Fast fashion and its social and environmental impact (2024)

FAQs

Fast fashion and its social and environmental impact? ›

It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year. Even washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibres into the ocean each year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.

Unfortunately, fast fashion is one of the biggest causes of pollution in the world. Large quantities of greenhouse gases, the depletion of non-renewable resources and sweat-shop environments are all present in the production of fast-fashion garments.

Plastic fibres are polluting the oceans, the wastewater, toxic dyes, and the exploitation of underpaid workers. Fast fashion is big business, and while the environmental costs are rising, experts say there is another way: a circular economy for textiles.

Fast fashion promotes the throwaway culture, excessive consumerism, and makes clothes disposable commodities. Many consumers make purchasing decisions based on their emotions. Retailers use that behavior and tap into the subconscious of consumers.

Social factors affecting fashion include cultures, norms, lifestyle, demographics and population changes. For example, a small clothing manufacturer needs to create styles that appeal to those of different cultures, especially if those cultural groups represent large enough segments of its market.

While the fashion sector is booming, increasing attention has been brought to the impressive range of negative environmental impacts that the industry is responsible for. Fashion production makes up 10% of humanity's carbon emissions, dries up water sources, and pollutes rivers and streams.

In addition to environmental issues, fast fashion garments spark a lot of ethical concerns. They are often made in sweatshops where underpaid workers are employed for long hours in unsafe conditions and are exposed to harmful chemicals used in textile production.

Garments contain a variety of harmful chemicals including PFAS, azo dyes, phthalates, and formaldehyde (Fashinnovation, 2022). These chemicals come with risks of irritation; respiratory, developmental, and reproductive problems; and certain cancers.

The Darker Side of Fast-Fashion

Fast-fashion production is outsourced in countries like India, Vietnam, China, and Bangladesh with cheap labor. This raises other concerns in relation to the exploitation of workers who work in unsafe and inhumane conditions with zero safety net and low wages.

Critics assert that fast fashion apparel cannot be sustainable by its very nature. The poor quality of the material makes it hard to recycle, even if the brands commit to recycling a certain percentage of used or unsold products.

What negative impact does fast fashion have? ›

Fast fashion relies on cheap, disposable clothing that is produced quickly and sold at low prices, encouraging consumers to buy and discard clothing at an alarming rate. As a result, landfills are overflowing with discarded clothing, and textile waste is piling up.

Because fast fashion cannot exist without the exploitation of garment and other industry workers (to keep prices low enough for a high rate of consumption), the current fast fashion model is both an environmental and social justice crisis. The social costs also span far beyond working conditions.

Doubling the use of our clothes would, for example, cut the garment trade's climate pollution by nearly half. Shutting down worldwide clothing production for a year would be equal to grounding all international flights and stopping all maritime shipping for the same time period.

These unsold garments are often burned, as it's cheaper and easier for the company than finding a way to reuse or recycle them. Apart from wasting resources, the fast fashion industry pollutes waterways with toxic dyes, and increases the number of microfibres in the ocean through the use of fossil fuel-based fabrics.

In addition, the equivalent of a truckload of clothes is burnt or buried in landfills every second, further increasing the industry's carbon footprint. Furthermore, creating textiles is an energy-intensive process that demands an excessive amount of petroleum.

These ethical issues include wages of the garment workers that work for fast fashion contractors, the working conditions in the factory itself, and employment of child labor in developing country that involve garment factories and also the social effect towards the environment and the villages around the factory.

The #FastFashion movement, specifically focusing on sustainability issues, is considered to have undergone an Organic growth. While there were a couple events that had facilitated increased social media awareness, such as the textile factory that burned down in India in 2013 and Stella McCartney's exposing campaign ...

What are the pros and cons of fast fashion? ›

Fast fashion's benefits are affordable prices and instant gratification for consumers, more profits for companies, and the democratization of stylish clothing. On the downside, fast fashion is also associated with pollution, waste, the promulgation of a "disposable" mentality, low wages, and unsafe workplaces.

It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year. Even washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibres into the ocean each year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.

The French environment agency (ADEME) recommends choosing clothes made with organic cotton, recycled cotton, or polyester. According to the recycling methodology, it can reduce the impact by up to 99%. Another idea is to choose fibers made from natural resources such as wood cellulose.

- Donate your clothes to your friends, family, neighbors, or to charity. - Sell them on second-hand apps like Vinted. - Some clothes shops take back used clothes from their own brand or even from other brands. - Put them in the textile recycling bin.

Each wash and dry cycle, especially the latter, sheds microfilaments that move through our sewage systems and end up in waterways. It is estimated that half a million tons of these contaminants reach the ocean each year. That's the equivalent to the plastic pollution of more than 50 billion bottles.

Change consumer habits towards fashion

Unethical clothing can refer to a variety of things. It might include clothing that uses sweatshops, cheap labour from impoverished countries with loose labour laws. Alternatively, it might refer to the process by which clothes are made.

It may surprise you to learn that the fashion industry produces about 10 percent of annual global carbon emissions, which is more than all maritime shipping and international flights combined. What's more, fashion's emissions of harmful greenhouse gases are projected to grow by more than 50 percent by 2030.

100 billion pieces a year is an estimate from a decade ago, before the explosion in ultra-cheap, disposable fashion from companies like Boohoo and Shein. What we do know is that the unnecessary overproduction of clothing is a leading cause of climate change and plastic pollution.

