IT'S a pity that we can't all run around naked because we really should if we want to make a useful contribution to slowing down the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Clothes are often forgotten when we consider the big CO2 producers – houses, cars, flying and food production, particularly meat, and yet they are something we all own. It would certainly help if we were covered in fur as we are the only mammal that wears clothes.

While it's well known that there was food rationing during and after the second world war, it's often forgotten that clothing was also restricted, and coupons were needed when buying a new garment. It ended in 1949, and we've enthusiastically made up for it since.

In those days most folk only had two sets of clothes, one for the week, and Sunday best. My school clothes were clean on Monday and had to last until the end of the week when they contributed to the poor air quality. Then it was into a coal fired boiler with carbolic soap, made from coal tar, where they were stirred with a dolly stick, squeezed through a mangle, and hung out to dry.

Since then the world population has risen from just over two billion to more than seven billion, and not only are clothes now made out of a wider range of fibres, but folk own many more, discard the majority before they are worn out, and change them daily. Few clothes are repaired these days and the idea of 'make do and mend' has been forgotten.

At every stage clothes spell CO2, from the raw materials used to the time they are worn. Thus cotton needs nitrogen fertiliser, and enormous volumes of water, plus machinery for harvesting. Wool producing sheep are probably the best way of preventing new trees growing that would store CO2, and generally synthetic fibres are made from oil, coal or gas. Materials such as polyester and nylon are the product of the energy intensive chemical industry.

Then the raw materials travel the globe with cotton from the US to Bangladesh and Australian wool to China and Europe passing containers of all the manufactured garments criss-crossing the oceans.

We now wash them too often, frequently at high temperatures, in automatic washing machines that are energy intensive, particularly if the clothes are dried using a tumble drier rather than a line in the garden, or a kitchen rack pulled up to the ceiling. And then too many are unnecessarily ironed.

The real purpose of clothes should be to keep us warm, protected and decent, not for flaunting our wealth and ability to produce CO2.