Twenty years ago, people had maybe two seasonal collections a year and shopping for clothes was an occasional event. Today, there are new trends and designs every week and we’ve created 52 “micro-seasons”. This has allowed a new model of retail to gain popularity: fast fashion. Fast fashion brands are rapidly mass-producing new clothes, allowing consumers to stay on top of the latest trends for the lowest prices. More likely than not, you’ve probably shopped from fast fashion brands with the leading ones including Zara, H&M, TopShop, and Gap.
Fast fashion seems almost too good to be true, and that’s because it is. These brands are able to produce copious amounts of clothes and sell them for such low prices because they prioritize the mass-production of clothing over the well-being of their workers and the environment. The popularity of this industry can largely be attributed to social media culture and the wide accessibility of online shopping today. Social media influencers are constantly promoting brands, making them a primary source of advertisement: tagging a brand in an Instagram post, offering a discount code, or sporting a new outfit every post fuels the toxic and unrealistic idea that it's “socially unacceptable” to repeat outfits and encourages people to buy something that they didn’t even know they needed. Nevertheless, being able to partake in such trends gives consumers a feeling of satisfaction and inclusivity that brands play into.
Being able to shop online is easy and convenient because it offers seemingly endless options. But more often than not, it results in impulse buying and can lead to clothes being rarely or never worn. Have you ever seen an item online and it says “Hurry up before it’s too late!” or “Last in Stock!”? These little signs are there to create a sense of urgency for the customer to buy quickly and irrationally. People often justify purchasing clothing they don’t need because it’s “on-sale” or they’re offered deals: “if you spend over x amount of money, you’ll get free shipping” or “you’ll get a half off if you spend x amount of money.” Shopping fulfills temporary satisfaction for the consumer, with the keyword being temporary, because with fast fashion, the consumption of clothing is endless and the impacts are detrimental.
Demand quality not just in the products you buy, but in the life of the person who made it.
It’s been evident for years that most of the clothes sold across the globe are made in countries that have nonexistent or barely existent workers’ rights. Companies constantly seek out production sites that are cheap, and every time a country’s economic and labour condition improves, the sites move to a country with worse conditions. The labourers in these sites are forced to work in inhuman conditions with little or no sanitation facilities and ventilation, breathing in toxic substances and fibre dust in unsafe buildings that are a tremor away from crumbling to dust. The labourers are forced to work 14-16 hours a day, everyday of the week, with supervised, extremely short water and bathroom breaks. During peak seasons, they are even forced to work 20 hours a day to meet the unrealistic deadlines set by the brands. They start as early as 7 in the morning and work till 2 or 3 in the night. Often, the people in the higher positions come up with excuses: “at least they’re making money,” “it's better than nothing for them.” And to a certain extent, this is true. Most of the workers are women from low or middle income families who otherwise would not have a job due to the lack of opportunities for women and patriarchal societal settings in the countries. For them, having to work in such horrible conditions is far better than having no work at all, as it lends them a livelihood. Companies say that the labourers are paid the minimum wage - but does that assure that the most basic necessities of the labourers can be fulfilled with the meagre money they make? In most of the countries where fast clothing is made, the minimum legal wage is not even one fifth of the living wage - the minimum income needed to meet the basic needs. The workers are being paid 5 times less than what they need to live with dignity. Since the management is mostly male and the workforce mostly female, owing to this unfair power hierarchy, the women are sexually exploited, berated and physically abused into doing their work. With the constant threat of termination and the male dominant management, they don’t report the abuse they face, and it is said that once a worker reports the abuse, she is blacklisted and won’t be able to get a job in any of the factories. So know this: the next time you buy that rad “feminist” or “girl power” tshirt, it is made by women who had to face regular mental, physical and sexual abuse, and there’s a really high probability that they were paid little or no wage for making it. Now, with the global coronavirus crisis, companies have resorted to lockdown marketing, turning to new marketing techniques to cope with the unusual context and changing business setting. They’ve started selling loungewear at really low prices at the expense of the labourers, for whom even lockdown is no respite.
