You may have heard the term fast fashion used before, you may have heard of bloggers pledging to quit fast fashion, but do you actually know why fast fashion is so bad?
I am here to clearly answer all of your questions. Below, I will cover the following:
- What is fast fashion? What, why, how.
- Why is fast fashion bad?
- Fast fashion and human rights
- Fast fashion and the environment
- How to quit fast fashion
What, why & how?
What is fast fashion?
Fast fashion is clothing that is produced at rapid speeds and then sold for a very cheap price.
Why? The history of fast fashion
Fast fashion was first dubbed by founder and former chairman, billionaire Amancio Ortega, of Inditex fashion group. Inditex are best known for their well-known chain, Zara.
Ortega’s fast fashion mission was to ensure a 15-day turnaround for any garment, from a designer’s brain to being sold in retail stores.
As you can imagine, this kind of declaration puts a lot of pressure on a lot of people.
Before fast fashion, fashion labels would generally bring out 2 collections in one year (Spring/Summer & Autumn/Winter).
Now, fast fashion brands can drop new collections from every few weeks to every few days.
What this does to us as consumers, is it tells us we need to be continuously updating our clothing to remain trendy. Something we may have bought 2 weeks ago, is now no longer on-trend because there are new exciting items that have just come out.
This leads to an insatiable demand for clothing.
How is fast fashion profitable?
Fast fashion is so profitable for businesses because the production cost is so low. Last year, H&M saw a 6% increase in profits. That’s a total of 1.4 billion USD. (The thought of this makes me want to vomit).
Fast fashion brands keep their production costs low by outsourcing factory workers and producing their goods in countries such as Bangladesh, where the conditions for workers are abominable, to say the least.
Why is fast fashion bad?
So we just began touching on it above, but here are the two main reasons why fast fashion is so bad.
The first reason…
For fast fashion brands to continue to sell low-cost clothing and make a profit, they have to keep their production costs down. Low production costs lead to the exploitation of humans working in their supply chain.
The second reason…
Fast fashion is not sustainable. It is killing our earth through pollution and waste.
The word sustainable derives from the word sustain. If something is sustained, it is strengthened or supported.
Fast fashion does not strengthen or support the environment or the workers in the industry.
So let’s dive deeper into both topics.
The effects of fast fashion on workers
On April 24, 2013, the eight-story Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, collapsed killing 1,134 people and seriously injuring over 2000 others. This building housed many garment factories. The majority of the workers killed were young women.
It took over 3 weeks to rescue all of those trapped under the rubble, some women having no choice but to cut off their own limbs with hacksaws to free themselves.
This was truly a horrific event in history that brings a heavy feeling to my heart writing about it.
However, this was not the only factory disaster seen in Bangladesh, and there have been more since. Factories are riddled with safety issues and fires are extremely common. Often these buildings are not built with proper fire exits, or fire exists have been known to be locked, therefore many innocent people have burnt alive in these factory fires.
Since the collapse of the Rana-Plaza many fashion labels have taken steps to improve safety and working conditions in their supply chains, however, unfortunately, reports have shown that there are still significant safety and moral issues at bay.
Wages in these factories remain incredibly low and do not meet the minimum wage. Child labor is common. Sexual harassment of women and children has been witnessed in many undercover documentaries. And if the workers dare speak out about anything, they may be criminalised. These workers fear for their lives on a daily basis.
A recent report from Oxfam concluded that as little as 2 cents from each garment sold in Australia end up in the pockets of the workers who made them.
These inhumane conditions are spread further than Bangladesh and are ongoing. We need to remember this next time we question the price of our clothes.
Q: How can it be that cheap? At who’s cost?
and…
Q: How come these clothes are expensive? (when shopping transparently ethical brands, they are expensive because they are fairly made).
How does fast fashion impact the environment?
The facts about the fashion industry
According to a 2017 report made by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the equivalent of 1 garbage truck full of textiles is landfilled or burned every second.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation have estimated that the value of money lost every year, of unworn, rarely recycled clothing is approximately 500 billion USD.
If the fashion industry keeps producing at this rate, by 2050 the industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget.
So what does this all mean?
It means that the fashion industry is one of the highest air and water polluters in the world.
Fast fashion, in particular, uses cheap man-made materials, like polyester, that use a lot of chemicals in their production. The production of polyester releases 2-3 times more carbon emissions than cotton. Polyester is also made from plastic, so that leads us to further problems.
It can take up to 200 years for polyester to break down in landfills and polyester does not break down in the ocean.
You might be thinking, hold on, how does it end up in the ocean?
