Watch | In Ludhiana, Demand for Cheap, Trendy Clothes Is Closely Linked with Death and Disease

A bustling textile hub in northern India known for manufacturing 80% of the country’s woollen clothes hides an important ecological secret.

In the second episode of our series with The ReFashion Hub, we visit two villages in Ludhiana – a bustling textile hub in northern India known for manufacturing 80% of the country’s woollen clothes and exporting activewear worth Rs 3,000 crore around the world. Almost all activewear clothing here is made out of nylon, polyester, and acrylic fabrics – widely known for polluting water sources.

In addition, the process of dyeing these fabrics has turned the water streams here black. Watch this video to understand the micro-impact of cheap, trendy clothes stacked in our closets.

You’ve tuned to a three-part series on how fast-fashion clothing is harming day-to-day lives in the developing world.

The production of this series has been made possible by The ReFashion Hub. In this series, we explain what is fast fashion, why you may really not need those sweatshirts you just ordered from an online store, and what each of us can do to clean our fashion footprint in the world.

Watch part one here.

Narrator: Bahar Dutt
Script writers: Pawanjot Kaur and Naomi Barton
Producer: Pawanjot Kaur
Cinematographer: Harnoor Singh
Video editor and animator: Asad Ali
Science editor: Vasudevan Mukunth