In their scour for cheap labour, companies seeking out child labour is also extremely common. In south India, the Sumangali scheme, a supposed marriage assistance for girls from poor, lower caste families, is child labour in disguise. The girls work in a garment factory for 3 years under contract with the promise of a lump sum of money at the end for dowry. In their book published in 2013, Human Trafficking Around The World: Hidden in Plain Sight by Rita James Simon and Stephanie Hepburn, they delineate that the Chinese government sanctioned work-study programmes for children that were an indirect means to supply school children for forced labour. It is estimated that around 168 million children, aged 5-14, are child labourers across the globe. The majority in Asia, Pacific and Sub Saharan Africa with 1 in 5 children in forced child labour. Child labor is present not only in garment factories but also in the cotton industry that supplies the raw material for the fast fashion industry in countries like China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan; their governments sanction the removal of children from schools and colleges to harvest the annual cotton crop.
The popularity of denims, particularly worn or distressed jeans, is no secret. But do you know the perils it poses to the people who make them? The process of sandblasting - the removal of the dark indigo pigment by blasting small particles of sand at high pressures against the fabric to soften and lighten the garment - causes silicosis, a fatal lung disorder caused by inhaling silicon dust usually common among miners. But for garment workers it is often misdiagnosed as tuberculosis since they both present with similar symptoms.
You might wonder how such cruel, inhuman conditions and rampant abuse of the workers remain unaccounted and in the shadows. This is how: outsourcing, contract work, and accelerated labor. Fast fashion companies, headquartered in high income countries, are not technically affiliated with their factories. They don’t own them, and they have no contact with their production sites in the low income countries or the production managers. Rather, fast fashion companies contract their production through supplier companies that act as middlemen, and these suppliers then subcontract production to factories that have no affiliation with the corporations. Therefore, fast fashion brands have no legal obligation to treat their workers in the bottomost tier with respect and can’t be held accountable for the subpar working conditions and horrific treatment.
If you want to fully grasp the reality of the condition of the labourers who make those cute, trendy, cheap clothes you buy and throw out after a couple of uses, you have to look no further than harrowing images from the Rana Plaza accident that took place in 2013. With a death toll of 1134, and over 2500 people injured, it is the worst industrial accident in the world since the Bhopal gas leak in 1984. According to research by the advocacy group International Labor Rights Forum, it is estimated that since 2005, at least 1800 garment workers have been killed in factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh alone. Another incident in the US, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911, with a casualty of 146 deaths and 78 injuries, also shook the world and forced the American legislation to reform the safety and health standards. In 2012, a fire in a textile factory in Pakistan killed 258 people and injured more than 600, making it the worst industrial factory fire in the country. Incidents like these will probably happen again and nothing will radically change. It’s 2020. Everyone has a voice. What are you going to use your voice for? The next time you think of buying that cheap t-shirt or hoodie, take 2 minutes to check if the brand is an ethical, moral one. If it’s not, save up money and buy a higher priced one even though it costs more. Making this choice may cost you more money, but making that cheap t-shirt could cost the labourer her life.
Fast Fashion is Destroying Our Planet
Unsustainable Materials
The consumption of clothing has increased significantly in the past 20 years and is at a higher rate than ever. With 80 to 100 billion garments produced globally every year, what does this mean for the environment? Well, with increased clothing production comes extensive and irreversible damage to nearly every aspect of the planet from the oceans to the atmosphere. The problem starts with the fact that most of the clothes we wear today are made from unsustainable materials, many of which are synthetic (plastic) fibers like polyester or nylon. Polyester is found in up to 60% of garments today and is commonly used because it is a cheap and versatile material-perfect for fast fashion. This material requires an immense amount of water, oil, and coal every year to be produced and has a substantial carbon footprint. This unfortunately comes as no shock because the fashion industry accounts for 10 percent of global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and overseas shipping.
