Environmental impact of clothing
based on fiber type,
Information visualisation,
June 2021 – July 2021
In this project, a sustainability topic was to be presented through an information visualisation.
The topic of "fast fashion" was chosen, with a particular focus on the impact of the materials used in fashion products. The Higg Sustainability Index (HIGG) was used to uniformly assess the sustainability performance of materials used in fashion products. In addition, biodegradability was taken into account in order to obtain a complete overview of the entire life cycle of these materials.
Research and brainstorming
After an in-depth investigation of the environmental impact of the fashion industry the chemical pollution, water consumption, eutrophication and CO2 emissions were analysed.
Since various materials showed very different impacts, the fiber type became an interesting aspect to highlight in this data visualisation.
Data presentation concept
Various concepts for the visualisation were outlined. A major challenge was to effectively illustrate the effects of the individual materials, as the differences in effect-size were enormous. Also the time intervals of biodegradability varied considerably, therefore a logarithmic scale was required.
Realisation
Finally, the concept was implemented digitally and optimised based on internal suggestions from the course.
Key project learnings
During this project, I learned that the perception and interpretation of data visualisations is significantly influenced by certain factors such as the choice of chart type, scaling of the axes and the visual design. Therefore, this knowledge is essential for the correct and understandable design of data visualisations.
