虎说百科丨双十一劝退大法：你每买一件衬衫，等于耗费 6000 瓶农夫山泉！

Why is it important to recycle clothes?

Your clothes take a huge amount of resources to create, ship, and sell—being green means doing everything you can to avoid throwing them away.

为什么回收旧衣物如此重要？

制作、运输和销售衣服的过程耗费了大量资源，想做到绿色环保意味着要尽全力避免将它们一扔了之。

In the last couple of decades, the amount of clothes we buy has doubled. Over 80 billion garments are made worldwide every year using vast quantities of energy, raw materials, chemicals, labor, and water—it takes 792 gallons (3,000 l) of water to make just one cotton shirt.

过去这几十年间，我们购买衣服的数量已经翻了一番。每年全球出产的成衣数量已经超过了 800 亿件，耗费了大量的能源、原材料、化学品、劳动力，还有水——光是生产一件全棉衬衫，就要耗费 792 加仑，也就是多达 3000 升的水。

Since we definitely don't need all those clothes, many of them get quickly discarded. In the US, about 796 lb (36 kg) of clothing is thrown away per person each year. We don't recycle anywhere near enough—in the UK, 41% of people are unsure of how to recycle clothes. Clothes that aren't recycled end up in landfills or burned, emitting toxic fumes from the chemicals used in their manufacture.

既然我们根本不需要那么多衣服，那么其中很多衣服还没穿多久就被我们扔掉了。在美国，每人每年扔掉的衣服就有大概 796 磅，约合 36 公斤。放眼全世界，对于旧衣物的回收程度都远远不够——在英国，有多达 41%的人并不清楚如何回收衣物。那些没有被回收的衣物最后都被填埋或是焚烧，在衣物生产过程中所使用的化学成分会在燃烧过程中释放出有毒烟气。

One of the easiest ways to be greener is to value your clothes and make the best possible use of them. That applies both while they're in your wardrobe and after they've left it.

Where clothes are concerned, "recycling" simply means allowing them to carry on being useful after you have finished using them by donating or selling them or sending them off to be made into new items.

一个更加绿色环保的最简单方式就是珍惜并最大化利用衣服。这种对衣物的珍惜和利用，不管是当它们还挂在你的衣橱时，还是被扔掉时，都同样适用。

就衣服而言，“回收”就意味着在你用完以后继续发挥它们的作用，不管是把它们捐掉、卖掉还是送去制成新的东西。

Extending the life of your clothes reduces the impact of the energy and resources used to make them, because you avoid replacing them with new items. What's more, it means someone else will wear the clothes rather than buying new.

延长衣服的使用寿命就是在减少衣服制作过程中对能源和资源的影响，因为这样就避免了买新衣服替换旧衣服。甚至这意味着（如果你把衣服捐出去），就有另外的人不需要买新衣服。

If your clothes are no longer wearable, it's well worth dropping them off at a clothes bank or other clothes recycling facility. From here, they can be resold as filler for car seats and other lower-grade textile products. Think of clothes as having different life stages—so, rather than a straight line from factory to store, to wardrobe, to trash, they are mended, upcycled, adjusted, passed on, or repurposed.

如果你有些衣服不能穿了，把它们放到衣物银行或者是其他的衣物回收设施就很有意义。进了这些衣物回收站以后，这些穿不了的衣服也能作为汽车座椅的填料或者是其他更低等级的纺织制品再度出售。设想衣服具有不同的生命阶段——它们的生命周期不是从工厂到商店再到衣橱最后成为垃圾的这样一条直线，而是可以被修了再穿，变废为宝，传递下去，或改变用途重新利用。

每年全球扔掉的衣物中，大约只有 20%被重新使用或者循环利用。