Ejercicio B.3 · Inglés PAU Madrid Ordinaria Lunes 2022

TEXTO B

Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry

According to reports from 2019, the amount of clothes bought in the European Union (EU) per person has increased by 40% in just a few decades. This fact was driven by a fall in prices and the increased speed with which fashion is delivered to consumers.

Clothing accounts for between 2% and 10% of the environmental impact of EU consumption. This impact is often felt in third countries, as most production takes place out of the EU. The production of raw materials – e.g. pesticides for cotton –, spinning them into fibres, weaving fabrics and dyeing require enormous amounts of water and chemicals. Consumer use also has a large environmental footprint due to the water, energy and chemicals used in washing, tumble drying and ironing, as well as to microplastics shed into the environment.

Less than half of used clothes are collected for re-use or recycling when they are no longer needed, and only 1% are recycled into new clothes, since technologies that would enable recycling clothes into virgin fibres are only starting to emerge. Various ways to address these issues have been proposed, including developing new business models for clothing rental, designing products in a way that would make re-use and recycling easier (circular fashion), convincing consumers to buy fewer clothes of better quality (slow fashion), and generally directing consumer behaviour towards choosing more sustainable options.

In 2018, the EU adopted a circular economy package that will for the first time ensure that textiles are collected separately in all Member States by 2025 at the latest. The European Parliament has for years promoted the use of ecological and sustainable raw materials and the re-use and recycling of clothing.

Adapted from “Environmental Impact of the Textile and Clothing Industry,” European Parliament Think Tank, January 17, 2019. <https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EPRS_BRI%282019%29633143>

B.3.- Find the words in the text that mean:

(Puntuación máxima: 1 punto)

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