Engaging Sportswear

Creating sportswear isn't just about smarter technologies, getting faster or looking fly.

Designing engaging sportswear requires taking a responsible approach to the garment industry.

Here are some fascinating facts about our $3 trillion global industry:

• Americans throw away about 70 lbs of clothing per person every year.

• Fast fashion garments, which we wear less than 5 times and keep for 35 days, produce over 400% more carbon emissions per item per year than garments worn 50 times and kept for a full year.

• Cheap synthetic fibers also emit gasses like N2O, which is 300 times more damaging than CO2.

• Over 70 million trees are logged every year and turned into fabrics like rayon, viscose, modal and lyocell.

• Cotton is the world’s single largest pesticide-consuming crop, using 24% of all insecticides and 11% of all pesticides globally, adversely affecting soil and water.

• Plastic microfibers shed from our synthetic clothing into the water supply account for 85% of the human-made material found along ocean shores, threatening marine wildlife and ending up in our food supply.

• The fashion industry is the second biggest polluter of freshwater resources on the planet.

• A quarter of the chemicals produced in the world are used in textiles.