Textile Tales: The Environmental Narrative of Fabrics and Fibers

Being one of the largest exporters of textiles and apparel in the world, India’s textile industries are expected to touch heights with a market size of 250 billion dollars by 2025. Textile industries involve processes like spinning, weaving, dyeing, and finishing products. These industries use a great amount of harmful chemicals and enormous amount of water during the production of a single fabric. It has been estimated that for the production of a single t-shirt, about 2500–3000 L of water is consumed. Various chemicals are used during the manufacturing of textile fabrics and these chemicals get dumped into the environment in one or the other way polluting our environment. Also, the adverse effect of modernization has led to the growth of textile production. Due to this, global production of textile fiber has almost doubled in the last 2 decades, and with this comes a huge amount of fabric waste. The environmental impact of textile industries has become one of the most gut-wrenching issues in today’s world. This chapter encompasses the knowledge of textile industries and various environmental challenges faced by living and non-living beings.