The Textile Research findings that inspired us to start @ecodesigns

Prior to starting @ecodesigns, we carried out some research about textile waste and the fashion industry in Bamenda - North West Region of Cameroon. We distributed 400 questionnaires to tailors and fashion designers in our community.

We wanted to find out the amount the amount of textile waste produced by the fashion industry in Bamenda, the total number of tailors and fashion designers as well as know whether the people were aware of the environmental impact of the textile and fashion industry.
Some of our research findings include;

1. The amount of textile waste generated in Bamenda is rapidly increasing
2. Many people do not know the environmental impact of textile waste
3. The tailoring industry in Bamenda is dying i.e. Professionalism is dying, prices are falling, business is dying and all these are due to the huge influx of low quality non-durable and cheap materials imported from Asia. What people popurlarly call "Chinese materials". Any man anywhere is sewing anything and really don't care about the quality of the product nor price. This has greatly contributed to textile waste pollution in Bamenda.
4. There are more “General Tailors” than “Specialist or Specialized Tailors”.
5. Women garments produce more textile waste than men garments
6. Women sew and have more garments than men
7. There are more than 800 Tailors in Bamenda
8. Each tailor generates an average of 2 – 5kg of textile waste every week and even more during festive periods. We realized from this research that the tailoring/fashion industry in Bamenda generates about 1600kg to 4000kg of textile waste every week.
9. The Bamenda main market and Commercial Avenue have the highest amount of tailors in the city hence is the heart of textile waste production in the city
10. More than 90% of the tailors/fashion designers burn or throw their textile waste in the landfill and many of them were unaware of the environmental impact of the textile waste and the textile industry as a whole.
11. Not up to 10% of the Tailors and Fashion Designers recycle. Even the less than 10% who recycle do so at very small scale

These are some of the scary facts that inspired us to start @ecodesigns.

Did you know according to the World Bank, 17-20 percent of industrial water pollution is due to textile dyeing and treatment?

Did you know if you recycle 5kg of textile waste you are preventing 13 – 18kg of CO2 gases from polluting the atmosphere, saving 14000 gallons of water and reducing the amount of insecticides released to grow material for new clothes?

We do what we do at @ecodesigns because we want to change the situation. These are the reasons that inspired us to start a textile recycling and fashion designing hub.
We have also been able to carry out research in the amount of textile waste produced by households and we will like to share our research findings with you.

We can do more but we lack materials and machines to increase our textile recycling and women empowerment project. We have 11 trainees and 02 Training Directors but have just 06 machines which are not enough for the 13 young girls who are striving to get empowered as well as clean-up the world. It is for this reason that @ecodesigns is striving to raise funds to purchase 7 machines so that we can double our productivity and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our textile recycling and fashion designing training.

Learn more about Ecodesigns at https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@ecodesigns/introducing-ecodesigns-a-textile-recycling-and-fashion-designing-hub-that-is-empowering-young-women

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