A look into the fashion industry

A garment factory in SouthEast Asia / photo by getty images

Unethical fashion

The low costs of the sector of fast fashion have high costs environmentally and ethically.

Fast fashion according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers.”

This greatly polluting industry promotes a constant cycle of exploitation of workers and the Earth. Three fifths of clothes end up in landfills within a year of being made.

Environmental Impacts

Clothes now are designed not to last. This starts with the textiles used, now more than ever synthetic fibers. The market for synthetics, chemically sourced and greatly polluting, is rising quickly, used in more than 60 % of fabrics. Materials made from fossil fuels and once disposed of, these fibers and microfibers will not decay, forever lingering in oceans and landfills.

Between the production and disposal of garments, the industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions. By comparison the EPA estimates that agriculture comprises 10% of greenhouse gas emissions.

In this article, Booth states that most shoes and clothes are recyclable, yet only fifteen percent of materials produced yearly are reused. Disposed clothes fill the municipal landfills, creating circa 21 billion pounds of textile waste. This means each person creates about 85 pounds of clothing waste per year.



Labor Inequity

Not only is the fashion industry exploitative of the environment, but it exploits people all over the world.

Sweatshops are workplaces in the garment district that employ cheap labor and break (US) labor laws. They present unsafe working conditions, inhumane working hours, low wages, child labor, and hardly any, if not no benefits (such as health insurance, medical leave, paid vacation or retirement plans). Sweatshops are most prevalent in developing countries, where the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates more than a million and a half children work to make materials and clothes for the US and Europe.

Many of these workplaces are unsafe, sometimes even including the literal infrastructure of them. In the 2013, 1100 people were killed when a garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh. The owners had even ignored the warnings of the building’s instability the day before the tragedy.



Change

Ethical fashion: “clothing made in ways that value social welfare and worker rights” (Lessler)


This is detrimental to the environment and small steps and changes could go a long way.


How to support ethical and sustainable fashion and reduce the impacts of fast fashion:


  • An easy first step is being aware and careful about where you shop and what you buy.

    • Look for materials that are less harmful to the environment:

    • Naturally sourced, biodegradable, and compostable→ hemp, linen, cotton, silk, wool, leather, and cellulose fibers, viscose, rayon, lyocell

    • Avoid → virgin, petroleum-derived synthetics like polyester, acrylic, and nylon.


Recycle used materials: this counts for most things and can be true even for clothes, here are some ideas: