Fast Fashion or Flop

Chances are, you’ve gotten a cheap t-shirt somewhere, whether it’s SHEIN, H&M, ZARA, or any other major brand. The fast fashion industry has penetrated almost every aspect of everyday life, becoming commonplace in society. These multi-trillion dollar companies are known to create cheap clothing, but there is a hidden cost behind buying fast fashion. These conglomerates abuse workers and the environment to such an extent that it ruins countless lives, environments, and our entire world. The amount of negative things that the fast fashion industry brings into our world is contrasting to the complacency of the everyday consumer. Customers don’t know about the process of buying clothing, they just see something they like, press purchase, then wait for it to arrive. There is a plethora of news, articles, and journal entries on the issues plaguing the fashion world, yet impressionable children, adolescents, and adults are oblivious to the problems that the fast fashion industry poses. They are missing the vital information on what goes on behind the scenes, and it is necessary for us as a society to be knowledgeable on this subject. Therefore, fashion driven adolescents should stay away from fast fashion because it pollutes the environment, harms the climate, and abuses workers. 

            The fast fashion industry produces a plethora of clothing, while also polluting some of the most important world resources. One of these is water. Many factories use water either as a source of energy or for other aspects of the garment making process; however, this process comes with an extremely dangerous side effect, water pollution. Rashmila Maiti, in the article “Fast Fashion and Its Environmental Impact,” states, “Business Insider also cautions that textile dyeing is the world’s second-largest polluter of water, since the water leftover from the dyeing process is often dumped into ditches, streams or rivers” Fresh drinking water is a vital resource for human and animal life, and when it is disrupted through industrial practices that the fast fashion industry titans are doing, there are many dangerous effects that take place. Ecosystems can become damaged with pollution affecting the food chain or environment, animals can start dying off, and humans can start becoming unhealthier as toxic water enters their bodies. Although these companies are indifferent to this pollution, there is another problem that can come about from their actions too. While the water is becoming polluted with toxic waste, microplastics become an issue as well. 

            Microplastics are miniscule fragments of plastic that make their way into our environment and drinking water, and the clothing making industry has a big part to do with this. Maiti states, “A 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that 35% of all microplastics – tiny pieces of non-biodegradable plastic – in the ocean come from the laundering of synthetic textiles like polyester.” Microplastics have been proven to be unhealthy towards human beings, affecting immune response and contributing to neurotoxicity and metabolic disorders.  Healthier materials such as silk, wool, and hemp are not heavily used by the fast fashion industry due to their cost of production. The main focus for these companies is profit, and nothing will get in the way of that. Alongside all of this, the other resources that these titans of industry use to create this mass amount of clothing has its own effects on the planet and pollution of it as well. Cotton is especially harmful and commonly used in the textile making process. Maiti states, “Additionally, cotton, which is in a large amount of fast fashion products, is also not environmentally friendly to manufacture. Pesticides deemed necessary for the growth of cotton presents health risks to farmers”. While cotton is not particularly harmful to consumers, the locals in the presence of these factories have to deal with the aftereffects of pesticides from the manufacturing process potentially harming them. Alongside this, the workers are exposed to these dangerous chemicals directly. Cotton being the #1 most used material to make clothing from, it is no doubt that companies will cut whatever corners they need in order to boost profits. No matter what, all of this pollution is just a scratch on the surface compared to the other climate effects that the industry has on the world.

            Other than pollution being a risk to life on planet earth, the climate itself is also under attack by these same companies. Many factories in this sectere use a very large quantity of fossil fuels in order to fulfill their operations, and fast fashion is a massive example. Helle Abelvik-Lawson in “How fast fashion fuels climate change, plastic pollution, and violence” states, “Plastic is made from oil and gas. Polyester is a thread made from plastic, woven into fabric. It’s thought that over half of the clothes produced today use synthetic materials like polyester.” These companies are notorious for using cheap materials such as unsustainable cotton and polyester, it is no surprise that they use a large amount of oil to produce the clothing they sell to consumers. With people falling into the trap of buying more and more, they are even more inclined to produce this cheap clothing since people don’t care where their clothing comes from. With this, comes an issue with c02 and greenhouse gasses that this creates. It is widely known that massive amounts of c02 in the atmosphere can detrimentally affect our climate, and yet clothing factories are notoriously known to do that. In the same article, the author states, “Partly because of all this plastic use, and the energy needed to process it, the fashion industryproduces 8–10% of global CO2 emissions (4–5 billion tonnes annually). Along with demand for polyester, this is set to rise.” 8-10% is an insanely large number, and the fashion industry’s reliance on these energy sources are severely altering the climate in a negative way. The overreliance on these energy sources creates a massive incentive for oil companies to boost production and actively try to make the environment worse. Lawson states, “Luckily for them, the fast fashion industry has a seemingly endless demand for polyester. Oil companies are seeking to take advantage of this demand”. The oil companies would not operate if the incentive for oil was not there, so it is extremely important that we as a society take a second to look at the clothes we purchase and see where/what it came from. If we do this, we could slowly but surely make a dent in the oil making industry. With society comes people, and people are at the forefront of the garment making process, and there are a lot of negatives and misery involved there too.

