Regenerative fashion integrates fibers produced through regenerative agriculture. A type of agriculture that follows the guidance of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, also known as agroecology. It promotes sustainability throughout the entire value chain in the manufacture of a garment, from the extraction of raw materials to the final consumer and the use given to the garment, but also seeks to go a step further. Regenerative fashion appeals to the collective conscience of a community for the conservation and preservation of nature but also for its regeneration. The systems or processes of obtaining raw materials in an unsustainable way end up desertifying the soils, causing the disappearance of large tracts of virgin forests. On the other hand, there are also areas of sterile soils, without humus, which is indispensable for life. Let’s take humus for example. Humus is the top layer of soil, rich in organic residues produced by the decomposition of animals and plants and necessary for the formation of life in the soil. Humus has the following benefits:
it brings plant nutrition and nitrogenous products to degraded soil it allows the soil to be tilled more easily it helps the soil to drain well and to retain essential water it increases the porosity of the soil provides useful micro-organisms serves as food
To "regenerate" means to produce this vegetation layer in the soil. So that healthy ecosystems can be restored and biodiversity can develop successfully. Regenerating also means the support and economic development of the local communities that work the land where the raw materials for the garments are extracted. From the Origin of the Fibers of our Garments Nowadays the most used material in the world is polyester, a synthetic material that comes from petroleum and generates many problems for the environment and also for your health. But today we are not going to talk about that. The second major material used globally is cotton. Cotton is a natural vegetable fiber that comes from the fruit of a plant. This crop, when grown in a conventional way, that is, if it is not being produced in an ecological way, which is the usual way, is produced in large areas of monoculture, thus negatively affecting the soil and encouraging the creation of pests. These bad cultivation practices make it necessary to use numerous synthetic chemical substances: pesticides, insecticides to avoid pests, herbicides to avoid the unwanted plants that accompany their production, and fertilizers because the soil with all these chemical treatments and bad practices loses fertility and has less richness. All these synthetic chemicals pass into the soil and the plant. Global Desertification These production systems are also clearing virgin forests either to produce garments using the trees to produce viscose that we then use in clothing, or to produce other materials, and deforesting forests all over the world. This is the exact opposite of what we should be doing and if not look at this image below taken by Collect Earth. All those yellowish areas throughout the center of the planet are becoming desertified. As you can see, Spain is not spared and if we continue at this rate and do not act quickly, in a few years instead of a rich and diverse country like the one we have, we will be living in a desert. Furthermore, the lack of rich soils, i.e. soils with humus, means that our lands are barren, incapable of giving life to forests, and incapable of capturing the carbon that is in the air. One of the great solutions to climate change is rich soil. Soil has the capacity to capture the CO2 that is in the atmosphere, but for that to happen it has to be soil rich in humus. Regenerating is the new black Regenerating the land means helping to produce that topsoil that contains the nutrients needed for biodiversity to thrive and that accompanies different crops. It also means harnessing the power of vegetation to sequester carbon from the air into the soil, increase the capacity of soils to retain rainwater and prevent runoff, improve crop resilience and recover nutrients for food.