FAST FASHION BREEDS GROWING HARM

“Fast fashion”– a term used so often in the recent past that one might begin to think of it as a buzzword, instead of the business model that it truly is. And a highly damaging model, it turns out.

Fast fashion is low-quality clothes made with cheap materials and sold at low prices. These clothing brands take ideas from high fashion and create replicas of the latest trends. The idea is to get these garments out to consumers quickly while they are at the top of their popularity. Unfortunately, these trendy clothes quickly phase out and are discarded, due to poor quality, after a few uses. The latest styles are sold right when consumers want them, and then taken off the racks when they don’t.

These brands include Forever 21, Zara, Shein, Asos, Wish, and many more. This business model seems harmless, but a look at fast fashion’s impact on the planet tells a different story.

NASTY IMPACTS

Pressure to bring down costs and speed up production time comes at a steep cost to the environment. For example, these brands use cheap, toxic textile dyes that contain carcinogens. These dyes can cause contact dermatitis, respiratory diseases, and irritation to the eyes, skin, and mucous membranes. In addition, most of these garment factories are in low-income areas of China and Bangladesh, and these toxic dyes flood these communities’ waterways and contaminate their drinking water.

Safety standards in these overseas garment factories are poor. Employees get lung disease caused by cotton dust and synthetic air particulates, while a lack of work breaks causes overuse injuries. Deaths have also resulted from these hazardous conditions, such as Bangladesh’s 2013 Rana Plaza building collapse. After cracks in the foundation of the eight-story Rana Plaza had been found, an immediate evacuation order for all building employees was issued, but the building owners neglected these warnings, and it collapsed the next day. Due to this negligence, 1,034 people were killed, and another 2,500 were injured.

Fast fashion brands choose unregulated forms of manufacturing, which place affordability over safety. What’s more, these workers are also not paid a livable wage.

One of the most used fabrics in fast fashion is polyester, derived from fossil fuels, and its microfibers shed when washed, which adds to the rising levels of plastic in our waterways. But even “natural fabrics” can be a problem at the scale fast fashion demands. For example, conventional cotton requires an enormous amount of water and pesticides in developing countries, resulting in drought risk and creating stress on water sources, including competition with local communities’ needs. As a result, the fashion industry is the second-biggest consumer of water, producing 20% of global wastewater while generating more greenhouse gas emissions than all international airline flights and maritime shipping combined, according to the UN Environment Programme.

PASS-DOWN PROBLEMS

Fast production of these items causes consumers to dispose of more clothes than ever before, creating massive textile waste. When finished, people donate their used clothing, assuming that someone will reuse it. However, with the growing number of clothing items thrown out that are

of poorer quality, less and less can be resold, and millions of garments are put into bales and shipped abroad every year. Whatever purveyors cannot sell in thrift stores gets sent to a salvage market in places such as Ghana. One Ghana market receives around 15 million used clothing items from Western countries every week.

Market traders upcycle these garments, but the process is becoming increasingly difficult, due to the poor quality of fast fashion garments. CBS News estimates that 40% of all the clothing bales sent to Ghana end up in landfills. Even worse, some unsold clothing washes out to beaches when it rains heavily, creating huge piles of clothes in the sand.

A contributing factor to this overconsumption is that 1 in 3 young women who make up the bulk of fast-fashion consumers think garments worn once or twice are “old.” Online retailers use tailored strategies on social media that directly target young people and use influencers to promote their brand. Their followers can “swipe up” and instantly purchase an outfit worn by the media influencer. There is also an uptick in buy-now-pay-later options that do not require credit checks, making buying these items so quick and easy that it removes any moment for reflection and any barriers to purchase.

NEW APPROACH NEEDED

We need to rethink our fast-fashion habits. We can’t continue to make clothes that do not consider safety and the environment. Apparel brands need to take responsibility for the waste they’re creating by addressing the chemicals used, having transparent sourcing, using synthetic fabrics that don’t break down, and stopping the use of unsafe factories with unfair work practices.

Moreover, as a global community we need to change how we consume fashion. We as consumers need to buy less clothing, and when we do, we need to make sure that it is more sustainable and of higher quality.

Please, read labels before purchasing and look for natural organic fibers, nontoxic dyes, take-back programs, and ethical production. Reimagine your current wardrobe and upcycle something old to make it new, like taking old jeans and cutting them off to make shorts. There are plenty of free video tutorials on YouTube with great ideas and step-by-step instructions. Repair and keep garments that become damaged, or shop at local thrift stores and buy gently used previously owned clothing. These solutions will reduce the impact on the environment, reduce unnecessary waste, and promote safe working conditions for garment factory workers.

Sources: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ghana-fast-fashion-environmental-disaster/ https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-alliance-sustainable-fashion-addresses-damage-fast-fashion

The Fast Fashion Problem And 5 Ways To Fix It – TechNewsHQ. https://www.technewshq.org/the-fast-fashion-problem-and-5-ways-to-fix-it/ Living Tragedies and Dying Workers – SEAWEED. https://2018.iseaweed.org/en/living-tragedies-and-dying-workers/

Consumers Should Not Support Fast Fashion Brands – The Mirador. https://mhsmirador.com/opinion/2020/09/25/consumers-should-not-support-fast-fashion-brands/ The Ripple Effect — Pact Articles. https://articles.wearpact.com/blog/2019/3/27/the-ripple-effect https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/blogpost/why-fast-fashion-needs-slow-down