Fashion's Melt Down
Throwaway culture is trashing the planet-but one young chemical engineer has her own way to turn it over．
Fast fashion has changed the way we dress．We buy more clothes, more often-but we wear them less．Alina Bassi, founder of Kleiderly, wants to give our clothing waste another chance at a useful life．
Bassi has always cared about the threat of climate change, but she actually started her career in the oil industry．After a few years, she landed at bio-bean, a startup that turned waste coffee grounds into products that could be burnt for heat and fuel．After a year, Bassi was keen to branch out-used coffee grounds are not the biggest threat facing the planet．Instead, she poured her efforts into tackling a much bigger global polluter: the fashion industry．
According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, we produce 100 billion items of clothing per year, and this is set to double by 2050．But they don't last long enough to offset（抵消）the carbon cost of producing the material, creating the clothes, and then shipping them to customers．"It makes no sense that we have such a high carbon footprint for something so short-lived," Bassi says．
Using the principles of a circular economy, Bassi has developed a low-energy, multi-stage process to turn clothing fibres into an alternative to oil-based plastic．This new plastic can then be used by manufacturers in their existing machines, so that your old T-shirts and jeans will become different products instead of clothes, such as clothing hangers, or even furniture．
Fashion companies have some other ways to reduce fashion waste, from creating clothes designed to last, to recycling the fabric to make more clothing．But "a problem this big needs multiple solutions," Bassi says．"We think about the multiple lives of a product and how we can keep reusing it instead of letting it fall into landfills or incinerators（焚化炉）,"she says．
1. Why did Bassi switch her focus to the fashion industry?2. Please paraphrase the underlined sentence in your own words．
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why．
Kleiderly can change old jackets and trousers into a new material, which can be used to make more clothing．
4. Please briefly present your own solution（s）to the throwaway problem in daily life．（about 40 words）
