Powered by so-called ‘fast-fashion’, the global clothing industry – which has almost doubled its turnover 20 years – has some damning environmental liabilities. According to the World Economic Forum it is responsible for 10% of humanity’s carbon pollution, and a 2017 report by the IUCN stated 500,000 tons of plastic fibres – some 35% of all microplastics in the ocean – come from the laundering of synthetic fabrics. It’s also the second largest industrial consumer of water and its second largest polluter – yet 85% of all textiles produced are destined for landfill, or burning: a dumper truck’s worth full every second. As such, calls for less waste and more sustainable production, with a focus on circular economic methodologies, is being adopted by environmentally-conscious brands. Here, beside mountains of discarded clothing, a woman and designer model a dress made from the same reused cast-offs in Prato, Italy. In 2019 it featured in a National Geographic cover story entitled The End of Trash.
Plant-based solutions to everything from cosmetics to food have become growth areas in sustainable industry – with some using low, zero or even negative carbon methods to enable production. Here, a man inspects bioengineered barley growing in inert volcanic pumice in a carbon-negative greenhouse in Reykjanes, Iceland. The greenhouse is powered by natural geothermal heat and glacial meltwater.
A child in Amboseli, Kenya, holds an acacia seedling. Conservation outreach programs and education such as this in locations that have suffered severe habitat loss is helping to re-establish biodiversity, shade, and improve agriculture conditions for local communities. They are also helping to curb poaching for the illegal wildlife trade by decreasing reliance on uncultivated forest, and encouraging species like elephants to re-establish.
Is multi-use the future? Can places disposing of waste also be power stations? Can waste itself become a fuel? From wooden skyscrapers to ‘vertical forests’ and dramatic uses for buildings are being created as visual statement pieces to highlight a future that could be more sustainable. This example, in Copenhagen, is an incinerator which produces energy, and also doubles as a recreational site with a ski slope, climbing wall and running track. The waste-to-energy incinerator is billed as one of the cleanest in the world thanks to advanced filtering of its emissions using Selective Catalytic Reduction.
In Ulaanbaatar, a staff member stands beside a bulletin board with an array of face masks in an independent laboratory that specialises in analysing air quality. A UNICEF report found children living in a highly polluted area of Ulaanbaatar had 40% lower lung function than those living in rural areas. In the absence of widespread reform around the causes of air pollution – thus reducing the incidence of illness – education of medical professionals on how to treat chronic respiratory illness is ongoing.
Increasing adoption of technology, greater internet use and the social media revolution has created a corresponding demand for power. Charging points, wireless networks and servers to cope with the growing digitisation of life are by some estimates equal to 3.7% of greenhouse gas production – roughly equivalent to the aviation industry. Certain parts of the developed world are hotspots for this usage; others – such as the resident of this yurt, in the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan’s Badakhshan – find power in a way that is more off-grid.
Wind turbines and solar modules blanket the Mojave Desert in California. A focus on renewable energy sources has been a key part of the plan to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C versus pre-industrial levels. India and China have been major adopters of solar, with the two biggest plants respectively. Other renewable sources seeing growth are tidal and wave, with smaller-scale solar ‘microgrids’ being pioneered in rural areas enabling peer-to-peer purchasing of renewably-generated electricity.
A woman faints from the heat during the Hinglaj, a Hindu pilgrimage through the desert of western Pakistan. Extreme and sustained heat has seen an increase in fatalities around the world, and has also highlighted discrepancies across the socio-economic spectrum in the ability to cope with changing conditions in agriculture, income and lifestyle. Human migrations due to climate change are already taking place.
Tourists wearing gaiters made from waterproof plastic brave floodwaters in St Marks Square, Venice, 2018. Flooding has always been a part of the Medieval lagoon city’s way of life – but rising sea levels, increased storm surges caused by extreme weather has made recent years of flooding its worst in decades. Experts speculate sea levels in the Mediterranean may rise as much as five feet by 2100, meaning the floods in the Venetian lagoon could become more extreme. A system of gates designed to protect the city from extreme tides has been in the works for almost 20 years.
The planting of biological refuges such as mangroves that double as buffer zone sea defences is a climate solution many coastal communities are embracing. Mangroves are an effective carbon sink, with complex root systems stabilising extensive soils, and help desalinate coastal waters providing a more liveable habitat for reefs and marine ecosystems. These mangrove seedlings in Kiribati, an atoll state in the South Pacific, is predicted to be the first country to be submerged by rising sea levels. In the shorter term, rising salinity of its freshwater has led to evasive methods to safeguard agriculture on the islands – such as mangrove plantations.
