Fast Fashion Facts
"Fast Fashion" hasn't always been with us.
Generally before 1920, clothing wasn't disposed of at the rate that it is today. People bought practical clothing to fulfill their needs for daily life. If a clothing item no longer suited that person, it would be given to a different family member and be tailored to fit them. When a clothing item became damaged or worn, people mended their own clothing and continued using it. Then, after a piece of clothing was worn beyond use, it was repurposed into household items, such as rags or quilts.
The clothing industry has a significant negative impact on our environment.
The fashion industry is the second-biggest consumer of water and is responsible for 8 to 10% of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined (Maiti and Thomas). This shows how much our simple purchases affect the environment. Even if we are just purchasing a cheap shirt from Target, it still contributes to the clothing industry’s detrimental impact on our planet. Making clothes uses lots of resources that are running out quickly. The creation of textiles and clothing has an enormous effect on the environment. The cotton for just one T-shirt, for example, takes about 719 gallons of water to produce. People need at least eight gallons of water per day for drinking, cooking and washing, according to the World Health Organization. The water used for a single T-shirt could support someone for up to two months (Kowalski). If we want to preserve our earth's resources, we need to stop constantly buying new clothing. A cotton t-shirt of the same or better quality could easily be found at a secondhand store for a cheap price, without having such an extreme environmental impact.
Fast Fashion uses harsh and unsafe labor practices while offering little pay for poorly treated workers. Behind the new displays filled with trendy clothing in our favorite stores, there are real people making those items. “In recent years, unsafe working conditions in clothing factories around the globe have provoked widespread outrage. Garment workers often have to endure heavy labour abuses. From sexual and verbal harassment, low wages and lack of union protection, these workers often do their jobs in a state of fear and uncertainty” (Mikolajczak). Many people don't think about how their cheap clothes are being made. Workers are being put in these dangerous situations just so they can get paid extremely low wages in poor conditions. Majority of the time the production takes place in less developed regions where outsourcing for labor is cheap and effective. Many factories in China use forced labor to produce textiles and clothing for the fast fashion industry. China forces people from the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority to work in factories producing cotton fabric for the garment industry (ImpACT International for Human Rights Policies). Oppressed minority groups are experiencing forced labor just so these fabrics can be produced cheaply and quickly. If we can know where fabric is being produced or we don't produce new fabric for clothing, we can take these people out of their horrible working situations and not contribute to the problem. Oftentimes we don't see how these clothes are being made because companies hide where their clothes are really being made. But sometimes a cry for help manages to come though. A woman in the UK found this note in a pair of pants from fast fashion retailer, Primark: “SOS! SOS! SOS! We are prisoners at Xiangnan jail in Hubei, China. For a long time, we have been producing clothing for export. We work for 15 hours each day. What we eat is even worse than food for pigs and dogs. The work we do is similar to [the hard work] that oxen and horses do. We urge the international community to denounce China for this inhumane act” (The Conscious Club). It is clear that these prisoners are being treated horribly with their only chance of being saved, being a note in a pair of pants they manufactured. These people are not making a penny, but sacrificing their well-being to hopefully maintain the last bit of safety they have. Laborers are nearly being forced to work while jeopardizing their safety and hoping for at least enough money to keep them alive.
The purchasing and creation of clothing results in a huge amount of unnecessary waste. “In 1980 the EPA found the U.S. to have generated roughly 5 billion pounds of textile waste in the public waste stream. That amount has since spiked to 32.44 billion pounds in 2014.. This is post-consumer textile waste, which includes products such as clothing, footwear, fashion accessories, towels, bedding, and drapery that have already been purchased. 95% of all textiles have the potential to be reused or recycled, but currently they are recycled at a rate of only 15%” (Center for EcoTechnology). Therefore, if clothing is extremely cheap, people are more likely to buy it without thinking it through. This results in clothing being worn very few times and then just going to waste afterwards. Almost all clothing has the potential to serve a purpose even after a person no longer wants it, but because of our habits of just throwing it away, we create tremendous amounts of waste. There isn't a need to cycle through clothing constantly, yet we do, at a terrible rate. “According to the EPA Office of Solid Waste, Americans throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year, and clothing and other textiles represent about 4% of the municipal solid waste. But this figure is rapidly growing” (Claudio). If we are throwing away clothes constantly, why do we keep buying more? This is a cycle many consumers are stuck in: buying clothes on a whim, not getting much use out of them, throwing them away, and buying more. If Americans could be more conscientious about their clothing purchase, we could significantly reduce this number. The more we buy, the more we have to dispose of to create more room in our closets. Increased consumption of fast fashion has created millions of tons of textile waste, particularly in developing countries. Much of this waste ends up in second-hand clothing markets in those countries (Bick and Halsey). Our waste doesn't just affect us, it affects people in other parts of the world. When more developed countries have extra waste, they don't want to deal with it so it ends up in the hands of developing countries. They might not get full use out of these and our waste just gets put on them to deal with. There is no need for people and companies to dispose of clothing and or textiles and create this waste.
