The Dangers of Fast Fashion

Fast fashion industry aims to produce stylish clothing pieces inspired by the
latest designs of luxury fashion brands but at a lower quality and a price. They target
average consumers who want to wear trendy pieces, as seen on celebrities and
runways, as soon as possible in a price they can afford notwithstanding its low quality
fabrics for these consumers lean more on the design than the longevity of the piece.
Because of the fast changing trend, fast fashion industry is known for creating tons of
clothes in a very fast pace thus making them one of the greatest contributor in the
world's carbon footprint. Some notable brands belonging in this industry are H&M,
Forever 21, Zara, Cotton On, and etc. This industry has been making negative
consequences on the consumers and environment.
Everything that is sold in a mall has gone an intensive market research to
generate sales such as the product itself, packaging, promotion, and pricing. As for fast
fashion, considering their low tag prices, their way to earn profit is to sell tons of clothes.
According to Hines and Bruce of Fashion Marketing, pieces of fast fashion is for
immediate consumption just to capture the look of the moment and not to linger in the
wardrobe. From this, it is evident why clothes from fast fashion are really not in a good
quality as brands want the consumers to keep coming back to purchase again a new
piece that is also a newly released design. Brands know the human trait of wanting to
be in trend so they use it to make money by always releasing new designs of clothing.
Based from the research study of Knutson et.al. entitled Neural predictors of Purchases,
when people buy an item, the brain gets pleasure of anticipating the new item but also
gets pain from the loss of money but if people see the price tag which was greatly
discounted, the brain feels almost no pain. This kind of marketing strategy is apparent in
most fast fashion brands to sell the old designs to give way to the new items. According
to Business Insider, H&M, the world's second largest apparel retailer, can create new
styles in just two weeks and produce and distribute it in less than a month. Fast fashion
brands are able to produce tons of clothes in a cheap price mainly because of
outsourcing the production in developing countries such as in Bangladesh and China
where labor costs are low. In fact there are many issues regarding the employees being
underpaid and working under unsafe and lethal conditions in producing garments. One
tragic incident happened in the eight-storey Raja Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh,
where H&M and Zara also outsources for production, collapsed due to negligence of the
structural failure where more than 1,100 were dead and approximately 2,500 injured.
In 2017, according to WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, the average
concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 405.5 parts per million (ppm) globally
from 403.3 ppm in 2016. Greenhouse gas emissions mainly carbon dioxide are the
main cause of climate change and this phenomenon brings negative impacts on the
Earth that are irreversible. The textile production which accounts for 1.2 billion tonnes of
carbon dioxide annually making it as the world's second most polluting industry coming
after oil industry. Over 60% of the textiles are used for clothing which was produced
mainly from coal-fuelled power plants. The industry produces 60 million tons of
garments each year and consumers only wear it a few times before they throw out the
used garment. Over 16 million tons of textile waste was produced by the United States
according to United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2014. The industry has
become unsustainable in terms of production and consumption. Most fabrics used in
fast fashion are made of polyester, nylon and other synthetic fibers which are all forms
of plastic and accounts for the 60% of the materials used in our clothes worldwide.
These synthetic fibers are made mainly from coal and contributes to greenhouse gas
emissions. These are mainly used in fast fashion industry since they do not wrinkle
easily, smooth, lightweight, and cheap. Not only the industry damage the land and air
but also the water. Because of the materials used in the fabrics, the tiny shards of
synthetic fibers pollute the ocean every time people do the laundry or even not since it
just falls off from the garment. It was estimated that a single load of laundry releases
hundreds of thousands of synthetic fibers and some of it goes to the sewage treatment
and some in the ocean, which is a microplastic pollution, and may be ingested by living
organisms in the oceans and even humans because of the food chain.
There are some persons and companies who are making a move towards being
green in terms of fashion. An example of this is Rent the Runway, a company whose
service is to let people rent designer clothes thus making them not to buy clothes
especially if they only need to use it once for an event. So that one clothing piece is not
only worn by one but worn by many. Another is an outdoor clothing company named
Patagonia who believes in using business to inspire solutions to the environmental
crisis, as what they have said. Patagonia believes in making high quality stuff so it can
last for years, in addition, they offer a repairing service on their clothing or if it cannot be
repaired anymore, it will go to recycling. And lastly is Zero Waste Daniel which is owned
by Daniel Silverstein. He recycles used garments and turn it into a fashionable clothing
piece. Furthermore, all of the pieces are handmade by him. There are still other
companies who are turning the fashion industry into a sustainable one, not only these
three.
The industry of fast fashion is indeed one of the most damaging industries in the
environment and as the most intelligent being in the world, humans are the only ones
who can do something to alleviate the negative impacts of fast fashion which were also
caused by them. The pollution brought by the industry made some companies to go
towards being environment-friendly with their business and by following this move of the
other fast fashion brands, the environment will be a healthier one for the future to come.
Consumers must also be smart on choosing garments and learn how they can reduce
their clothing waste. There are different options to choose from such as buying higher
quality garments, renting clothes that may only be used once, and learning to stylishly
dress without harming the environment. There is nothing bad about following the trend
as long as nothing is harmed such as the environment and an individual ’s self-esteem,
but what would be a good trend is when fashion brands make stylish pieces out of
environment-friendly materials and people start to be more mindful of the world they are
living in.