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Step into your closet and pick a garment at random. Check the tag – does it contain polyester? With plastic-based materials like polyester and nylon making up 60% of all materials used by the fashion industry in 2019, and polyester fabric making up 54% of textile production in 2021, the answer is likely yes.
It’s no secret that fast fashion isn’t exactly good for our planet. The industry’s environmental footprint can be measured across its contributions to global carbon emissions, microplastics in the ocean, excessive water usage and industrial wastewater pollution.
But is it really as simple as labelling plastic-based materials as ‘bad’ and natural fibres as ‘good’?
With insights from Dr Lorinda Cramer, a lecturer in Deakin’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences whose research explores the gendered dimensions of dress and textiles, sustainable fashion and waste, we take a closer look at the complex history of polyester.
According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, polyester is ‘a class of synthetic polymers built up from multiple chemical repeating units linked together by ester groups.’ In simpler terms, polyester is a type of plastic.
While the term ‘polyester’ can refer to a broad group of synthetic materials, in the context of fabric, it’s usually polyethylene terephthalate (PET) that we’re referring to. You’ve probably held something made from PET recently, whether it’s a bottle of water or soft drink, or a clamshell package housing fruit or vegetables.
It’s probably hard to imagine that this material could make fabric that’s soft enough to wear, but when PET is cleaned, shredded and melted into chips, it can then be fed through a spinneret to create fibres that can then be spun into yarn and woven into polyester fabric.
Polyesters are derived from petroleum, which comes from crude oil – a non-renewable fossil fuel. Like coal and natural gas, crude oil is formed from the remains of ancient marine organisms. Over millions of years, heat and pressure transformed these remains into carbon-rich substances that we now extract and refine into a variety of products, including polyester.
Tapping into fossil fuels has helped to propel human development, powering industries, transportation and modern manufacturing. But while these resources have enabled enormous growth, as the term ‘non-renewable’ indicates, they are also finite.
Fossil fuels take millions of years to form, and humans are extracting and consuming them at a far faster rate than they can be replenished. Plus, extracting and processing crude oil has significant environmental costs, including greenhouse gas emissions, habitat disruption and pollution.
All of that is to say, these resources won’t last forever; their impacts are already being felt – and the production of polyester fabric is part of that picture.
If polyester fabric comes from a resource that will eventually run out, and its extraction has a high environmental cost, it’s fair to ask: why do we use it so widely?
Part of the answer lies in its properties. ‘Polyester fabric is cost-effective to produce, versatile, hard-wearing and low maintenance making it a popular choice – more than half of all clothes sold in Australia today are made from polyester,’ says Cramer.
Let’s dig into those characteristics in a bit more detail.
For starters, polyester fibre is strong and durable. It’s resistant to stretching, shrinking and abrasion, meaning you can put your clothes through the wringer without them easily losing their shape. Compare this to a cotton t-shirt, which can lose its structure over time, or a wool cardigan, which can warp or shrink if not carefully washed.
Polyester fibre is also wrinkle-resistant, so it doesn’t crease as easily as many natural fibres. This means fewer mornings spent frantically ironing or steaming before rushing out the door.
Another key property is its low absorbency. Polyester fabric, like most synthetic fabrics, doesn’t take in much moisture. That’s why it’s often used in activewear, and why brands often describe it as ‘sweat wicking’: the fabric moves moisture away from the skin so it can evaporate more quickly, rather than holding onto it.
Polyester fabric is typically lightweight and versatile, meaning it can be engineered into a wide range of textures. The polyester-based pieces in your wardrobe might feel smooth and silky, or thicker and more structured, depending on how the fibres were made.
Finally, polyester has excellent colour retention. Compared to fabrics like cotton, which can fade over time, polyester tends to hold onto its colour even after repeated washing, so your clothes look newer for longer.
We’ve covered the ‘what’ of polyester, but to really understand how this material became so prolific in the garment industry, let’s turn the clock back to the mid-20th century.
Interestingly, women weren’t the target market for this ‘wonder’ fabric – at least at first.
‘Given their so-called “miracle” qualities that made them easy to wear and easy to care for, synthetics were also heavily promoted to men: specifically, those who travelled for work or were bachelors,’ says Cramer.
‘Nylon, an earlier synthetic than polyester, had been sold to men who needed the convenience of a shirt that could be washed quickly and easily at home or in a hotel basin at night, hang overnight to drip dry and be ready to wear again the following morning without the need to iron.’
Before polyester fabric became commonplace, doing laundry was a far more frequent and labour-intensive process. Clothes made from natural fibres needed careful washing, drying and often ironing.
