What Is Fast Fashion? How Fast Fashion Impacts the Planet

Fast fashion refers to the fashion industry business model of mass-producing trendy clothing at a low cost. Fast fashion retailers purposely produce cheap, low-quality clothing that consumers dispose of quickly, after which they purchase new products.

Before the Industrial Revolution, buying clothing meant purchasing a few things and making them last since sourcing materials for clothing was expensive and time-consuming. Here’s how things have changed:

• Industrial Revolution: New industrial inventions such as the power loom and the sewing machine led to garment factories and sweatshops, which used low-cost labor to expedite textile production, revolutionizing the fashion business.
• Outsourcing: Fast fashion grew in the 1970s when manufacturers began outsourcing clothing production to cheaper countries with less stringent labor practices. The fashion industry created mass-produced garments and offered them to consumers at a low price. Consumers responded by spending more on new clothes and learning to expect new styles in stores regularly.
• Fast fashion takes over: The fast fashion industry hit its stride during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Fast fashion companies that offered cheap clothes and an ever-revolving supply of new items became the norm, while the actual cost of these fashion trends remained largely unseen.

Fast fashion does tout some benefits, such as making trendy styles available to everyone at a low cost and generating a high profit for clothing brands. However, the industry affects the environment, animals, and human beings. Consider the downsides:

• Environmental impact: Fast fashion uses synthetic fabrics derived from fossil fuels, contributing to increased carbon emissions and global warming. Land clearing for the massive amounts of cotton required to support the industry leads to drought risks, lowered soil quality, and reduced animal biodiversity. Chemicals from dyeing leach into wastewater, and landfills overflow with textile waste.
• Exploitative labor practices: Fast fashion lends itself to human rights abuses by paying garment workers less than minimum wage to toil long hours in poor working conditions to meet consumer demand. Garment factories sometimes hire underage workers for low wages with no guarantee of their safety.
• Negative consumer impact: The fast fashion clothing industry encourages consumers to believe they must stay on top of trends, creating a never-ending cycle of buying and disposing of clothing. The fashion cycle involves coaxing you to buy, forcing you to recognize within a short time that the trends have changed, causing you to become dissatisfied with your current clothing, which encourages you to buy more.

There are several environmental impacts of fast fashion, including:

• Harm to animals: Marine life ingests dyes, toxic chemicals, and microfibers released by the production of fast fashion clothing into waterways and the ocean, affecting the food chain.
• Land degradation: Commercially grown cotton requires significant resources. It requires a lot of water, and synthetic fertilizer degrades the soil.
• Greenhouse gas emissions: The fashion industry has a large carbon footprint. It contributes ten percent of global carbon emissions due to the extended supply chain of manufacturing and shipping required to produce a garment.
• Toxic chemical pollution: The poor-quality textiles that fast fashion companies use contaminate landfills with lead, pesticides, and other poisonous chemicals, and because of their synthetic composition, they don’t biodegrade. The textile industry takes up about five percent of all landfill space.
• Water pollution: Using chemicals to dye textiles pollutes waterways that humans and animals use. According to the United Nations Commission for Europe, the fashion industry contributes twenty percent of wastewater. The denim industry claims the title of second-largest polluter of fresh water in the world, damaging the ecology of local surroundings and impeding sustainability. Polyester sheds microfibers, which end up in the water system and contribute to ocean plastic pollution.

Fast fashion brands share some universal traits you can quickly identify in-store or by reading the garment details online. Typical factors include:

• Cheap materials: The most common materials are low-quality, synthetic fabrics like acrylic, polyester, nylon, and spandex. These fabrics contain plastic, and when you wash them, they shed microplastics into waterways. Additionally, plastic production relies heavily on fossil fuels.
• Manufactured out of country: The clothing labels reveal the manufacturer produced the garment in another country where labor is cheap and oversight is minimal.
• Low prices: Fast fashion companies want to sell, and they profit by selling many garments for a low price.
• Many styles: The store contains hundreds of clothing items of varying styles, all of which fall under current fashion trends promoted by designers and influencers.
• Rapid production: The clothing brand releases new styles weekly, in abundance.

Changing your buying habits and finding alternatives to fast fashion helps the environment, and your clothes will last longer. Follow these tips to change your fast fashion habits:

1. 1. Buy less. Buying less means you have more money to spend on longer-lasting items from environmentally friendly companies with fair labor practices.
2. 2. Embrace used. Buying secondhand clothing extends the life of an item, keeping it out of a landfill. Visit thrift stores and vintage stores for unique finds at low prices.
3. 3. Care for your clothes. Extend the lifespan of your apparel by washing items less frequently, using gentle detergents, delicates bags, and cold water. Skip the dryer and air-dry your clothes to help them last longer. Treat stains immediately to prevent them from setting.
4. 4. Embrace slow fashion. This ideology focuses on selecting high-quality, simple, evergreen pieces that work for various outfits. You purchase fewer clothes that last longer. Select eco-friendly materials such as organic cotton, hemp, and clothing made from recycled materials.
5. 5. Repair damaged clothing. Repair rips and snags instead of tossing damaged clothes. If the repairs are too complicated to do yourself, bring the item to a tailor or shoe repair shop. Give new life to faded or stained items by dyeing them a new color.
6. 6. Rent special-occasion items. Instead of buying an outfit you’ll only wear once, borrow one from a friends or online clothing rental company.
7. 7. Research before buying. Some fast fashion companies participate in greenwashing: They claim to produce sustainable fashion when they do the opposite. Be sure to research a company’s claims before buying anything.

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