Is Renting Clothes Greener than Buying Them?

Clothing rental is a hot new industry and retailers are demanding to get on board in hopes of attracting green shoppers. But is renting fashion actually more     1    than buying it, and if so, how much more? Journalist and author Elizabeth Cline investigated this question and concluded that it’s not as environmentally-friendly as it seems.

Take     2    , for example, which has to go two ways if an item is rented—receiving and returning. Cline writes that consumer transportation has the second largest carbon footprint of our collective fashion habit after     3    . She writes,” An item ordered online and then returned can send out 20 kilograms of carbon each way, and increases up to 50 kilograms for rush shipping. By comparison, the carbon impact of a pair of jeans     4    from a physical store and washed and worn at home is 33.4 kilograms, according to a 2015 study by Levi’s.”

Then there’s the     5    of washing, which has to happen for every item when it’s returned, regardless of whether or not it was worn. For most rental services, this usually means dry cleaning, a high impact and polluting process. All the rental services that Cline looked into have     6    perchloroethylene(全氯乙烯), a carcinogenic(致癌的)air pollutant that is still used by 70 percent of US dry cleaners, with hydrocarbon alternatives, although these aren’t great either.

Lastly, Cline fears that rental services will increase our     7    for fast fashion, simply because it’s so easily accessible. There’s something called “share washing” that makes people engage in more     8    behaviors precisely because a product or service is shared and thus is regarded as more eco-friendly. Uber is one example of this, advertised as “a way to share rides and limit car ownership,” and yet ”it has been proven to     9    walking, bicycling, and public transportation use.”

Renting clothes is still     10    to buying them cheap and throwing them in the dustbin after a few wears, but we shouldn’t let the availability of these services make us too satisfied. There’s an even better step—and that’s wearing what is already in the closet.

Rainforests, found in Earth’s temperate and tropical(热带的) zones, are some of the most biologically varied ecosystems on the planet. All rainforests share certain     1     features, including a closed canopy—the dense vegetation of the top branches that forms a roof above the forest floor, a damp and warm climate, and    2     constant temperatures throughout the year. Most of the forest’s insect and animal life grows well in the canopy’s leafy and sunlit environment. The forest’s ground cover, by comparison, is small. Less than 2% of the sun’s light makes its way through the canopy and the darkness below. This darkness, along with the poor quality of the soils,     3     plant growth.

Rainforests are a(n)    4     part of Earth’s total ecology. Huge amounts of water are absorbed into tree roots and    5     into the atmosphere from the tree leaves through a process called transpiration(蒸腾作用). Tree roots also fix the soil in place and slow the run-off of rains into rivers and oceans. Through the process of photosynthesis(光合作用), rainforests absorb more carbon dioxide and give off more oxygen than any other ecosystem.

The rainforests are    6     shrinking at a rapid rate as a result of the profitable ventures of farming, logging, and mining. When tropical rainforests are    7     in order to raise cattle and crops, the nutrient-poor soils are quickly exhausted. When farmers move on to new areas, heavy rains and baking sun leave the land fruitless and lifeless. Logging and mining cause similar damage to the land and destroy the territory of    8     millions of birds, insects and animals. By some estimates, an area of tropical rainforest the size of the state of Delaware    9     in this way every month.

When asked by a TV reporter to talk about air and water quality in his hometown, Qi Mu noted, “The air is great now, and we can take more walks and enjoy being outdoors again.” He felt quite pleased because the villagers were living     1     with nature once more. However, he could not forget about an earlier time when his village had been struggling with a serious air quality problem.

In the 1990s,     2     from a nearby city was usually brought to the village. “How can we make use of this?” the villagers wondered. Soon they found that garbage could be used to feed pigs. “Over the next few years,     3    of pig farms were set up,” Qi recalled. But then nobody in the village wanted to open their windows. “The smell from the garbage and pig waste was making us sick,” Qi said. The numbers of mosquitoes and flies were also horrifying. “Under such circumstances, no single women wanted to marry anyone in our village and move here,” Qi sighed.

The villagers could no longer tolerate the situation. So an    4     was launched and a “clean-up” campaign was added to the government agenda, including     5     large vehicles from passing through the village. Garbage from the city was no longer disposed of in the village, and more trees were planted. “We can all breathe more freely now that the natural beauty of our village has been    6    ,” said Qi.