‘Newspapers keenly reported on businessmen who wore their shirts day after day, across weeks, to test the exciting potential,’ says Cramer. ‘When Terylene, Imperial Chemical Industry’s brand name for polyester, had its spectacular rise in Australia in the 1950s, it introduced even more people to clothes made from a durable, wrinkle-resistant, wash-and-wear synthetic fabric.’
From there, polyester fabric became popular in the rapidly expanding youth market, which embraced its potential to be dyed luminescent, almost neon colours and fashioned into bold, sculptural clothes.
From what we’ve unpacked so far, it’s easy to see why polyester has developed a bad reputation – and there are valid reasons for that. As a synthetic material derived from fossil fuels, it’s closely tied to some of the fashion industry’s biggest environmental challenges.
‘Polyester is often cast as “bad”: not only is it petroleum derived, with the fossil fuel industry the largest polluter globally, but polyester does not biodegrade,’ says Cramer. ‘It sheds microplastics each time it is washed, with these microplastics entering waterways and polluting marine environments – and when discarded, polyester garments sent to landfill may take 200 years to break down.’
But stopping the conversation there risks oversimplifying the issue.
For starters, Cramer notes that it’s important to acknowledge that natural fibres are not without their challenges, too. ‘Both wool and cotton, for example, require volumes of water to grow and farmers may use pesticides and chemicals. The fibres must then be cleaned, with the wool scouring process, for example using water and more chemicals,’ says Cramer.
‘These factors can’t be ignored in considerations around sustainable clothing choices, though natural fibres do have two key advantages that synthetics don’t: they’re renewable and biodegradable.’
Polyester fabric’s impact is also shaped by how it’s produced, used and disposed of, and by the broader systems it exists within. Fast fashion in particular has driven the mass production of cheap, short-lived garments, many of them made from polyester.
There have been attempts to improve polyester’s footprint: ‘Recycled polyester, made from discarded plastic bottles and other waste, is now available and has been framed as a more sustainable option – though, as some point out, this doesn’t solve the problem of too much plastic already in the world,’ says Cramer.
Ultimately, the question isn’t just whether polyester fabric is ‘bad’ and natural fibres are ‘good’, but how we produce, use and dispose of these materials.
‘Perhaps what’s needed now is consumer education that encourages an awareness in more people of the environmental impact of the clothes we buy, from the fibres they’re made from to the emissions produced by the global fashion industry.’
While it’d be easy for us to recommend avoiding purchasing clothing made from polyester fabric altogether, that’s not realistic. Natural fibres can be more expensive, require more care and aren’t always accessible to everyone. So, rather than throwing out everything in your wardrobe made from synthetic materials and starting from scratch, a more practical approach is to be more considered about what – and how much – you buy.
‘One way to think about a more sustainable use of polyester, or more sustainable clothing habits in general, is to prioritise buying good, quality pieces – and buying fewer of them,’ says Cramer.
According to Seamless, Australia’s Clothing Stewardship Scheme, in 2024 Australians purchased 1.51 billion items of clothing. That’s the equivalent of 55 items per person, which is pretty much a full closet being purchased annually.
‘Investing in classic silhouettes and quality items would help to counter fast, trend-driven fashion and place an emphasis back on the mindful consumption of pieces we need, rather than simply want,’ says Cramer.
In other words, sustainability isn’t just about what your clothes are made from. It’s also about how long they last, and how often we buy them.
If there’s one main takeaway from this article, it’s that materials aren’t black and white.
For better and for worse, polyester fabric has played a major role in shaping modern fashion. It’s changed what we wear and how clothes are made, cared for and purchased – and its popularity has also pushed innovation across the textile industry more broadly.
‘One aspect of polyester that I’ve been fascinated by is what its introduction and rise in the 1950s did to push research into natural fibres, particularly wool, forward,’ says Cramer.
Polyester was linked to modern living and convenience for qualities that weren’t then possible in wool. ‘One of these was polyester’s capacity to be permanently creased or pleated at a time when creases down the front of trousers was the norm and pleated skirts were fashionable,’ Cramer explains. ‘Polyester was also “wash-and-wear”, while wool had a reputation for being more difficult to launder at home.’
The result? An increase in research in Australia that aimed to improve wool by giving it similar advantages while keeping it competitive in the apparel market.
‘The CSIRO developed processes like “Si-Ro-Set”, wool’s equivalent of permanent pleating, and “Sironise”, to make it easy care,’ says Cramer. “And, as fibre innovation moves forward in many exciting directions, what has captured my attention are new fibres made out of unexpected natural sources, like seaweed.’
So, as the fibre industry continues to evolve, it’s important to recognise that individual materials like polyester fabric are just one part of a much broader system that’s shaped by innovation, industry practices and the choices we make as consumers.