Another extremely common fabric used in 33% of our clothes today is cotton. Don’t be fooled by the fact that cotton is a natural fiber and is biodegradable because it requires massive water consumption and creates pollution through its use of pesticides and fertilizers. It takes 2,700 liters of water to produce 1 cotton t-shirt. Imagine how much of that water could be going to the millions of people who don’t have access to safe water. Have you ever heard of the Aral Sea? Probably not because it’s not much of a sea anymore due to cotton production. The Aral Sea was a large saltwater lake in Central Asia and has been shrinking since the 1960s due to the intense irrigation of rivers that feed into it for cotton farming; this is only one example of the extensive water consumption that cotton requires. Carbon emissions and a shortage of safe water are already prevalent and concerning issues and we can’t forget the fast fashion industry’s contributions to them.
Water Pollution: Microplastics and Wastewater
When we think of plastic pollution in our oceans, plastic water bottles and plastic bags often come to mind. We fail to recognize a major source of plastic pollution, our clothing. You see, when clothing is machine washed, the thin plastic fibers that they’re composed of--microplastics--shed from our clothing and end up in the ocean. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that are less than five millimeters long. They’re widespread, extremely hard to control, and once they’re in the ocean they’re practically impossible to remove. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that 35% of microplastics that end up in the ocean every year come from synthetic textiles--our clothes. Microplastics are not only harmful to the environment but pose a potential threat to aquatic life because, if ingested, it can accumulate in an animal's stomach and clog their digestive tracts and/or cause starvation.
Another harmful water pollutant comes from the garment factories themselves through wastewater (any water that has been used, such as bathing, dishwashing, or manufacturing). It can create environmental health hazards and requires special treatment of disposal. Many garment factories in Asian countries such as China or Bangladesh are unregulated, meaning that wastewater filled with toxic chemicals from manufacturing, dyeing, and bleaching are often directly dumped into rivers, turning them into biologically dead zones. The Buriganga River is one of the most polluted rivers in Bangladesh mainly because of the textile and dyeing factories that dump untreated wastewater and waste into the river. This type of pollution has made the river uninhabitable for fish and animals but also limits vital resources for the people who rely on these waterways for food, transportation, drinking, and cleaning. Efforts are being made by the Bangladesh authorities against these garment factories but it will take years before these rivers can be usable again. The UN Environment Programme states that 20% of all global wastewater is produced by the fashion industry. To give a sense of the amount of water used, one pair of jeans requires 2,000 gallons of water to be produced. So the next time you think you need another pair of jeans, ask yourself again if you actually need them or just want them?
Where do clothes go when they no longer ‘Fit the Trend’?
Not only is the production of clothing destroying the planet, but the disposal of them is too. With such a quick influx of new products, fast fashion has created the mindset that low quality and low price clothing are disposable. In some ways, it’s true because fast clothing is purposely made to not last long. On average, garments are only kept half as long as they did in 2000, adding to the overproduction and waste of them. On top of that, only 15% of clothing is actually recycled, leaving the rest to end up in landfills. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the United States alone, over 11 million tons of clothes were sent to landfills in 2017. The average American discards 80 pounds of clothes and the unfortunate fact is that it’s becoming more common for clothes to be worn fewer times. Since a substantial amount of clothing is made of non-biodegradable synthetic materials, the majority of clothing will sit in landfills for hundreds and possibly thousands of years. There, clothes release toxic chemicals from the dye and bleach into surrounding soil and water, putting ecosystems, animals, and humans at risk. These impacts are a by-product of fast fashion and are just as damaging to the environment. Our clothing decisions now will be one of the many problems that younger and future generations will have to deal with if we don’t start making conscious clothing purchases and stop this unsustainable trend.
