What is Fast Fashion?
How many of us like to go shopping? Or get the latest trendy pieces of clothing for cheap? Majority of us, right? Who doesn’t like a good deal? Now, how many of the clothes you get are eco-friendly?
That’s a little bit harder to answer right? The reason why that’s a hard question nowadays is because of the concept of fast fashion. Fast fashion is a problem and is negatively impacting the environment in many ways.
Fast fashion is a manufacturing and designing method that quickly mass produces clothing. produces focuses on producing mass amounts of clothing at a rapid and mass capacity scale. Due to the rapid production of high volumes of clothing, manufacturers use low-quality materials which results in clothing being cheap and affordable. Many of the brands we buy clothes from are not eco-friendly at all. Yes, we are getting a cheaper price for these clothes, but the environment is paying for them.
Fast Fashion Problems
Cheap Quality Clothes Lead To Cheap Quality Air
Since trends are ever-changing, come and go brands don’t spend much time on quality, they rather put their time on quantity. Due to this way of production, there is an excessive amount of clothing that piles up in landfills. The World Bank (Fleischamann, 2019) said that 62 million metric tons of apparel were consumed globally. Whether the article of clothing is too small or too unfashionable many just throw the clothes out instead of donating them away. Mass-produced clothing is cheaply made and gets ruined.
These garments—full of lead, pesticides, and countless other chemicals—rarely break down. Instead, they sit in landfills, releasing toxins into the air.”
Stanton 2021
This can be threatening to communities near the landfilled pile of clothes. You might be thinking, why not just burn them to get rid of them for good. 57% of the clothing ends up in landfills to be incinerated since they are cheaply made and get ruined in a matter of few wears and tears. Burning mass amounts of clothes result in poisonous gasses in the air we breathe. Even though scientists have created techniques to filter these gasses from reaching us, it doesn’t eliminate the threat completely, just slows down the process (Le, 2020).
Consuming Plastic Due To Water Pollution
Cheaply made clothing not only pollutes our air but pollutes our water as well. Fast fashion makes most of our clothing out of synthetic fabrics since they are cheap. Some of these synthetic fabrics are polyester and nylon. These two alone release nitrous oxide which if you don’t know, it’s three hundred times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide. Also cotton is a very harmful fabric since to even produce a single cotton article takes about 3,000 gallons of water! These are just a few out of many fabrics that provides problems for the environment. Independent.co talks about materials that serve a problem to our environment.
Did you know that every time you wash a garment with such materials they let out microplastics that make their way into our ocean? These microplastics are then eaten by small fish, which are then eaten by bigger fish, and guess who eats those fish. Yeah, you guessed it.
“A quarter of seafood we consume contains microplastics.”
Wolfe 2020
35% of microplastics are derived from synthetic fabrics. Plastic doesn’t degrade easily underwater. When it does break down though, it creates a toxin that spreads and harms marine life. And us! Consuing plastic is extremely harmful for our bodies as it can cause health issues.
Fast fashion is becoming dangerous as its production is rapidly increasing. Consumers are so hellbent on getting the newest styles when the environment is at risk. Brands are releasing collections of clothing one after the other. They know that we as consumers do not care about the environment, we just want our clothes cheap and trendy. That is why they use such cheap materials and produce mass clothing which then piles up in landfills. These materials used for fast fashion then emit greenhouse gasses into our air and decompose slowly and release toxins to our oceans. Is fast fashion worth risking the air we breathe and the water we need?
Shop More Sustainably To Prevent These Problems.
Now that we as consumers are made aware of the negative effects of fast fashion, what can we do to prevent such harm to our environment? We live in the 21 first century where we can search what stores produce fast fashion clothing and which stores are eco-friendly.
To name a few, some of the popular fast fashion brands are:
H&M
Forever 21
Zara
Shein
GAP
FashionNova
Urban Outfitters
ASOS
Yes, these brands may be more accessible and affordable but they are designed to get rid of. These brands make clothing that will be out of style by the end of the season or that will rip easy, making you want to buy more new clothing. Is this season’s style more important than our environment?
No, it’s not, which is why you can shop for more eco-friendly brands such as Vetta, Reformation, Patagonia, etc. You can find tons of online stores that are eco-friendly. Researching brands and materials sbefore buying your clothes is a great way to live more sustainably. If you are concerned about pricing for these types of brands, don’t worry there are many eco-friendly brands nowadays that fall under your price range!
If you’re like me and enjoy the latest trends and the brands that produce fast fashion, you can do other things that will help our planet. One is, buying clothes second-hand and donating the ones you no longer wish to wear. Thrift Stores are a perfect place to shop for some really cool pieces and you can donate there as well. If you love the latest fashion trends, thrift stores are a great place to find them as well since fashion from the past always makes its way back to the present!
Ultimately, fast fashion is a problematic method brands use to produce the latest trends. This flawed method proves to be harmful to our environment. Fast fashion is the reason for excessive clothing which then lets out chemicals that pollute our air and have cheap materials which are hard to degrade and are fed to marine life. We can slowly reduce the problems that fast fashion brings if we resort to more sustainable brands.
Buy less, Choose well, Make it last
Vivian Westwood
Frequently Asked Questions about fast fashion
What is the problem with fast fashion?
The problem with fast fashion is how it releases toxic chemicals to our environment. Fast fashion brands use cheap and synthetic materials. And as consumers we over consume clothing and eventually throw them away they end up in landfills emitting these greenhouse gasses into the air we are breathing in.
Is fast fashion destroying our environment?
Fast fashion is hurting our planet in more than one way. Not only does fast fashion release microplastics into our ocean making fish consume it and then having us consume it as well, it also releases toxic chemicals into our air. There are so many land piles of clothes due to the way fast fashion brands produce clothing.
Is fast fashion ethical?
No, fast fashion is not ethical as it uses sweatshops and underpays their workers. Not only do they underpay, they give their workers terrible working conditions as well as long hours. Fast fashion is neither ethical nor environmentally friendly.
Why are fast fashion brands bad?
Fast fashion brands use cheap materials that do not last. These materials also make their way to our waters when we wash them. Therefore harming marine life.
