The Price You Pay: How Fast Fashion is Hurting the Environment
Insight provided by Jessica Pierson, originally published on May 11th, 2021.
Have you ever shopped at Forever 21, H&M or Zara? If so, you have probably experienced the crowd-pleasing business model known as fast fashion. By definition, fast fashion refers to cheaply produced and priced clothing of the latest styles and trends, made and pushed into stores at high speeds to meet consumer demand. New clothing trends constantly come and go, and many retailers want to be fully stocked and ready with the latest styles exactly when customers want them.
From a consumer’s perspective, everything about this model sounds great; you see the latest look on Instagram or Pinterest and you know you can count on a store like Forever 21 to have something similar in stock. In order to keep up with consumer demands and stay on top of trends, fast fashion retailers need the right resources to manufacture and sell clothing in a timely manner. This fast-paced method unfortunately comes with a price in the form of detrimental environmental effects. The damage of fast fashion includes excessive water usage, textile waste, microplastics and their carbon emissions, and poor working conditions.
The garment production process utilizes mass consumption of water, with the fast fashion industry being the second largest consumer industry of water. To put things into perspective, it takes about 700 gallons of water to produce one cotton shirt and roughly 2,000 gallons to produce one pair of jeans. In addition to fabric production, textile dyeing is the world’s second largest polluter of water. Nearly 20% of the world’s wastewater is due to fabric dyeing and treatment. A lot of this wastewater is extremely toxic and often cannot be treated to become usable again.
In 2019, the global consumption of apparel was 62 million metric tons. If current consumer lifestyle patterns continue and fast fashion brands keep overproducing, it is estimated that in ten years global consumption will rise to 102 million metric tons of apparel. Also, most wasted material ends up in landfills and is not reused or recycled, oftentimes due to the low quality of the clothing. Of the total fiber input used in clothing, roughly 87% is either disposed of in a landfill or incinerated, which releases more toxic pollutants into the environment.
Using low quality materials allows sellers to lower prices for consumers and provide them with a great deal. The downside to these cheaper, lower quality materials is that they tend to contain harmful microplastics. 35% of all microplastics come from synthetic materials which are commonly used in fast fashion clothing production, such as polyester. These fibers take hundreds of years to biodegrade, contaminate water sources, and are very harmful to marine ecosystems when they are released into the ocean. These fibers also tend to release more carbon emissions than material such as cotton. The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions. This accounts for emissions released during textile and clothing production, global transportation, and movement of textiles to landfills.
Along with the harmful environmental effects produced by fast fashion, the industry also contributes to the poor working conditions in garment factories. A report published by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2018 put forth evidence of forced child labor in the fashion industry in countries including Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam. The industry relies on cheap labor in areas where occupational hazards and safety standards aren’t taken into consideration.
These are only a handful of the negative effects that fast fashion has had on our environment. Although it is convenient to have access to the latest trendy items on demand, this convenience comes with a price. Constantly producing new items and discarding them to stay fashionable is not a sustainable practice. Perhaps as consumers, we need to be buying less, choosing our purchases more wisely, and making them last. If more people support sustainable and ethical fashion brands, it is possible that fast fashion and its detrimental effects will not be the future of the fashion industry.
Sources:
https://goodonyou.eco/fast-fashions-environmental-impact/
https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/
https://psci.princeton.edu/tips/2020/7/20/the-impact-of-fast-fashion-on-the-environment
Jessica Pierson is a junior from Parsippany, New Jersey pursuing a business administration degree with concentrations in management and finance. She is currently interning as a Customer Support Analyst at BASF chemical company where she works directly with the Care Chemicals team to gain further knowledge and experience within the division. From a young age, Jessica has been intrigued by the world of start-ups and the process entrepreneurs endure.