How to Stop Supporting Fast Fashion
Now that you know how harmful fast fashion is to garment workers and the environment, what can you do to make a real change? To reduce the overproduction and overall waste of clothing, everyone can buy fewer clothes (only buy what you truly need), invest in more durable options, shop secondhand or from thrift stores, and/or shop from ethical and sustainable brands. When getting rid of clothing, donate it, or recycle it. And to the people who are unable to shop more ethical and sustainable brands because they tend to be more expensive, do not be deterred from making efforts to stop fast fashion. The long term change comes from educating ourselves, raising awareness, and using our voices to hold fast fashion brands accountable to change their policies. Websites like Good On You are a great resource and rate fashion brands based on their treatment of people (workers), the planet, and animals. For example, Shein and Fashion Nova are both popular fast fashion brands that are rated ‘We Avoid’ on Good On You because they are not transparent about their information regarding their environmental and labor policies. We can also support organizations like the Clean Clothes Campaign which is dedicated to improve working conditions for garment workers and provides information on the mistreatment that these workers face from all over the world.
As consumers, we hold so much power in what we choose to buy. We can use that power to temporarily boycott fast fashion brands and then express our dissatisfaction as customers to demand better working conditions and eco-friendly means of production. We need to question them: Who made my clothes? Do your garment workers get paid livable wages? What materials do you use to make your clothes? On social media we can amplify our voices; the #whomademyclothes on Instagram is already doing just that. We also need to recognize and avoid greenwashing, which is when brands provide misleading information saying their products are environmentally friendly when they aren’t. Fast fashion brands such as H&M and Zara have stated their plans to become more environmentally friendly. As consumers, we need to make sure that these brands uphold their promises by questioning them and having them be transparent about this information. To go one step further, we can do the same for high-end brands too. Just because a brand is more expensive doesn’t mean it’s more sustainable or ethical. We shouldn’t wait for the next Rana Plaza accident or river to become polluted to take action.
Sources:
Labour Impacts:
Chandra, Robin R. “Sumangali Scheme: When Marriage Assistance Becomes Bonded Labour in Disguise.” The News Minute, 3 Nov. 2016, www.thenewsminute.com/article/sumangali-scheme-when-marriage-assistance-becomes-bonded-labour-disguise-52320.
CODO Fashion Contributers. “A Day in the Life of a Fast Fashion Worker.” Codogirl.com, www.codogirl.com/blogs/news/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-fast-fashion-worker.
Hobson, John. “To Die for? The Health and Safety of Fast Fashion.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 2 July 2013, https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/63/5/317/1451439
Stafford, Victoria. “Factory Exploitation and the Fast Fashion Machine.” Green America, 2018, www.greenamerica.org/blog/factory-exploitation-and-fast-fashion-machine.
“Working Conditions in the Fashion Industry.” SustainYourStyle, www.sustainyourstyle.org/old-working-conditions.
Environment Impacts:
Boucher, J. & Friot, D. Primary Microplastics in the Oceans: a Global Evaluation of Sources. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.CH.2017.01. en, 43pp (2017).
Bowman, Emma, and Sarah McCammon. “Can Fast Fashion And Sustainability Be Stitched Together?” NPR, NPR, 27 July 2019, www.npr.org/2019/07/27/745418569/can-fast-fashion-and-sustainability-be-stitched-together.
Drew, Deborah, and Genevieve Yehounme. “The Apparel Industry's Environmental Impact in 6 Graphics.” World Resources Institute, 16 Jan. 2020, www.wri.org/blog/2017/07/apparel-industrys-environmental-impact-6-graphics.
Falco, Francesca De, et al. “The Contribution of Washing Processes of Synthetic Clothes to Microplastic Pollution.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 29 Apr. 2019, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43023-x.
“The Fight to End Fashion's Silence on Its Waste Problem.” Google, Google, www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-44968561.
“Textiles: Material-Specific Data.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, 30 Oct. 2019, www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/textiles-material-specific-data.
UN Environment. “Putting the Brakes on Fast Fashion.” UN Environment, www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/putting-brakes-fast-fashion.
“What Really Happens to Unwanted Clothes?” Green America, www.greenamerica.org/unraveling-fashion-industry/what-really-happens-unwanted-clothes.
“Where Is Our River?” We Are Water, www.wearewater.org/en/where-is-our-river_289140.
“World of Change: Shrinking Aral Sea.” NASA, NASA, earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/AralSea.
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