Intertwining Engineering and Fashion by Destiny

Intertwining Engineering and Fashion by Destiny - April 2025 Scholarship Essay

The fashion industry plays a key role in our modern society. Over half of businesses use fast fashion, producing garments quickly in factories with low labor costs. Fast fashion is responsible for 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions, releasing 1.2 billion tonnes annually. It is clear that we live in a society where technology assists us, but that doesn't mean that we should turn away from eco-friendly options.

Clothes created by fast fashion often contain animal-based and synthetic fibers, which require over 342 million barrels of oil to produce. Each year, 300,000 tonnes of clothes are burned, releasing harmful gases like methane into the air. As a fashion enthusiast, I have challenged myself to explore sustainable alternatives like eco-friendly dyes, redirected my funds to smaller businesses, researched production methods, and conducted experiments with natural dyes. At home, I often borrowed the car to visit the marina and gather seaweed for my research. I started by extracting green dye from local seaweed and testing which mediums produced the most vibrant colors. I applied these dyes to cotton cloth and exposed them to UV light to observe color retention.

Without action, fast fashion is projected to account for 26% of carbon emissions by 2050. As the global population grows, increasing carbon emissions will lead to rising sea levels, melting polar ice caps, and more severe storms.

This is important to me because I love fashion and care deeply about the world. I want to raise a family in the future, but I'm concerned about the future if we continue to exploit the planet. I want my children to experience the beauty the world has to offer, but they won't be able to if we don't change at least one aspect of daily life: our clothing.