Who is being affected by fast fashion?
According to non-profit Remake, 80% of apparel is made by young women between the ages of 18 and 24. A 2018 US Department of Labor report found evidence of forced and child labour in the fashion industry in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam and others.
Compared to the prestigious fashion brands that have just few fashion collections in the course of the year, fast fashion businesses offer their customers a lot more fashion collections during the year at more affordable prices. Consumers can buy more for less, but they keep up with the latest fashion trends.
Fast fashion culture is creating an unsustainable practice of churning out new styles every other week. This industry creates unsafe workplaces, a decline in domestic manufacturing, and a decline in quality. Cheap fashion comes at a cost to workers; they are underpaid, overworked, and put in unsafe conditions.
The target audience for fast fashion retailers are largely consumers aged 18 and 24 who are often students with low incomes (Lam etal., 2016). Females of this age group are found to shop in fast fashion retailers more often than any other demographic group.
Among the environmental impacts of fast fashion are the depletion of non-renewable sources, emission of greenhouse gases and the use of massive amounts of water and energy.
Fast fashion's negative impact includes its use of cheap, toxic textile dyes—making the fashion industry the one of the largest polluters of clean water globally, right up there with agriculture.
The Economic Impact of the Fashion Industry: Fast Fashion
It has a huge impact on the economy. It is responsible for both the recent and future growth of the apparel industry. In fact, as of 2017, the market expected to grow by 5.91 percent. It also predicted to reach 1,652.73 billion dollars by 2020.
By age group, most fast fashion shoppers were between the ages of 18 and 24. Of that age group, 147 out of 157 female respondents stated that they shopped at a fast fashion company. Out of 135 men in this age group, 115 said they consistently shopped at a fast fashion location.
There is a reason why fast fashion is also known as disposable fashion; the significant amount of waste associated with it. With consumers understanding and accepting the lesser quality of the garments in substitution for lower prices, they are quick to throw away the items and move on to the next trend.
Fashion's environmental impacts
Fashion is responsible for 10 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and 20 percent of global wastewater, and uses more energy than the aviation and shipping sectors combined.
How does fast fashion affect child labor?
The 'fast fashion' model has a deteriorating effect on working conditions. Low wages, forced labour, unhealthy and dangerous working conditions and child labour are rampant throughout the garment supply chain.
The industry produces an estimated 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions. The production and distribution of the crops, fibers, and garments used in fashion all contribute to differing forms of environmental pollution, including water, air, and soil degradation.
Social media only expedites the connection between consumers and products, fueling harmful throw-away culture and overconsumption. A survey reported in The Standard showed that 10% of the 2,000 consumers that participated throw away an item of clothing once it has been posted to social media on three occasions.
India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Turkey, among others, have become popular locations for the sourcing of fast fashion garments and accessories.
Fast fashion is the mass production of cheap, poor quality, disposable clothing. To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, the fashion industry churns out a gargantuan 80 billion garments a year. That's over 10 for every person on earth. And it's 400% more than it produced 20 years ago.
Along with massive water consumption, textile waste and toxic dyes leaching into soils and waterways, fast fashion also releases microplastics when washed, which leads to about 500,000 tons of microfibres in the ocean every year - the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.
The success of fast fashion helped double the size of the fashion industry between 2000 and 2014. In 2021, the fast fashion sector is expected to generate $31 billion globally, an increase of 22% from 2020 — which represents more than a full recovery of COVID-19-related losses — according to Research and Markets.
These small businesses are far more easily affected by more factors, such as change in trends and climate change. Additionally, the fast fashion companies stealing designs from small businesses further hinders the original designers of those products from profiting at all from their own work.
On top of that, fast fashion uses pesticides for dyeing and production, leading to a heavy pollution of waterways in many developing countries.
The biggest fast fashion consumers by age
It has become very clear that Gen Z-ers are the biggest fast fashion culprits with half (49%) of 18-23-year-olds shopping more than once a week! Just over a quarter (28%) of 24-30-year-olds (millennials) are shopping more than once a week, by comparison, a big difference!
What generation buys the most fast fashion?
In a revealing 2020 Vogue Business survey, more than half of the 105 members of Gen Z surveyed reported buying "most of their clothes" from fast-fashion brands. Shein alone earned almost $10 billion in 2020 — its eighth consecutive year of revenue growth over 100 percent.
Today, Millennials and Gen Z are the primary target demographics for fast fashion, but these generations are also characterised by their awareness of societal trends, environmental degradation, and political issues.
The fashion & textiles industry is a major polluter of water at all stages of the value chain, from the agricultural runoff from cottonfields causing algal blooms that choke rivers, to the dying process releasing a co*cktail of toxic chemicals and the washing of clothes releasing microplastics.
However, the most surprising fact is that while the Walt Disney Company sells products that are catered towards making children happy, the company actually uses sweatshops and child labor to produce their products in developing countries.
In the company's report today, Apple says it found no evidence of forced labor or underage child labor.
- Nike. The deceptive aspect with child labour is that most companies will use children to labour from overseas in other countries and use the materials and work provided, for their products. ...
- Adidas. Adidas is another clothing brand deeply indulged in child labour scandals. ...
- H&M.
Fashion Reflects Social Changes: The Connection Between the Industry and Society. Social change means a prominent revision in behavior patterns and cultural values. It is possible to see how fashion changes according to the current social and political moments throughout history.
Fast fashion has an enormous environmental footprint for both its production and disposal. Clothing production requires a considerable amount of energy and resources, while it depends on toxic fabric dyes and other chemicals that contaminate fresh water. Fashion produces a tenth of the world's carbon emissions.
Buy or rent secondhand clothes.
If you enjoy shopping often to refresh your wardrobe, embrace used clothing. Thrift stores around the world offer unique and vintage styles, but more retailers are embracing the second hand model to fight fast fashion.
81% of the respondents were of the view that the social media page of a luxury fashion brand increases brand loyalty and enhances consumer buying by bringing the consumer closer to the brand, its products and every emotional and social impact that it creates.
