Edited by Sijia Jiang
This year as we launched SIJIASUDIO’s first collection, our top priority was finding the right materials for our designs. We were able to successfully design garments that consist of all natural fabrics with the exception of vegan leather. The garments were carefully designed to suit the texture of the selected dead-stock natural fabric. During the process of finding our fabric suppliers, we learned not just about the fashion industry’s impacts but the impacts of the supply chain as a whole, specifically where our materials have been sourced and how they are produced. Although we know that we cannot shop our way out of the climate crisis, we would like to believe that we are able to bring sustainability to light in the Asian fashion market. We see durability and longevity of the existing pieces as our highest priority and we are planning a customising service for old garments in the future. Because of our unique designs, our brand was able to not only promote our brand but also what we stand for, which is putting our planet first. Although there are various findings behind each fabric that is commonly used in the market at the moment, we would like to address the dominance of synthetic fabric in our industry and why we chose to avoid it. 
After the invention of synthetic resin plastic in 1906, polyethylene was first made in England in 1933. This was followed by nylon stockings in 1937, plastic raps for food in 1953, plastic bags in 1965, and plastic bottles in 1975. The reason why plastic was able to be reinvented for various forms was because synthetics are cheaper and easier to produce, which may be great for profit margins, but it releases an overwhelming amount of chemicals, waste and carbon emissions. These concerns were starting to arise when a plastic island was first found in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in 1997, which double in size by 2009. After micro plastics were found at the South Pole for the first time in 2018, we are now consuming 5g of micro plastics (about a single credit card) per week. To translate the impacts of plastic into carbon emissions, in a single year, almost 70 million barrels of crude oil feedstocks are used in the manufacturing of polyester alone, which produces double the greenhouse gas emissions than those of the aviation sector. It is common knowledge that synthetic fabric causes harmful impacts to the environment, however, it was shocking to find out the fact that since its conception, it took only about a century for us to abuse it to a scale that we cannot handle. Now it is ruining the food chain of marine life on top of oil spills, acidity from carbon sequestration, chemical pollution and bleaching, as well as overfishing.
To avoid polyethylene terephthalate (PET) materials as much as possible, our garment designs were very fluid, with natural colours to bring out the texture of the soft natural fabric we were working with. We want our customers to enjoy wearing our designs guilt-free and to cherish them for a long time, so our aptitude on altering design whilst minimising environmental degradation was put to the test. Synthetic fibers have dominated the market since the 1960s, making up to 62% of the global fiber production in 2018. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that a shocking less than 1 percent of all clothing is recycled back into clothings; to increase the circularity of the garments and to slow the development of new oils, gas, and petrochemical infrastructure, we are planning to work with recycled PET fabrics, in addition to our efforts to avoid synthetics. Although it is not the best solution, as it requires more chemical usage to down-cycle synthetics and micro-plastics are shed with each wash, it is still crucial to create a greater demand for recycled synthetic materials to divert investments from petrochemical and virgin plastic production. Despite the tricky balance between all of these nuances that come with synthetic fibers, SIJIASUDIO is working with our external partners in the supply chain to reduce the consumption of plastic in our fabrics and in our packaging to almost none.
Sources:
TextileExchange. (n.d.). [online] Available at: https:// store.textileexchange.org/wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/2019/11/Textile Exchange_Preferred-Fiber-Material-Market-Report_2019.pdf. [Accessed 25 Aug. 2020].
Wright, L. (2019). Plastic warms the planet twice as much as aviation – here’s how to make it climate-friendly. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/plastic-warmsthe-planet-twice-as-much-as-aviation-heres-how-to-make-it-climate-friendly-116376 [Accessed 25 Aug. 2020].
Charlie Bradley Ross (2017). What Synthetic Materials Are Doing To Our Environment. [online] The Sustainable Fashion Collective. Available at: https://www.the-sustainable-fashion-collective. com/2017/04/11/synthetic-materials-environment [Accessed 25 Aug. 2020].
GIBBENS, S. (2019). You eat thousands of bits of plastic every year. [online] Nationalgeographic.com. Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/ 2019/06/you-eat-thousands-of-bits-of-plastic-every-year/ [Accessed 25 Aug. 2020].
BPFmedia (2008). The BPF Plastics Timeline. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?time_continue=25&v=IBFMLMxGANc&feature=emb_title [Accessed 25 Aug. 2020].