Fast fashion provides an easier, faster, trendier, and cheaper way to get more. This breeds an environment of overconsumption, waste, pollution, and ignorance.
Unfortunately many people tend to look the other way for the sake of price or convenience.
We all know that the world is changing every day, and not in a good way. The fashion apparel industry has also significantly changed in the last 20 years, adapting itself to the highly competitive and increasingly demanding market, creating new strategies and leading to the evolution of “throwaway or fast fashion”
The Fast Fashion industry, has grown 21% over the past 3 years, reflecting the growing consumer demand for speed in the retail industry.
Nowadays, information and trends are moving around the globe at tremendous speeds, and fashion is keeping up gathering speed ferociously.
Consumers demand constant change and the frequent availability of new products. Fast fashion labels are dropping daily several new styles, selling items for so little that they cannot afford to pay the people making their clothing a decent living wage, and establishing a business model that encourages reckless spending. Fast fashion provides an easier, faster, trendier, and cheaper way to get more. This breeds an environment of overconsumption, waste, pollution, and ignorance.
Unfortunately many people tend to look the other way for the sake or price or convenience.
Nowadays consumers have an endless rush for what´s new, and the business model of fast fashion is based on consumers’ desire for new clothing to wear as they thrive on constant change and new trends.
In order to fulfill consumer’s demand, fast fashion brands provide very cheep prices and a wide range of clothing that reflects the latest trends. This quick demand has increased the number of seasons presented in the stores, up to 18 per year! Today, it is not uncommon for fast fashion retailers to introduce new products, multiple times in a single week to stay on trend.
As a consequence, companies have to figure out where in their business process they are able to speed up the service delivery to meet these new challenging demands. The way to do this is making their products in sweatshops, factories where manual workers are employed for their hard labour, under highly poor working conditions, working up to 18 hr per day for less than US$1
Fast fashion also operates on a business model of low quality goods and high volume, and is deeply committed to built-in obsolescence. Fast fashion retailers sell clothing that is expected to be disposed of after being worn only a few times. These cycles of providing cheep prices to trigger the sales, and the low quality of the products that would need to be replaced much more often, are making consumers unconsciously buy more. This way, sales numbers multiply, and so does the amount of waste that comes with it, as excessive stock and untrendy clothes tends to end up in landfills.
Due to this rise in consumption, developed countries are producing and importing more and more garments each season, resulting in more and more textiles being discarded yearly from which the main portion is ending up in landfills worldwide. These clothes are often made from synthetic or inorganic materials which don´t degrade properly, but this is not the only environmental concern that the fast fashion industry creates.
Throughout all stages of textile production, the aquatic, terrestrial, and atmospheric ecosystems experience lasting environmental harm. One of these harmful effects is the release of greenhouse gases into the air by global transportation of goods and the utilization of heavy machinery.
Along with the release of hazardous gases and carbon dioxide emission, various pesticides, toxic chemicals and poisonous dyes are consistently being released into the aquatic environment in each community the fashion sector operates in. The growing demand for fast fashion has caused a significant rise in environmental damage over the years.
Raise awareness and recognize that we are all interconnected to a larger environmental and social system, that the impact of our collective choices can affect people and the world we all live in, and make conscious decisions accordingly.
– Think before buying, ask yourself questions and demand companies to be transparent and to show their manufacturing processes.
– Educate yourself and condition your attitudes to understand why something like sustainable fashion is vital in the long run.
– Buy clothes that make you feel good about what you wear, knowing that you are not just buying a garment but a whole chain of values.
– Buy wisely and consciously pieces of clothing that you know that you will use and love again and again and again.
By slowing down consumption, decreasing fashion production can allow the earth’s regenerative capabilities to take place. This will alleviate pressure on raw materials and natural cycles so fashion production can be in a healthy rhythm with what the earth can provide again.
Train yourself, educate others, and live a lifestyle that you can feel good about because every purchase we make is a choice, a choice to support those doing right by animals, people, and the planet, or those choosing convenience over compassion.