Fast fashion has radically transformed the textile industry. These days, 56 million tons of clothing are sold every year. But cheap garments come at a high price: A precarious existence for workers and a catastrophic environmental impact.
The clothing industry is currently deluging the planet with garments. With 100 billion items produced every year, that’s more than ever before. International companies are locked in an ongoing race to create new styles and win higher profits. And this gigantic expansion is set to continue: The sector is forecast to grow by 60 per cent by 2030.
The "Zara" Dynamics
On the one hand, fast fashion means affordable clothes for all. Zara is known as the original fast fashion brand. The Spanish clothing giant creates 65,000 new styles every year. Shopping for clothes has become a veritable leisure activity stoked by social media: half of all Instagram posts are related to fashion and beauty. This is how market leaders in fast fashion influence their customers’ buying behavior, backed by relevant neuromarketing specialists. Fast fashion profits from e-commerce. No more trying on clothes in the store, the customer orders online and has the garment delivered - and if they don’t like it, they just send it back. Throwaway clothes and throwaway work: carried out by an army of couriers within the precarious gig economy.
The sustainability Lie:
The textile industry is the sector with the world’s second-highest environmental price tag. Fast fashion manufacturers’ favorite material - viscose made from wood fibers - is marketed as a climate-friendly alternative. But producing this fabric uses a whole range of chemicals. This leads to serious health issues, not only for those working in the factories, but also for people living close by, for example in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Every year in Europe, four million tons of clothing ends up in the trash. Less than one per cent of this is recycled. The fashion industry likes to parade its sustainability credentials, but the reality is quite the opposite.
Fighting to mitigate the fast fashion after-effects?
In its Sustainable Development Goals, the UN states that in order to sustain our current lifestyles, by 2050 we could need the equivalent of almost three planets to provide the natural resources we use.
Our desire for cheap, on-trend clothes means fashion is costing the earth.
But there’s plenty more that individuals can do to reduce their own carbon fashion footprint.
1. Buy less and wear more
As the Fixing Fashion report says: “The most sustainable garment is the one we already own.” Extending the active life of 50% of UK clothing by nine months would save: 8% carbon, 10% water, 4% waste per metric ton of clothing, according to WRAP’s Valuing Our Clothes report.
2. Read the label
Petroleum based synthetic fibres like polyester require less water and land than cotton, but they emit more greenhouse gases per kilogram. But bio-based synthetic polymers made from renewable crops like corn and sugarcane release “up to 60% less carbon emissions, partly due to the crops creating carbon sinks”. Labels should show whether clothes are made using recycled polyester (rPET).
3. Vote with your feet
Some brands are more sustainable than others, so choose where you buy your clothes. In the UK, some sustainable and vintage brands offer lifetime repair services. Fifty-nine major retailers including IKEA and GAP have vowed to increase their use of recycled polyester by a minimum of 25% by 2020.
Image: Ellen Macarthur Foundation
4. Shop and drop for charity
In 2017, the UK’s 11,000 charity shops saved 330,000 metric tons of textiles from landfill, and helped to cut carbon emissions by millions of tons a year, through reusing and recycling second-hand clothes.
5. Choose organic cotton
The Soil Association told the Environmental Audit Committee that increasing organic cotton production could minimise the environmental impact of the fashion industry, as it would reduce the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and water.
6. Rent or borrow clothes
Apps like MyWardrobeHQ allow peer-to-peer clothes sharing, based on a sharing economy model. In the US, Rent the Runway was launched in 2009 with designer clothes for special occasions, and now has 6 million members.
7. Watch your washing
A 6kg domestic wash has the potential to release as many as 700,000 fibres into the environment, which should make you think twice before you pop stuff in the laundry you’ve only worn once. Washing on a lower temperature uses less energy, and adopting simple habits, like turning clothes inside out, will increase wearability.
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