PANGAIA Is Made For Lounging During Quarantine And Plans To Fight COVID

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by Emily Neves

We are currently living in the age of “fast fashion”- clothing that is made cheap and quickly, and is discarded just as easily. According to the Ellen McArthur Foundation, textile production has doubled in the past 15 years. To accommodate this rise, most- if not all- major clothing retailers have begun to make cheap products to increase that productivity.

PANGAIA’s Mission

One company that seeks to rise above this is PANGAIA, a collective based out of Europe, whose mission is to create sustainable clothing options for the planet. They wish to solve the environmental issues, like textile overproduction, by bringing their sustainable products into our everyday lifestyle.

Pangaia is not some remote, billionaire philanthropist's wet dream. There is no Tony Stark behind Panagaia. It knows where the world is situated today, and their moral compass points true north. On their website, they state that they are helping the COVID-19 pandemic by offering real solutions, including converting their factories to produce more PPE (personal protective equipment) that is so desperately needed, especially in the New York metro area.

So, with 100% vegan, no-animal-harmed products, a philanthropic and environment-centrist mission to save the planet, and heavy investment in the future of material science, the UK-based Pangaia is saving the planet, revolutionizing the fashion industry, and producing comfortable, affordable clothing that just may satiate the need for fast and cheap, and replace that mindset with comfortable and conscientious.

 Pangaia (a company who bills themselves as a “materials science company on a mission to save our environment”) has some decidedly sci-fi approaches to sustainable clothing, and it should since it isn't just a clothing company but also a clothing technology collective. Their use of seaweed, flowers and pesticide-free cotton seeds is conjoined with their philanthropical partnerships, like the one they have with SeaTrees, the first blue-carbon, ocean focused platform taking action to reverse climate change by planting and protecting SeaTrees (mangrove forests, sea kelp fields, seagrass and coral reefs) and in coastal ecosystems. Why the focus on mangrove trees if you’re making a t-shirt? One mangrove tree stores up to one ton of CO2, that’s why.

Sea Trees

The PANGAIA Plan

At a time when we’re finally starting to see a direct correlation between humans being punished and sent to their rooms, and the planet recovering from it, this may be something to applaud. According to the UK Daily Express, “ ... large swathes (sic) of lockdowns across the planet have led to a decrease in carbon emissions which will ultimately benefit the planet”. China has seen an almost 25% reduction in carbon emissions since the outbreak, and with far fewer planes and automobiles out and about, now may be the time to embrace sustainable clothing.

One of the methods Pangaia employs is something called FLWRDWN, an acronym for FlowerDown, which uses the petals of natural wildflowers in place of goose or duck down. Since down is usually harvested from living ducks and geese (try sleeping with that guilt stuffed into your pillow) the alternative of using wildflowers seems far more humane, and vastly more sustainable.

They also employ non-toxic dyes and coloring in their products using recycled food waste and other biodegradable products. The necessity of using a more sustainable method of textile production is sorely needed at a time when we produce over 100 billion items of clothing and 500 billion tons of plastic waste, half of which will end up in landfills, and all of which can take decades to decompose.

And Pangaia (the name is derived from pan – meaning all-inclusive, and gaia – Greek for Earth Mother) even takes their sustainable philosophy as far as their packaging. Every item they sell is sequestered “in TIPA packaging, a part bio-based, plastic alternative which fully disappears within 24 weeks in a compost facility.” It wasn’t an easy stretch to get here, either. Pangaia claims that it took them 10 years of research to come up with the technology, which is fully understandable for a company that found a way to use 75% less water in textile production - a huge deal with regular textile manufacturing, which sometimes expends a wasteful amount of water in their workflow.

It has been said that it takes almost 2000 gallons of water to make one pair of blue jeans. That cannot be good for the planet, where freshwater is already a dying resource in most third-world countries. 

Consumed By Consumption

We are a society consumed with instant gratification. We want our cars faster and smaller, we want our food prepared and delivered in under 30 minutes, and we want to be able to walk into any superstore and find cheap, readily available clothing instantly. Many of the mid and lower-level socio-economic shoppers in this country cannot wait for the glitzy fashion runways of Paris and New York to deliver cheap, affordable clothing to them. They’re more than satisfied to see what Walmart has on sale this week.

The problem with this rampant instant consumerism is a constant push and pull dance that the American consumer has always had - a morass between morals and money. We want it cheap. We want it fast. But we are suddenly becoming very aware of our carbon footprint, and the deadly consequences of having everything in the blink of an eye versus watching polar bears dying atop shrinking ice caps.

The Thrift Store has grown more popular over the years- with the rise of companies like the GoodWill, which offers an easy way to donate your clothes, thrifting is now easier than ever. But just because it has become more popular does not mean it has become more sustainable.

According to the Council for Textile Recycling, charities and thrift stores sell only 20 percent of the clothing donated to them at their retail outlets. The rest is put in a landfill. In 2017, the EPA estimated that the textile industry - specifically clothing and footwear - generated 12.8 tons of products. They say that 1.7 tons of this product was recycled, and 8.9 tons has been put into the landfill (with the other 2.2 tons being combusted with energy-saving material). Unfortunately, clothing doesn’t decompose easily. It’s dyed, bleached, and filled with plastic that can take up to 50 years to decompose. Meanwhile, synthetic materials like polyester take around 1,000 years to return to a compostable state.

So the dilemma is once again – do we settle for cheap and fast, or do we look to something more sustainable that may not be as cheap or as fast, but has definite implications in our soul-shearing eco- guilt?

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