Cath attended the NFWI educational Fast Fashion event, organised along with clothing charity TRAID, for WI members to learn more about how to reduce the global impact of clothing and learn more about the true cost of fast fashion.  Members were asked to consider different aspects of fast fashion - repairing and mending clothes,  clothes production and the throwaway culture and the impact microplastic fibres have on the environment. Cath made a pledge not to purchase anything new for a whole year and I am trying to follow her good example. So far this has worked well, especially now that we can not go out to shop.
I did wonder about the actual term fast fashion meant and found a definition in a UK government report which said that:    ‘Fast fashion’ is a term used to describe a new accelerated fashion business model that has evolved since the 1980s. It involves increased numbers of new fashion collections every year, quick turnarounds and often lower prices. Reacting rapidly to offer new products to meet consumer demand is crucial to this business model.
The report Fixing Fashion: clothing consumption and sustainability;  Published: 19 February 2019 is very informative and deserves more visibility, its available here
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmenvaud/1952/full-report.html
Finally I wondered what happened to the clothing that we in the UK send to recycling and found the website of a very interesting company Roberts Recycling Ltd which recycles and sends textiles overseas for reuse.
 
https://www.robertsrecycling.co.uk/news/how-much-co2-is-saved-by-our-textile-recycling-operations/