November 15, 2022
By: Megan Moran
Convenient and affordable clothing stores like Shein, Forever 21, or Zara are successful and well liked by younger generations but they are quickly damaging the Earth. Clothing companies like those contribute to the ‘fast fashion’ industry. According to earth.org, “The term fast fashion refers to a large sector of the fashion industry whose business model relies on cheap and speedy production of low quality clothing, which gets pumped quickly through stores in order to meet the latest and newest trends.”
When pollution and carbon emissions are thought of, companies like Shein and Forever 21 are not often at the front of mind. Typically transportation vehicles like planes, ships, and trucks are thought to be the blame for carbon emissions but in actuality, fast fashion production takes up 10% of total global carbon emissions. That is double of what flight and maritime transport takes up of global carbon emissions, which is 5%.
Clothing in fast fashion stores goes out of style quickly, causing people to discard it after only a few wears, which ends up polluting rivers or piling up in dumps with 85% of all textiles going to dumps every year. Besides discarded clothing affecting the Earth’s water; the dyeing and creation of clothing pollutes it. It requires approximately 700 gallons of water to make one cotton shirt and approximately 2,000 gallons of water to make one pair of jeans. Earth.org also states that the dyeing process is the second-largest polluter of water in the world, as a result of the leftover water from the process being dumped in streams or rivers.
Companies like Shein are the ones largely contributing to clothing polluting the Earth and piling up in dumps. Shein releases 700-1,000 items per day resulting in 35,000 pieces of clothing being produced per day. With that large amount of items being released each day, it results in some not being as popular as others. All of the pieces that are produced for an item that ends up being unpopular are discarded and left to pollute the environment.
Shein is quickly growing in popularity and other fast fashion companies continue to have success, leading to more and more pollution of our Earth. If we want to decrease pollution and help our planet heal, we need to actively choose to not purchase from fast fashion brands and tell others about the damage they are causing. There are inexpensive, environmentally safe alternatives for clothing stores so, do some research about your favorite clothing brands and go thrift shopping!
Sources:
https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/
https://earth.org/what-is-fast-fashion/