Some people argue that fast fashion is an accessible way for people who follow trends to purchase the new clothes they want often, and for not very much money. It also benefits business, creating huge profit margins. Fast fashion is extremely popular but it is a destructive business model that provides cheap clothing for consumers and profits for business at the expense of our environment. While it might be extremely profitable for businesses to use cheap labor, textiles, and production to make clothes and sell them for increased profits, it is a destructive practice. People who benefit from buying these clothes might not know any better despite being huge consumers of these clothes. It might look like a great system on the outside, but it's detrimental to people and our environment. People buy fast fashion because it’s cheap but they don’t keep the clothing very long and this creates massive amounts of abandoned items. These people who buy cheap clothing because it's all they can afford are being tricked into a cycle that doesn't really benefit them. They will end up spending more on items that are poor quality, just to replace them for more low quality clothing. Lower income people have many other options for high quality clothing, including second hand shops that often sell expensive clothing for a small price. This will not only be a better and longer-lasting purchase, but will benefit our planet and the people who work to make clothing as well.
We can stop these problems created by the clothing industry by implementing practices like “slow fashion”. Some retailers and manufacturers like H&M offer clothing recycling in their stores (Portela). Also, in the past, governments and organizations have tried to protect workers after disasters, like when 1,132 workers died when a clothing factory collapsed in Bangladesh (International Labour Organization). Recent proposed solutions include protesting brands to demand they do better so people can purchase from them without having as many negative impacts on our world (Portela). My proposed solution is to promote ways of “slow fashion” by just using different ways of thinking when it comes to purchasing clothing and fashion items. The key players are the fashion industry, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. As consumers, we have the power to make change by supporting eco-friendly manufacturers and changing our buying habits. We can also encourage corporations to make better choices when it comes to sourcing textiles and using better labor practices where people are in safe conditions and are paid fairly. Organizations like Dressember and Re/make have offered ways to find ethical fashion. They advocate for workers’ rights and fair wages, too and try to get clothing manufacturers to be environmentally responsible and treat their workers fairly.
Fast fashion offers consumers the latest looks at a cheap price, but this comes at a price: the destruction of our environment, the exploitation of the workers who create the clothing, and the unnecessary discarding of fashion items and textiles. Buying clothing responsibly can help with all of these issues. People need to think before they buy fast fashion and make better, more conscientious choices. We can all help save our environment and make peoples’ lives better by just being aware of the situation and taking action.
Works Cited
Bick, Rachel, and Erika Halsey. “The global environmental injustice of fast fashion - Environmental Health.” Environmental Health, 27 December 2018, https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-018-0433-7. Accessed 21 March 2022.
Center for EcoTechnology. “The Monster in our Closet: Fast Fashion & Textile Waste on the Rise.” Center for EcoTechnology, 19 July 2021, https://www.centerforecotechnology.org/fast-fashion-textile-waste/. Accessed 21 March 2022.
Claudio, Luz. “Waste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry.” Environmental Health Perspectives, 1 September 2007, https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.115-a449. Accessed March 16 2022.
The Conscious Club. “Clothing & Human Rights — The Conscious Challenge.” The Conscious Challenge, 6 June 2019, https://www.theconsciouschallenge.org/ecologicalfootprintbibleoverview/clothing-human-rights. Accessed 21 March 2022.
ImpACT International for Human Rights Policies. “Fast-fashion brands tainted by human rights abuses and forced labour: the exploitation of the Uighur population.” ImpACT International, 12 August 2020, https://impactpolicies.org/en/news/152/fast-fashion-brands-tainted-by-human-rights-abuses-and-forced-labour-the-exploitation-of-the-uighur-population. Accessed 21 March 2022.
International Labour Organization. “The Rana Plaza Accident and its aftermath.” International Labour Organization, 2018, https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/geip/WCMS_614394/lang--en/index.htm. Accessed 3 April 2022.
Maiti, Rashmila, and Dana Thomas. “Fast Fashion: Its Detrimental Effect on the Environment.” Earth.Org, 29 January 2020, https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/. Accessed 21 March 2022.
Mikolajczak, Chloé. “Six things you didn't know about the true cost of fast fashion.” United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Development Programme, 17 September 2019, https://www.undp.org/blog/six-things-you-didnt-know-about-true-cost-fast-fashion. Accessed 21 March 2022.
Molina, Daniela. “Breaking down the cost of ethical fashion.” Dressember, 23 November 2020, https://www.dressember.org/blog/ethical-fashion-cost. Accessed 21 March 2022.
Niinimäki, Kirsi. “The cost of ‘fast fashion’ – Up to 92 million tonnes of waste and 79 trillion litres of water consumed per year to make garments.” The cost of 'fast fashion' – Up to 92 million tonnes of waste and 79 trillion litres of water consumed per year to make garments | Aalto University, Aalto University, 7 April 2020, https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/the-cost-of-fast-fashion-up-to-92-million-tonnes-of-waste-and-79-trillion-litres-of-water. Accessed 21 March 2022.
Perry, Patsy. “Read this before you go sales shopping: the environmental costs of fast fashion.” The Conversation, 27 December 2017, https://theconversation.com/read-this-before-you-go-sales-shopping-the-environmental-costs-of-fast-fashion-88373. Accessed 21 March 2022.
Portela, Valentina. “The Fashion Industry Waste Is Drastically Contributing To Climate Change.” CALPIRG, 9 March 2021, https://calpirg.org/blogs/blog/cap/fashion-industry-waste-drastically-contributing-climate-change. Accessed 21 March 2022.