Modeling of Environmental Pollution Due to the Fashion Industry Using Fractional Programming

Abstract

The fashion industry is one of the world’s largest and third most polluting industries. It produces a carbon footprint of around 10% annually, which is much higher than the footprint produced by flights and shipping. Nowadays, there is an increase in demand for different and new products for people of all ages due to which fast-changing fashion is becoming a trend. But there is a hidden cost in the manufacturing of each material, which is ignored by people and which costs the environment and eventually the health of people. It not only pollutes the air due to the emission of greenhouse gases but also consumes plenty of water along with an increase in plastic and some other waste that pollutes our environment. The solution to the problem is to avoid and move away from this fast fashion trend and subsequently buy a few items of clothing that are good in quality and do not pose a threat to the environment. But this will lower the sales as well as the revenue of the fashion industry, which will eventually affect our economy. The purpose of this study is to construct a novel fractional mathematical programming model that caters to both objectives, i.e., minimizing environmental pollution and maximizing the revenue of the fashion industry with respect to the constraints based on the industry and environment.

Keywords

• pollution
• fashion industry
• environment
• greenhouse gases
• fractional programming model