fast fashion and the destruction that follows it

I think we are all aware that fast fashion is bad. But why is it bad? I feel like it’s a commonly spoken-about issue, yet a lot of people do not seem to really know what makes fast fashion just so bad.

Fast fashion provides trendy pieces of clothing at alarmingly low prices. It utilizes cost-effective labor in impoverished countries to mass produce low-quality clothing and market it at bargain prices. They mostly target young people, specifically those who cannot afford to keep up with the trends as they come and go. Social media creates an availability that was never accessible before. It allows a user to see what billions of people are wearing every single day. This creates faster trend cycles as all it takes for something to become a trend is only one person wearing it in only one post which goes viral. Additionally, trends becoming a singular item of clothing or an extremely specific style leads to said style or piece of clothing going out of fashion very quickly.

The following breakdown gives a very brief overview of the effects of fast fashion.

Environment:

Producing clothing, no matter how the process, requires the use of water and often results in CO2 emissions. However, the mass amount of clothing produced by fast fashion companies and their lack of regard for the effects they are having on the environment results in an even higher amount of emissions. Many fast fashion companies have moved overseas to mostly underdeveloped areas where restrictions and regulations on emissions and environmental impacts are much lower than in the developed countries in which they sell their products. Fast fashion companies also often use viscose, a cheaper alternative to cotton, to again reduce production costs.  However, viscose has extremely detrimental effects on the environment such as the usage of harmful chemicals which leads to lethal health side effects on workers and results in a larger amount of greenhouse gas emissions than cotton production. Not only is the emissions and water consumption an issue, but their use of microfibers and viscose also poses a large threat to the environment. Synthetic microfibers are used by fast fashion companies as a substitute for more expensive fabrics such as cotton as a way to keep their pricing low. These synthetic fibers do not break down in the same way as typical clothing fibers and usually end up in the ocean or the atmosphere. Additionally, because fast fashion is mostly targeting these micro trends and is made of poor quality, people are much quicker to throw them away compared to other clothing items. All of these discarded items inevitably end up in our, already overfilled, landfills.

A giant pile of discarded fast fashion clothes in the Chilean desert.

Read about it here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/chile-fashion-pollution

photo from: https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/latin-america/chiles-desert-dumping-ground-for-fast-fashion-leftovers.phtml

Labor:

“The fast fashion industry employs approximately 75 million factory workers worldwide. Of those workers it is estimated that less than 2% of them make a living wage” (George Washinton Law School). As I live in the US, I can only confidently speak on practices here but I would assume most other highly developed countries have similar (if not better and more fair) labor practices. For the sake of this paragraph, I am just going to refer to the US. Most fast fashion factory workers are working in conditions that have been long gone in the United States and are now looked upon as barbaric and violations of human rights and dignity. Again according to George Washington Law, “European Parliament has even described the conditions of factory workers in Asia as ‘slave labor.’” Not to mention, child labor has become evident in this industry as well. Working with the aforementioned synthetic materials also has negative effects on workers’ health. As laborers breathe in these chemicals every day, their risk of disease increases.

From a rally in Bangladesh in 2014 on the anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse that killed more than 1,100 garment workers. The structure did not meet codes and was built without a permit.

photo from: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/garment-workers

The Fashion Industry:

This is more of a personal opinion than the first two, but I think fast fashion (and kind of social media) has taken away some of the best things about the fashion industry. Maybe not so much very high-end fashion but even so, their clothing pieces get ripped off so easily as well. Firstly, I think the speed of the trend cycle has become atrocious. Something is the most popular thing to wear one day and literally the next it’s overdone. Things go in and out so quickly there’s almost no time to catch up. I just think this is completely unattainable. I feel like we’re always chasing the new thing that is quite literally right around the corner. I wrote about this a little bit in my trends post but I just think that we’re losing authenticity and uniqueness. Everyone is wearing the EXACT same things and I think it’s so boring. And once you think you’ve caught up, in a week you’re behind again.

By no means am I trying to vilify people who have or do buy fast fashion, I think at some point we all have. It’s about learning and finding new ways to shop to avoid supporting companies that contribute to these problems. In my next blog post, I’ll dive into ways we can avoid fast fashion in the future.