Papers

61,005 results
|
Review Tier 2

Virtual versus sustainable fashion: a systematic literature review

This systematic literature review examined the degree of convergence between virtual fashion -- digitally rendered clothing without physical equivalents -- and sustainable fashion, assessing whether virtual garments offer a meaningful pathway to reducing the environmental footprint of the apparel industry.

2023 Scientific Papers of Silesian University of Technology Organization and Management Series 3 citations
Article Tier 2

Advancing sustainable fashion with 3D and AR technologies: a virtual fashion film approach

This paper is not about microplastics; it investigates how 3D design software and augmented reality tools can be used in virtual fashion films to promote sustainability in the fashion industry by reducing material waste.

2026
Article Tier 2

Rise of digital fashion and metaverse: influence on sustainability

This review explores how digital fashion and the metaverse could help address sustainability challenges in the apparel industry, which has doubled its output since 2000. Researchers examined how virtual technologies might reduce the environmental footprint of fashion by shifting some consumption to digital spaces. The study suggests that metaverse platforms could influence consumer decision-making and offer competitive advantages while potentially reducing waste and resource use.

2023 Digital Economy and Sustainable Development 51 citations
Article Tier 2

Unveiling Potential Landscapes in the Age of Dematerialization and Digital Progression

This study examines how the fashion industry's unsustainable production practices contribute to environmental pollution, including textile-derived microplastic contamination. The authors explore how digital technologies and dematerialization trends could shift consumption away from fast fashion toward more sustainable models. The research suggests that cultural and technological shifts may help reduce the fashion industry's environmental footprint.

2025 Fashion Highlight 1 citations
Article Tier 2

How can the fashion industry be sustainable? The use of immersive technology in fashion design for innovation, digital transformation, and sustainability

This study examines how immersive digital technologies can help the fashion industry adopt sustainable practices, exploring how digitised design and production processes can reduce environmental impacts including textile microplastic pollution.

2024 Wintec Research Archive (Waikato Institute of Technology)
Article Tier 2

Design Thinking as a remedy to Fast-Fashion ecological issues

This theoretical design study explores how design thinking methodologies could be applied to address the ecological problems caused by fast fashion, including textile microfiber pollution. It is primarily a conceptual design framework paper rather than an empirical research study.

2020 Theseus (Ammattikorkeakoulujen)
Article Tier 2

A Plan to Secure Environmental Sustainability Through Digital Transformation of the Fashion Industry: Focusing on Fashion Design and Smartization of the Manufacturing Process

This study examines how digital transformation and smart manufacturing technologies in the fashion industry can reduce environmental pollution, proposing a framework for integrating digital design tools and process optimization to improve sustainability across the fashion clothing supply chain.

2022 Academic Society for Appropriate Technology 6 citations
Article Tier 2

Bringing Sustainable Practices, Fashion Shows, and Sociological Insights Together to Reinvigorate Sustainable Fashion Education

This study explores how sustainable practices, fashion shows, and sociological perspectives can be integrated to strengthen sustainable fashion education. Researchers reviewed current challenges the fashion industry faces in adopting sustainability and examined how virtual fashion experiences present both opportunities and obstacles. The study highlights the role of fashion education in promoting environmental awareness, including reducing reliance on synthetic materials that contribute to microplastic pollution.

2025 Sustainability 6 citations
Article Tier 2

The Good, the Bad, and the Sustainable: How Technology Has Changed and Continues to Change the World of Fashion, from Cotton Gin to Digital Clothes

This review examines how technology has driven the rise of fast fashion — one of the most polluting industries globally — and explores how it can also drive more sustainable practices. Fast fashion production and disposal are major sources of synthetic textile microfibers that enter waterways during washing and waste processing.

2023 IntechOpen eBooks 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Mass-Customised Fashion in a Smart Holistic Wear-Care Business Model

This study proposes a holistic business model for mass-customized fashion using digital tracking technologies to extend product lifespans and enable better recycling. Extending clothing lifespans directly reduces the volume of synthetic textile fibers that shed as microplastics during washing and decomposition.

2023
Article Tier 2

Eco-Gamification Platform to Promote Consumers’ Engagement in the Textile and Clothing Circular Value Chain

This paper describes an eco-gamification digital platform designed to engage textile and clothing consumers in circular economy behaviors, using game mechanics to incentivize garment return, recycling, and sustainable purchasing to reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry.

2023 Sustainability 18 citations
Article Tier 2

Fashion industry: exploring the stages of digitalization, innovative potential and prospects of transformation into an environmentally sustainable ecosystem

This study analyzes the digital transformation of the fashion industry, identifying the stages of digitalization and the potential to shift from a linear to a circular production model to address mounting raw material shortages and environmental impacts. The authors propose an ecosystem-based digital platform as a framework for sustainable industry transformation.

