Carbon Footprints: Various Approaches to Clothing Care and Maintenance Practices Among Tertiary Students in Ghana

Abstract

The current study investigated the existing patterns of student laundry application. It distinguishes the environmental implications of these practices. Thus, the explanatory research design was adopted due to the nature of the study as there was the need to compare and analyse the responses from standardised questionnaires through the use of descriptive and inferential statistics which fit well into the explanatory survey design. This study hence adopted the quantitative methodology. The sample used for this study were tertiary students in Ghana. Convenience sampling method was used to select 150 students from four tertiary institutions and administered with questionnaires. The major findings of the study demonstrate that tertiary students are fully aware of the assertion that carbon footprint is something that leads to global warming and accepts that shaking, brushing and airing of clothes can be considered as an approach to clothing care and maintenance. They also appreciate that practising dry cleaning of clothes by the use of grease absorbents without the use of water should be considered as an approach to clothing care and maintenance. It was concluded that practicing dry cleaning of clothes by the use of grease absorbents without the use of water must be considered as an approach to clothing care and maintenance in tertiary institutions in Ghana.

The Performance of the Textiles and Apparel Sector and the Challenge of Environmental Sustainability in Ghana: A Qualitative Study

“…Granting numerous gases exist in the atmosphere, the most well-known term often linked to these climatic changes in the GHG; this is responsible for trapping the thermal radiation from the sun within the earth's atmosphere and leads to what is acknowledged as the greenhouse effect. The components of the GHG are water vapour (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), ozone (O3), and much more (Zanu et al, 2018;Wahlen., 1993).…”

“…Moreover, humans do not have adequate control over water vapour as they produce CO2 emissions. Thus, most climatic change reduction concentrates on CO2 emissions (Aivazidou & Tsolakis, 2019;Zanu et al, 2018).…”

“…A way to track one's greenhouse gas emissions is to be aware of their carbon footprint. Carbon footprint is the entire amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases emitted over the entire life cycle of a process or product (Zanu et al, 2018).…”