What might be some of the economic and environmental tradeoffs of producing clothes from human-made polymers, such as nylon, and polyester versus natural polymers, such as cotton?

Synthetic clothes are economically less expensive and lightweight compared to common traditional clothes; however, they pose difficulties for recycling

Explanation:

Polymers are compounds made of long repeating molecules, which can be classified according to their origin into natural and synthetic. Synthetic polymers include, among others, nylon (household products), polyvinyl chloride, also known as PVC (clothing), polypropylene (packaging), etc. As compared to traditional clothes made up of cotton, synthetic clothes offer significant advantages related to production costs, i.e., they can be produced in high-scale processes, and automated production is less expensive than traditional processes. However, synthetic polymers consist of long repeat chains of molecules that have very strong atomic bonds, which make difficult their degradation by decomposers (i.e., non-biodegradable in nature). The process of degradation of synthetic clothes can take up many years to break down these compounds. In addition, synthetic clothes are also pollutants because they are lost in the water when they are laundered, remaining for many years in water ecosystems.