Well, when we wash clothes made out of polyester/rayon/nylon (ie: plastics), the washing process releases microplastics into the ocean. It is believed that 30% of the ocean’s plastic pollution is from micro-plastics.
Plastic is killing our oceans and in particular our reefs. Ocean reefs generate half of the world’s oxygen supply and consume one-third of the carbon dioxide generated from fossil fuel burning. So it’s safe to conclude that ocean reefs are very important for the survival of the human race.
And to wrap this section up, I would, of course, have to mention just how thirsty the fashion industry is. It can take 2,700 liters of water to produce one cotton t-shirt.
To put that in perspective, that’s 3 years worth of drinking water… for one shirt.
Yep, I know that’s a lot of overwhelming information, but these are the facts.
The numbers are getting worse, and fast fashion is contributing significantly to this environmental problem.
How to quit fast fashion
So you’ve come this far. You’ve made it through the hard facts, and now you want to know how you can help!
Well, that makes me very happy.
There are three main things you can do today to begin your journey to quitting fast fashion and helping the world:
1.
Understand Consumerism
Simply being aware of something can be extremely powerful. So let’s start by being aware of the dangers of consumerism.
Consumerism is a social and economic order that fundamentally relies on the idea that a person’s happiness and wellbeing is determined by the number of consumer goods and material possessions they own.
I’m sure we all know by now that that is truly not the case. We know deep down that money and possessions do not buy happiness. However, we do not do enough soul searching and personal development work to actually find happiness elsewhere, so we end up giving in and believing the idea that consumption = happiness.
We have been born into this society that controls our consumption behaviours, and that’s not our fault, however, we have the power to change that. We need to be aware of how our behaviours are being controlled by brands, including advertising and marketing.
Understand that fast fashion labels feed our demand for new clothing with various tactics. However, we truly do not need this much new clothing.
I’ll finish this section off by saying, as consumers, we have all the purchasing power to encourage ethical practices. We need to take the time to understand where and how our clothes are made and put our money where it will make a difference.
We need to recognise our privilege. Looking trendy should not be at the expense of the environment and of people’s lives.
2.
Find Your Personal Style
Finding your personal style can completely change the way you shop for clothes. You are likely to shop less, wear more of your wardrobe, and to make fewer mistakes shopping.
Here are some quick tips to help find your personal style:
- Choose a colour palate
Know what colours look great on you and make your skin & eyes pop! Ask a friend to help you determine this if you need help. - Use Pinterest
You may have heard this many times before, but probably for good reason. It is a completely incredible tool to help you determine your style or to give you inspiration on how to wear a particular item in your wardrobe. - Study your favourite items from your closet
Ask yourself helpful questions. What do you love about that item? How does it make you feel? What else can you wear it with? (go to Pinterest for inspiration!) - Plan your shopping wishlist
Stop shopping as a hobby or as retail therapy. This is when you end up with items in your wardrobe that do not necessarily meet your style or go with anything else. - Don’t get stuck on one style label
When determining your style, you can have more than one style. For example, I like to see my own style as minimal, modern mixed with classic vintage! - Avoid buying into trends
Stick to classic pieces that will last you longer. - Declutter & study your wardrobe
Just like studying your favourite pieces, you want to also study your least favourite pieces and ask yourself helpful questions. Be mindful when decluttering, the majority of clothing donated to charity shops, unfortunately, ends up in landfill because of our current textile overload. Try to give to family and friends who will definitely wear it first, or sell items online. If the items are not worth selling, you can turn them into a cleaning rag around the house. (You can then eliminate paper towels from your home! I’d call that a win-win for the environment).
3.
Subscribe to my YouTube Channel (shameless plug!)
If you would like more in-depth help in finding your personal style, then you’ve come to the right place.
It is the mission of my Youtube channel to help women find their personal style and create versatile wardrobes of their dreams. From now on, the message I would like to send out is to “buy less and wear more” so that we can all make a positive change in this world.
This process is a new journey for me as well. So if you’d like to join me on this journey you can subscribe to my YouTube channel or even follow me over on Instagram.
I’ll be posting everything I learn along the way in terms of sustainable fashion, living with less, and creating versatile wardrobes to beat consumerism.
Lastly…
What I found to be the most alarming fact I came across in my research, is that fast fashion needs to continuously become cheaper (yes, cheaper than it already is), for the business model to be sustained.
If prices continue to fall, who gets affected the most? Those at the bottom of the supply chain. Those already in the most danger.
I’ll let that sink in…
As privileged human beings, living on the only inhabitable planet we know, we have to ask ourselves, at what cost is it all worth?
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