The Fast Fashion Effect

Ziruo Zhan (G8)

Published Issue 3 2021-2022

Economics & Business

Remember when you emptied out your overflowing closet of “outdated” clothes to make space for your seventh shopping trip this month? Or when you impulsively spent $200 on shein.com because of the Black Friday deals?

Today, people are buying and throwing out clothes more frequently and much faster, and the fashion industry is growing tremendously, leaving behind a trail of billions of tons of carbon emissions. The culprit? Fast fashion. This industry relies on on-trend clothing styles coming in and out of stores online and offline at impossibly cheap prices. Fast fashion seemingly came out of nowhere, growing massively in recent years. Brands like Shein, Zara, H&M, and Missguided have been drastically changing the fashion industry and consumer needs.

The Inhumanity Consequence

To maintain their cheap prices and the rapid in and out of designs, companies resort to hiring workers in developing countries with minimal human rights regulations. Allowing companies pay workers an unsustainable living wage, offering terrible working conditions. facilities are overcrowded with workers and harmful chemicals raising serious health concerns. These companies take advantage of the prominent lower class in these developing countries for slightly higher profit margins. Due to circumstances like unavailability of education, poverty, prejudice, sexism, or conflict, many in need of money are willing to work in these conditions. The majority of these workers are women, adolescents, and the elderly, desperate for work and nowhere else to go. The poorer populus of these developing countries producing for fast fashion such as India and Bangladesh now rely on this industry. It has become a growing concern that this trend with poor working conditions may grow into a snowball effect where other industries and companies may start to do the same in order to keep up with their competitors.

The Environmental Consequence

Recycle, reduce, reuse. The 3 Rs of recycling, a system you were probably taught as kids to promote sustainably and combat global warming. Are these fast fashion companies following this rule though, if they are willing to ignore all ethical rules for profit? They don’t. The fashion industry is responsible for a grand 10% of the world’s yearly carbon emissions, and is said to have used 1.5 trillion tons of water annually. For reference, one of your average cotton t-shirts used 2,700 liters of water to make. That’s more water than you're going to drink in the next two years of your life. As consumers buy more clothes, they throw out tons of clothes creating textile waste. As the cycle continues, this waste piles up in landfills, polluting the soil and the groundwater underneath, whilst contributing to greenhouse gas emissions as they are incinerated or left to decompose. As these effects build up, Antarctica continues to melt, sea levels keep rising, the air you breathe becomes polluted, and water availability steadily deteriorates.

What Can You Do?

So you’ve learned that the consequences are horrifying. You’ve read about the mothers and children who work longer hours than you for far less. So what can you do to help? The most obvious thing is to stop updating your closet so often. Buy clothes when you need them and consider buying higher-quality, more long-lasting clothing so you get what your money is worth whilst helping out our dying Earth. Even when you do have to empty out some space, consider if your clothes have somewhere better to go than the garbage. If they’re wearable and in decent condition consider donating them, perhaps to a thrift store or your local Salvation Army. If they’re torn, or very worn down, still donate them somewhere! Consult the internet, or a sorter to see whether they can be reused or recycled to create more clothing. Try your best to get those clothes somewhere, and help stop this ruthless cycle of fast fashion!