What is life without no real trends to follow that give us a reason to do therapeutic shopping every while? But are we as a civilisation realistically progressing or regressing when it comes to being mindful of our acts? Have humans evolved into a species that has no regard for the harm we ignorantly leave behind? Fast fashion is one of those ignorant human activities that kill many things around. This is a phenomenon that we need to recognise, acknowledge, educate and remove from the society around us. So it is our responsibility to understand what is fast fashion and its environmental impact. This blog will also discuss about fast fashion brands and explore statements about fast fashion
What is Fast Fashion?
Many of us would be very much an amateur to recognise this phenomenon even though every one of us are part of its existence.
Fast fashion is the modern phenomenon that makes almost all businesses in the fashion industry opt to mass produce garments that replicate high fashion designs. This satisfies an audience who is eager to dumb and switch according to trends, which on the other hand change so quickly.
To monetize such customer behavior fashion industries are mass producing clothes at a cheap price at the cost of harming the planet, exploiting laborers, and harming animals.
Trend-setting and the greed of the fashion industry
The change of trends in fashion was slow before the 1800s.
Back then we bought clothes occasionally. There were fewer trend cycles and high-fashioned clothing never came so cheap and neither was shopping a hobby.
Fashion illustration before 1861
The master brain behind quickly changing trend setting is the fashion industry itself. They sold the idea of repeating clothes and not following trends to be outside the realm of cool. Following that, they have succeeded in bringing trends one after the other forcing very less time with clothes of the last trend.
Story of Fast Fashion
Before the Industrial Revolution
Before the industrial revolution, fashion was slow. Everything was manual and people had to source raw material and weave them into clothes.
Women with Spinning wheel illustration
After Industrial Revolution
But the industrial revolution brought machines such as sewing machines that revolutionized the way how clothes were made. This made more businesses hire a large number of workers into machine-driven clothing manufacturing factories. Soon the streets started flooding with more fashion and trends.
Machines after Industrial Revolution
After 1960s
By the 1960s and 70s, Young people started slowly getting inspired by high fashion trends. Though at the beginning there was space between high fashion and street fashion and ordinary people could still not able to make or afford high-class fashion.
1990s and afterwards
But by the 1990s and 2000 low-cost fashion conquered the cloth market by producing designs that imitated high-class fashion as well. Ever since that fashion has kept evolving, getting more luring and powerful not to ignore and exploiting people who cared to dress well.
Fast Fashion Environmental Impact
We get very surprised when we are offered clothes at a very cheap price. It makes us wonder if those vendors make any profit at all. The truth is , Yes ! Those vendors are making profit but at the cost of exploiting our environment.
When there is an audience who are eager to replicate high fashion and trends , the fashion industry exploits such demand by mass producing clothes and fashion accessories at the cost of the environment. Following are some of the fast fashion environmental impacts.
Polluting water bodies
The chemicals from clothing manufacturing factories release toxic chemicals that can dry up and pollute water resources.
Fashion industrials have serious environmental Impact
20% of the waste water in the world results from textile dyeing chemicals that are brutally harmful for our water bodies. Such waste water is strongly toxic and is impossible to be treated to be used again .
Plastic Microfibers
35 % of micro plastics released into the ocean are synthetic materials from the factories of the fashion industry .
To lower the cost of materials even further , many of the textile manufactures go for polyester fibres instead of cotton that results in even higher levels of carbon emissions. Since polyester has plastic it lays in the ocean bed without degrading for a long time and once it degrades produces a substance that is harmful for the marine ecosystem .These plastic microfibers can also enter the food chain through aquatic life and bring dangerous health hazards
Washing clothes alone can release 500000 tonnes of micro fibres a year which is equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles.
Excessive water usage
Do you know that the fashion industry consumes 1/10th of the entire water used industrially?
This is insane, but it is very much true. And there is very little awareness and acknowledgment of the same to bring attention towards such impact of the textile industry industry on the water bodies.
Manufacturing a single shirt requires 3000 litres of water..
Excessive wastage of clothes.
The main game of big trend setting businesses is to keep changing the trends and make purchasing more affordable to increase its customers’ clothing purchase .In reality it drives customers to purchase things they do not need.