            These companies like to employ overseas workers with lax labor laws in order to make the largest profit they can, and in turn the employees of these factories suffer in a multitude of ways. One of the first being the extremely low wages that these workers have to survive off of. Emma Ross in “FAST FASHION GETTING FASTER: A LOOK AT THE UNETHICAL LABOR PRACTICES SUSTAINING A GROWING INDUSTRY” states, “Of those workers it is estimated that less than 2% of them make a living wage. This leads to workers living below the poverty line and the European Parliament has even described the conditions of factory workers in Asia as “slave labor”. This is exactly what these companies try to do in order to boost their profit margins, exploit the lax regulations of a country such as the Philippines or Bangladesh by employing extremely cheap labor. This cheap labor comes at a cost. Alongside the low wages, these employees work in extremely dangerous conditions that can and will put them in harm’s way. Ross states, “Additionally, the health of laborers is adversely affected by working conditions. The production of fast fashion clothing employs the use of 8,000 synthetic chemicals. Some of these chemicals have been shown to cause cancer and factory workers are regularly exposed to and breathing in these chemicals.” In western and developed countries, there are a plethora of laws that prevent this from happening, and with those laws comes more equipment, more safety officers and inspectors, and in turn creates less profit for the fashion companies. So they use other forms of work such as overseas labor in order to cut those expenses, and in turn people are put in danger, and an extreme example is when buildings collapse. In an article written by theconversation.com named “Fast fashion still comes with deadly risks, 10 years after the Rana Plaza disaster – the industry’s many moving pieces make it easy to cut corners” states,  “On April 24, 2013, a multistory garment factory complex in Bangladesh called Rana Plaza collapsed, killing more than 1,000 workers and injuring another 2,500. It remains the worst accident in the history of the apparel industry and one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the world.” This shows the lengths that these fast fashion companies go through in order to cut expenses and boost their bottom line. Supporting this by buying an endless supply of trendy fashion comes with a cost, and in order to prevent this from happening, there needs to be more regulations in these regions, and less support of the companies allowing this to happen. 

            In conclusion, the entire industry of fast fashion is extremely flawed and needs reworking. The pollution that it entails is extremely damaging to the environment, with them using fossil fuels, vast amounts of water, and toxic chemicals that spill over into nature itself, causing unforeseen problems. Climate concerns also are relevant due to the fossil fuels they use that are accountable for 10% of the global emissions produced. The fast fashion industry is to blame for this for their disregard of anything other than profit, and it is shown in their disregard for workers. The overseas workers they employ are poor and mistreated, causing them to have extremely low pays compared to other regions of the world, and dangerous work conditions whether it’s the toxic materials that they work with, or the structural integrity of the buildings that they work in. With all of this being said, it is clear how negative fast fashion is for the world. This industry has caused so much human suffering, so much environmental destruction, and so much disaster in its path. Tara Donaldson, a researcher on the subject, tells us how the average consumer does not have the information or the knowledge on how the fashion industry operates. This shows the ignorance that the average consumer of these products have, and how it’s vital for people to fight back and gain knowledge in this field while the fast fashion industry subdues this information. These companies are worth trillions of dollars, and even if a single person cannot change the course of those giants, it is up to us, as a collective, to stand back for a second and think of the repercussions of what we buy. Yes, it is extremely easy to just go on your phone and buy 20 articles of clothing for 100$, but if you look at the effects it has, and how on a massive scale it can bring suffering into this world, it may be time to look for another option. There are plenty of other options whether it’s ethically sourced clothes, fixing old clothes, or buying long lasting clothing. It is up to us, as a society, to work together on solving this issue and create a better world for tommorow.