The fashion industry consumes copious amounts of water and generates huge amounts of wastewater. As a result, the fashion industry is responsible for the consumption of 79 trillion litres of water annually, contributing to about 20% of industrial wastewater [6].

It is estimated that approximately 60% of fast fashion items are produced with plastic-based (which is made from fossil fuels) fabrics. Throughout their life cycles, these fabrics are significantly contributing to the worldwide plastic pollution crisis.

When did fast fashion become an issue? ›

Welcome to the world of fast fashion. Fast fashion is a relatively recent phenomenon. During the 1990s, retailers began to introduce trendy, cheaply-priced, poorly-made clothes on a weekly basis, intending to match the breakneck pace at which fashion trends move.

The human rights violations that ultimately occur in countries that manufacture clothing for fast fashion companies include health and safety violations and unfair wages.

The act of wearing an outfit has become political as the issues of fast fashion concerning slave labour, waste, capitalist greed, and climate impact have been at the forefront of the news for a number of years. Fast fashion can be classified as high fashion that is sold at a low cost.

Brands, retailers and factories must shoulder the responsibility of addressing fashion's key issues: from bad contracts and poverty wages to the exploitation of migrant workers and gender discrimination, the industry cannot continue to make billions in profit from a model that monetises injustice.

Boycotting fast fashion is a way to practice using what you have. Challenge yourself to make different outfits from a few pairs of shirts and pants. This can help encourage you to be more creative in using what is already in your closet and prevent clothing to be thrown away.

Fast fashion retailers are motivated by how much profit they can turn, and by paying so little in wages, not only is the profit margin increased, the workers are also trapped in a cycle of poverty.

Large amounts of resources are being extracted and clothes sent to landfills due to fast fashion. And more than USD 500 billion is lost each year due to a lack of reuse and recycling, as reported by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2017).

There are certain factors that influence fashion, such as psychological factors, socio-cultural factors, economic factors, environmental factors, etc.

Since it's a relatively new technology, there's little research to establish the long-term consequences, good or bad, of social media use. However, multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts.

Social media has definitely made it easier for consumers to discover and purchase new fashion items. By providing a platform for users to share their outfits and tag the brands they are wearing, social media has created an easy way for other users to find and purchase similar items.

How does fashion influence society? ›

Fashion keeps a society lively through different new styles and subsequent changes. Fashion promotes social changes from time to time and also respects traditions and customs in society. Fashion encourages to modify or amend all those customs that are rigid and have no relevancy anymore.

We know that social media has had a dramatic impact on the fashion industry – from business models to marketing – but it has also changed the way we dress ourselves every day. Women today are constantly sharing selfies, and don't want to wear an outfit that they've already been seen in (on social media).

Social media has led to new collaborations with influencers and celebrities, leading to even more demand for a limited release or piece of clothing. Kanye West is a well-known example of this, with his shoes being amongst the most expensive as their resale value is so high.

As a cultural process, fashion is responsible for locating individuals within a constantly changing forest of objects, people, events, styles and practices to which they relate, about which they form opinions and which symbolically help to locate them within various social strata and communities.

Individuals belonging to a higher social class often wore clothing made of silk, wool, and expensive furs, while those of the lower classes would possibly use heavy outer coats made from dog or goatskins, lined with linen or cotton.

The differences in how these societies perceive fashion choices show that gender indeed is a social construct and fashion choices that surround a specific gender is invariably influenced by society.

The disadvantages of fast fashion include –

not paying fair living wages to workers, poor working conditions, child labor, environmental destruction from hazardous chemicals, plastic-derived materials, and increasing amounts of water pollution and textile waste.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SLOW FASHION? With slower production schedules, smaller collections, zero waste designs, and the use of sustainable materials, Slow Fashion brands aim to reduce the textile waste and the consequent pollution.

Many of the clothes bought are thrown away after being worn just a handful of times: the industry produces an estimated 92 million tonnes of textiles waste annually, much of which is burnt or finds its way to landfill, while less than 1% of used clothing is recycled into new garments.

Fast fashion's benefits are affordable prices and instant gratification for consumers, more profits for companies, and the democratization of stylish clothing. On the downside, fast fashion is also associated with pollution, waste, the promulgation of a "disposable" mentality, low wages, and unsafe workplaces.

How fast fashion is ruining the environment? ›

As about 69% of clothes are made of synthetic fabrics, most of the wasted garments take hundreds of years to decompose in landfill. Natural fabrics, on the other hand, release methane in landfill—contributing to climate change.

What's the environmental impact of fast fashion? Producing clothes uses a lot of natural resources and creates greenhouse gas emissions which are responsible for climate change.

WHAT'S THE DEFINITION OF FAST FASHION? Fast fashion has three main components from the consumer's perspective: it's cheap, it's trendy and it's disposable. It makes purchasing clothes on impulse easy and affordable.

Slow fashion reduces the environmental impact of fashion by promoting the use of sustainable materials and processes, reducing waste, and supporting local production.

Clothes can take up to 200 years to decompose

100% cotton clothing can break down as quickly as a week. However, clothes made of plastic-based materials do not break down easily. They may take up to 200 years to decompose! For this reason, it is important to keep them out of our landfills.

Fast fashion denotes lower-quality, low-priced, mass-produced and machine-made garments that quickly end up in landfills. Slow fashion garments in contrast are made by hand, consume time to produce, use artistic talent, have better quality and are priced higher.