In 2021 the consumption of apparel worldwide was approximately 164.8 billion pieces and this value is expected to increase in the coming years.
Why Fast Fashion is Bad?
Polluting our planet
The pollutants from factories of big brands that market Fast fashion releases toxic chemicals that can dry up water resources as well as pollute rivers and streams. Moreover, just washing clothes can release 500000 tonnes of microfibers into the ocean each year which is equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles. This alone can make the textile industry a big contributor to endanger marine life.
Also read about Climate Change here
Labour Exploitation
Most brands in the industry generally use around 8000 toxic chemicals in the production of their garments at the cost of directly exposing such chemicals to factory workers. These chemicals are majorly found to be a trigger for cancer and much other life-threatening diseases.
Labours are also exploited through cheap labour by establishing their factories in low income asian and third world.
Cruelty to Animals
Wildlife endangered by fast fashion
The major raw material for fashion comes at the cost of harming animals. The rise of fast fashion has undone the balance of biodiversity by causing the loss of animal habitats and species
Fuelling Toxic Capitalism
Today we purchase 8 billion new clothing every year which is 200% higher than what we used to buy 20 years ago. Fast fashion has strategically campaigned in different ways to fuel the habit in consumers to purchase following the fast-changing trends.
Also read The mostly ignored toxicity of Social Media
List of Top 5 Fast Fashion brands with most Environmental Impact
The prettiest tiny thing in your wardrobe is not as innocent as you think. The garment and apparel industry brands have done all the research that it needs to trick you into buying all their clothes and fashion accessories one after the other.They are driven by capitalism and their desire to get into the top list of fashion brands. Here is a list of Top 10 Fast fashion brands with the most environmental impact.
Zara
Zara is the world’s top brand that drives fashion trends by retailing the best of designed clothing, accessories, perfumes, swimwear, shoes and makeup products .
It was founded in Spain and today has over 6000 stores in more than 100 countries around the world.
Zara alone churns around 840 million garments every year for its stores and are adding to greenhouse gases instead of keeping to their promise of reducing their contributions to it. This is driven by its need to keep alive the change of trends by their 300 designers churning 12000 new designs every year.
H&M
H&M is a household name who is the second largest retailer(after Zara) in the fashion industry. The brand is estimated to be selling 3 billion garments a year. Even though H&M has taken positive steps towards sustainable fashion by producing only garments that have minimum 50 % of sustainable material such as organic cotton and recycled polyester.
By 2030 the company aims to only use recycled materials . But H&M still faces criticism for not following labour rights because it has been found that its labours in India and Turkey are paid only a third of estimated livable wages.
Uniqlo
Uniqlo is a Japanese casual clothing designer, manufacturer and retailer that has a huge international market.
Founded in 1949, Uniqlo today has huge brand value for their products.
In 2015 and 2016 they faced several labour rights issues. They are one of the top brands that are running trends in Japan and worldwide. Uniqlo today is a rising brand with setting trends one after the other. It has huge factories to manufacture tonnes of clothes and apparels every year.
Fashion Nova
Fashion Nova is an American trend setting fashion brand that has a huge market in and around America and is based in Los Angeles, Southern California.
In 2018 they happened to be the brand that had the most google search.
The brand was identified and criticised heavily by law enforcement agencies for paying less than cheap wages to its workers. Its labours had to go through huge difficulty due to its company policies and poor labor rights and compensation.
ASOS
ASOS is a popular British online retailer which is now on the top in the list of top brands selling clothes to over 22 million customers annually. The name ASOS is an acronym for “as seen on screen”
ASOS has signed the 2025 sustainable sources challenge which calls brands to use 200 % sustainable cotton by 2025 . But, currently only 36% of their raw material fibres are sustainable which looks like their commitment to the challenge would not be fulfilled.
Statement about Fast Fashion
8.1 % of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by apparel and footwear productions.
There are many people who acknowledge its damage and have strongly quoted on fast fashion. Here are some of the famous of the best statement about fast fashion
Conclusion
Fast fashion is an obsession that is additive, capitalist, and harmful in its remains. It is therefore important that we recognize it and reverse the obsession that drives its glamour into society. It is time that we see the ugliness in the charisma that fast trends showcase and motivate each other to choose fashion in a more responsible way.
Also read What makes humans happy ?
