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Fast Fashion, the Environment, and the Need to Stop the Cycle by Doireann Minford
Fast Fashion, the Environment, and the Need to Stop the Cycle
By Doireann Minford, JF Law and Political Science
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The Fast Fashion Industry
Every year, 300,000 tonnes of textile waste are incinerated or sent to landfill sites. Burberry alone burned £28.6 million worth of goods in 2017. The fast fashion industry is a method of design, manufacturing, and marketing with the goal of rapidly producing goods in order to maximise profit. It has turned the traditional two fashion seasons a year into an unsustainable fifty-two ‘micro-seasons’ annually in response to the highly competitive nature of high-street brands. Clothing may seem cheaper than ever, but wherein lies the true cost? Industry-wide water consumption, emissions, and chemical use were ignored as contributors to the global climate crisis until recently. The fast fashion industry is responsible for an estimated 10 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions every year. Should the burden of solving these problems be left to environmentally-conscious consumers? Or is it arguably time to use policy, legislation, and governmental initiatives to end the climate crisis the industry has contributed to?
The Demand for Inexpensive Clothing
There is no doubt that sustainable clothing is expensive. It is produced with ecological integrity as well as sustainability in mind and, when compared to well-known high-street brands, it is just not as accessible. Brands such as Zara have promised that by 2025, their clothing will be fully sustainable. While this may point towards a trend in high-street brands attempting to atone for their previous transgressions against the environment, this trend will not be met well by all.
When affordable clothing shops such as Penneys reopened after the first lockdown last year, many commentators were quick to criticise the people queuing outside these stores for the chance to shop in person for the first time since March. All too quickly these critics were reminded just how fast children grow. In a time where one in five people in the country were on some form of unemployment payment, it was assumed that everyone had access to online stores to avail of their shopping needs. For many, this is all they could afford or all that they were willing to buy. Penneys broke their daily sales records twice in the days that followed reopening, showing us that the demand for low-cost clothing will never reach zero.
The Exploitation of Workers
The exploitation of both humans and the planet accounts for the majority of these businesses’ profits. They can demand extreme turnarounds for new products in order to feed the West’s greed without any regulation by locating their factories in countries with poor records for workers’ rights such as India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. Workers, predominantly women and girls, are forced into these factories for wages of less than 15 cent an hour for long shifts in perilous conditions. In one investigation of a factory in India, it was found that no worker was part of a trade union and 99 per cent of the women and girls interviewed were being paid far less than the Indian minimum wage.
Fashion Page 68 While it is easy to take the moral high ground and argue that these factories are halfway across the globe and that we can’t control business practices inside of them, every time we buy goods from a fast fashion brand, we are complicit in modern-day slavery. The problem may even be closer to home than was once presumed. An investigation found that in Leicester, a factory that supplied clothing to the brand Boohoo was allegedly paying staff £3.50 an hour, far below both the living and minimum wage in the UK. A company that recorded extremely high sales due to the move to online shopping at the start of the pandemic allegedly still made its factory workers come into work while sick with the Coronavirus. While the business has launched a review to eradicate “malpractice” with regard to its supply chain issues, the evidence lies in the wording. The company does not see the exploitation of workers in 2020 as a horrific breach of their power, both as a corporation and as an employer, but rather a poor business move that can be corrected with a review instead of institutional change. On the legislative side, countries like India and Britain are not lacking. They have laws stipulating a minimum wage and working hours. But when it comes to the actual implementation of this legislation, the truth about the power of these corporations comes to light.
The Environmental Impact
The textile industry still represents 10 to 20 per cent of pesticide use according to the World Resources Institute. To irrigate crops like cotton, one of the most commonly used fabrics in the industry, a vast amount of water is needed, with the majority of retailers opting to dispose of it with the ‘open-loop cycle’ method in which no water is cleaned or recycled but rather is let pollute both water and land. Stores may attempt to recoup conscious consumers’ respect by bringing out ‘green’ collections. But this is simply a marketing ploy. To counteract the environmental impact as well as the exploitation of workers, a slow approach to fashion is needed. The “fifty-two micro-seasons” need to be reconsidered.
Consumerism
An increase in social media’s influence over our lives, influencing us as to what to buy, as well as a trend towards consumerism since the 2000s have led to more demanding consumers who have a different perception of ‘throwaway’ fashion. We have been convinced by brands to believe that regular updates are needed for our wardrobe to remain in style. The average American discards 81 pounds of clothes yearly, destined not for charity shops or the recycling centre, but for landfills or incinerators. One in three women consider a garment to be ‘old’ after being worn once or twice. This is not a natural conclusion to come to, but rather one that has been fed to us by the very companies that produce these clothes to maximise profit. During the pandemic, after endless lockdowns, it is only natural that a pick-me-up can be found through a package coming in the mail, yet this pick-me-up is at the expense of the environment, as well as the workers who put their lives at risk by working through the pandemic to make clothes for you. Alternative options must be examined.
While waiting for regulation of the industry, we can choose to be conscious of the businesses we support. While it may seem difficult and expensive to start, if one can, fast fashion can be avoided unless absolutely necessary. When consumers are confronted with the negative externalities of the industry, they are more likely to reconsider where they shop. This information needs to be more widely accessible.
The Future of Fast Fashion
In 2002, Ireland imposed the plastic bag levy, something that was unthinkable at the time, and usage of plastic bags has dropped by 90 per cent since. While demand for fast fashion will never reach zero, that does not give the government the right to bypass it as an issue completely. A societal response will never be effective without legislative change and effective implementation. A world with no fast fashion may be impossible to create, but for the sake of the future inhabitants of our planet, one with as little fast fashion as possible should be aimed for.
“The environment is everything that isn’t me.” -Albert Einstein
