Apparel prices have actually dropped. We should be allowed to keep it that way

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They’ve gone after single-use plastics, they’ve made a lunge at agricultural fertilizer — and now, the Liberals might be going after clothes.

In July, Environment and Climate Change Canada announced its intent to address “plastic waste and pollution from the textile and apparel sector.” In short, there’s a plan in the works to reduce clothing waste. It’s far too early to know what it will entail, but the consultation documents raise a key concern: will clothes become more expensive?

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Textile waste is, indeed, a problem that afflicts the whole world. The manufacturing process for pulp-based synthetic fibres, like viscose, creates chemical waste. Their petroleum-based counterparts, like polyester and nylon, can’t biologically degrade, which means the discarded clothes they compose can’t properly break down and complete the carbon cycle. Your shirts shed microplastics in the dryer, and that’s a bad thing.

Whether it’s a significant bad thing worthy of federal intervention, however, is another matter.

Environment Canada’s own documents don’t present much of a pressing case: one federally commissioned study estimated........

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