The Naked Truth

Exposing the Harsh Realities of Fast Fashion

written by Bella Douglas

We are no longer just wearing our clothes. Our clothes are wearing out the world.

Fashion has never been cheaper or more accessible. It’s also an enormous business. McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm based out of New York City, estimates that fashion is nearly a $3 trillion industry. In 2018, the typical consumer buys far more clothing than they did just a few decades ago. However, they’re keeping items only half as long. This phenomenon has been catalyzed by the rise of “fast fashion,” where styles are manufactured quickly and inexpensively to allow access to current trends at a lower price.

Sure, fast fashion has granted us style and convenience at a price that the average shopper can actually afford—but at what cost?

Sure, fast fashion has granted us style and convenience at a price that the average shopper can actually afford—but at what cost?

The wastefulness encouraged by buying cheap and chasing trends is obvious—I’ll admit that I have literally thrown a pair of Forever 21 boots in the trash. However, the hidden costs are even more appalling.

Elizabeth L. Cline, author of “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion,” asserts that the concept of “disposable clothing” and our increasingly consumerist culture is hurting our environment, our economy and even our humanity. When we produce clothes that are effectively disposable, we run the risk of treating them like litter.

We are getting rid of our clothes almost as quickly as we buy them, which exerts an enormous amount of pressure on our planet. This can be seen in the immense amount of waste fast fashion generates. Landfills have proven to be the dirty shadow of the fashion industry. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 15.1 million tons of textile waste was generated in 2013—of which 12.8 million tons were discarded. This fact is corroborated by a 2016 Newsweek article, which states that “in less than 20 years, the volume of clothing Americans toss each year has doubled from 7 million to 14 million tons, an astonishing 80 pounds per person.”

Waste aside, fast fashion has also proven to be extremely costly of our global resources. For example: water. Water is easily taken for granted, especially in developed countries. However, a 2018 article from Quartz media mentions that the “$2.5 trillion fashion industry is the second-largest user of water globally, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), noting that producing one cotton shirt requires 2,700 liters of water—the amount a person drinks in 2.5 years.” Our shopping climate makes it easy to buy clothes without giving a second thought to where they come from or how they’re made. Considering about 90 percent of my clothes are cotton, this is especially disturbing for me to think about. UNECE has named fashion, especially the growing sector of fast fashion, “an environmental and social emergency,” and an industry responsible for producing 20 percent of global wastewater and 10 percent of global carbon emissions. UNECE cites cotton farming, which is necessary for fueling the fashion industry, as “responsible for 24 percent of insecticides and 11 percent of pesticides despite using only 3 percent of the world’s arable land.”

In addition to fast fashion’s devastating environmental impact, it also paints a disturbing picture of what life is like for the people that make our clothes.

Everything we’ve ever worn has, at one point, been touched by human hands that aren’t our own.

Fast fashion traps a generation of young workers in developing countries, many of whom are women, into poverty. Many enter the industry as young as 14. Unfortunately, due to the pressure to keep costs low and production speeds high, workers are bound to poor conditions with long hours and low pay. According to The New York Times, “it takes a garment worker 18 months to earn what a fashion brand CEO makes on their lunch break.” The relentless demand for cheaper clothes in the West keeps workers’ wages staggeringly low—so low that it can barely support the people whose blood, sweat and tears the industry relies on.

In April of 2013, 1,134 people died and approximately 2,500 were injured after an eight-story factory complex collapsed in Bangladesh. Now called the Rana Plaza disaster, the tragedy drew attention to the horrific conditions faced by factory employees in Bangladesh and around the world, and also raised questions about transparencies in the garment industry. Aruna Kashyap, senior counsel in the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, believes that the transparency between global apparel companies and the factories that employ such workers is crucial.

So, what has changed? According to a 2017 article from NPR, “two major agreements between global retailers and brands and trade unions—the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety—were signed after the tragedy.” Additionally, Nike, Patagonia and the H&M group are among 17 brands that committed to adhering to a transparency pledge at the end of 2017. Maintaining transparency within a supply chain allows companies to avoid potential human rights dilemmas. However, 17 brands is far from enough. Even though the rights and safety of workers are now in greater focus, the fashion industry still has a lot of work to do if it wants to fully address and fix these systemic issues.

What we wear is a fundamental part of what we choose to communicate about ourselves. “Clothes are our chosen skin,” said Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Fashion Revolution. It is our responsibility, as consumers, to decide if we can remain satisfied with a system that makes us feel rich, while leaving our world and our environment so poor. Will we continue to search for happiness in the consumption of things? What does our careless production and endless consumption say about us? Answering these questions is imperative if we want to change our lives for the better. Our world and our collective soul depends on it.