2023 Eastern-European Journal of Enterprise Technologies 13 citations
Article Tier 2

SUSTAINABLE FASHION INDUSTRY: Why do we need a switch towards conscious consumption?

This thesis examines the fashion industry's environmental and social harms, including its significant contribution to microplastic pollution through synthetic textile washing, and argues for a shift toward more conscious consumer behavior. Fast fashion is one of the largest sources of synthetic microfibers entering waterways globally.

2019 Theseus (Ammattikorkeakoulujen)
Article Tier 2

Exploring Consumer Engagement in Response to Sustainable Social Media Content and Brand Identity of Fashion Brands

This marketing study examines how sustainable social media content and brand identity affect consumer engagement with fashion brands. While not a science paper, consumer behavior toward sustainable fashion is relevant to demand for lower-microfiber synthetic textiles.

2023 Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Biomaterial Experimental Design Practices as an Strategy for Sustainable Fashion

This paper explores biomaterial design — including alternatives to synthetic polyester fibers — to drive sustainability innovation in the fashion industry. Reducing reliance on synthetic textiles like polyester could help decrease microplastic fiber pollution released during washing.

2022 MIX Sustentável 5 citations
Article Tier 2

Fashion, Sustainability, and the Anthropocene

This review examines the environmental impact of clothing consumption in the context of the Anthropocene, discussing emerging sustainable materials and circular economic models against the broader historical backdrop of human-environment interactions in the fashion industry.

2017 Utopian Studies 44 citations
Article Tier 2

Microbiology Meets the Fashion World: A Paradigm Shift in Design Education and Practice Through Biotechnology

This study examines how integrating microbiology and biotechnology into fashion design education can shift the industry away from its fossil-fuel-dependent, fast-fashion model, arguing that transdisciplinary approaches using living organisms and bio-based materials represent a promising path toward sustainability in one of the world's most polluting industries.

2022 Preprints.org 3 citations
Article Tier 2

Sustainable Fashion

This review of sustainable fashion examines how the textile industry's shift to fast fashion has accelerated environmental damage, including the shedding of synthetic microfibres — a major source of microplastic pollution in waterways — and argues that circular production models and consumer behaviour change are needed to reduce the industry's footprint. The paper is relevant because textile microfibres are among the most commonly detected microplastics in marine and freshwater environments.

2026 International Journal for Research in Applied Science and Engineering Technology
Article Tier 2

Fashioning Fiber Futures

This study examines the environmental and social problems generated by the global fashion industry's dominance by synthetic fibre production, including microplastic pollution and carbon emissions, and evaluates Fibershed's regional fibre network model as an alternative. Using qualitative thematic analysis, researchers assess how localised, community-based fibre systems and Indigenous and Black American knowledge could advance sustainable textile futures.

2024 Fashion Highlight
Article Tier 2

Linear Economy versus Circular Economy: New raw material

This paper examines the fashion industry's role in environmental sustainability and argues for a transition from linear to circular economic models. It highlights how the current take-make-waste approach generates massive textile waste, including synthetic microplastic fibers. A circular fashion economy would reduce both material waste and plastic pollution from textiles.

2022 Turk Turizm Arastirmalari Dergisi 4 citations
Article Tier 2

Fast fashion revolution: Unveiling the path to sustainable style in the era of fast fashion

Researchers examined the relationship between fashion orientation and fast fashion purchasing behavior, including how attitudes toward sustainable clothing consumption moderate these choices. They found that fashion orientation strongly influences purchase intention and actual buying behavior, but that sustainable clothing awareness can temper fast fashion consumption. The study highlights the environmental costs of fast fashion, including microplastic-generating textile waste, and calls for greater consumer education.

2024 E3S Web of Conferences 12 citations
Article Tier 2

The Rise of SHEIN: Navigating the Digital Era of Fast Fashion and Its Comprehensive Impacts

Not relevant to microplastics — this study analyzes fast-fashion retailer SHEIN's digital business model, supply chain, and environmental footprint from a business and sustainability perspective, without focusing on microplastic pollution specifically.

2024 Advances in Economics Management and Political Sciences 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Socially Responsible Fashion Practice: Looking Good and Feeling Good

This brief overview explores the concept of socially responsible fashion, focusing on how consumers balance looking stylish with making more sustainable clothing choices. It is a consumer behavior study not related to microplastics science.

2020 13 citations
Article Tier 2

Slow Fashion in a Fast Fashion World: Promoting Sustainability and Responsibility

This study examines the "slow fashion" movement as a sustainable alternative to fast fashion, analyzing how different business models, consumer behaviors, and policy frameworks can shift clothing production and consumption toward more responsible practices. Slow fashion is directly relevant to reducing textile microfiber pollution, since synthetic clothing is a major source of microplastics in wastewater.

2019 Laws 140 citations