How We Can Slow Down Fast Fashion

By Leah Favela 

When you think of things which cause harm to the environment, what comes to mind?

You probably think of driving a car when you could walk or bike, failing to properly dispose of recyclable materials, or using plastic items such as straws or grocery bags. Maybe international flight comes to mind or an image of someone throwing an empty drink bottle out their car window.

Clothing was likely not on your list.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone in this. Clothing wasn’t ever really something I thought about either.

It wasn’t until I decided to alter my daily habits in an attempt to live a more eco-friendly, sustainable life that I began to learn what a negative impact fashion has on our planet. Specifically fast fashion.

Fast fashion is a term used to describe clothes that follow the latest trends, are made cheaply and quickly, and are sold at very low prices. It’s the mass production of “en vogue” styles usually only made to last a season, maybe two, and then be discarded. Fast fashion has caused clothing consumption to skyrocket while dramatically shortening the lifecycle of each garment.

Missguided, an online clothing retailer, sells most of their two-piece swimsuits for under $10US. While this may sound appealing to the budget-minded, the bathing suits are made of mostly polyester, a cheap microfiber known to harm the environment. At such low prices, it doesn’t matter to many consumers that Missguided’s bikinis won’t last long. They can simply throw them away and buy more.

This perfectly illustrates the “take-make-dispose” model the fashion industry has adopted and consumers have accepted. Missguided is not the only clothing retailer doing this. Far from it.

Settle in and I’ll relay some facts to you. I’ll warn you now though, you probably won’t look at clothes buying the same again.

But the good thing is, I’ll also tell you some things we (because we are in this together) can do to change the fast fashion lifecycle. 

Fashion Facts

· The textile industry (the industry that designs, produces, and distributes yarn, cloth, and clothing) produces 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions, generating more greenhouse gases than commercial shipping and international flight combined.

· The fashion industry uses about 79 trillion liters of water per year. This isn’t surprising when you learn that it takes about 2,000 gallons of water to make just a single pair of jeans.

· Textile dying is the second largest polluter of water globally. Most “fast fashion” clothing is produced in low-income countries that don’t have many health and safety standards or regulations in place. This means untreated waste water from dyes is often released into local water supplies which has a cascading effect on all living things associated to that ecosystem.

· Many textiles which make our clothing contain plastic material such as polyester, nylon, acrylic, and polyamide. Every time these clothes are washed, plastic microfibers end up in the ocean. Half a million tons of plastic microfibers are released every year, 16 times more than those vilified plastic microbeads from cosmetics.

· When consumers tire of their clothes, they usually simply throw them out. Every year 85% of textiles go to the dump. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck full of these materials is landfilled or burned.

· The average consumer throws away 81.5lbs. (36.96 kg) of clothing per year. Ninety-five percent of clothing waste can be reused or recycled yet a massive amount still winds up in landfills.

· Consumers are buying over 60% more garments since the year 2000, but are keeping their clothes for only half as long.

· Where once clothing brands created three to four new collections of clothing a year (in conjunction with the seasons), now the fashion industry is typically rolling out 52 “micro-seasons” per year. New trends come out every week to increase a consumer’s feelings of being out of fashion and sending them running back to brick-and-mortar or online stores to buy the newest styles.

What Can We Do?

It’s easy to say that textile manufacturers, corporations and governments carry the weight of responsibility in bringing change to the fast fashion industry. Certainly, sustainable innovations and new trade and environmental policies and regulations will be the most effective in bringing about large-scale change.

But it’s important to remember that we, as consumers, are a part of this fast fashion supply chain, and changing our buying habits can help to break that chain and influence change. Look at the effect consumers had when they began to speak out against using plastic bags and straws.

We can make a difference.

Buy Better and Buy Less

It can be hard to resist the siren call of an inexpensive pair of cute boots. But you know those boots aren’t going to last long. Save a bit more money and buy a nicer pair of boots that will last a long time if taken care of properly. Do the same with every purchase. Or at least think about doing the same. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on everything you buy. But being more mindful of your shopping habits will slow you down, and that’s exactly what we’re going for.

Buy Sustainable Fibers

Buy sustainable fibers such as linen, hemp, organic cotton, Tencel (made from wood pulp), Monocel (made from bamboo), and rayon. The Sustainable Jungle has a fantastic blog post to educate consumers on the best types of fibers to buy and why. You can also learn about regenerated fibers and how to find clothes made from them.

At the moment, many eco-friendly brands are a bit pricey. But there are affordable brands offering shirts made from recycled materials which usually cost just $10 or $15 more than your basic t-shirt. When organic food first started hitting the market, it was extremely expensive because there wasn’t much demand for it. As more people became mindful food consumers and the demand for organic food went up, the cost went down. Organic tomatoes might cost a bit more than their non-organic counterparts, but the cost is now negligible, especially when considering the environmental benefits. The same thing can happen with fashion if consumers change their buying habits and show the fashion industry they are no longer willing to contribute to fast fashion.

Take a look at the Fashion Transparency Index to find out how well-known brands you might already buy rank for things like transparency, sustainable practices, and governance.

Repair Clothes

Learn to sew a button back on a shirt or stitch up the growing hole on the seam of your pants. Teach your children to do the same. If you’re feeling ambitious, you could even take a sewing class. Not only could you learn how to make larger repairs beyond reattaching a run-away button, you might even learn how to make a dress or a pair of pants.

Have a Clothing Swap

When was the last time you did this? If you have children you could organize clothing swaps for them as well. Normalizing the swapping and sharing of used clothes at a young age will help your children to become mindful consumers as they grow older.

Buy Second Hand Clothes

There are vintage shops around that have some pretty awesome pieces of clothing. Again, you might pay a bit more for it, but this means it’ll just make you think more about whether or not you really need, or absolutely have to have, it. Slowing down is the key to stopping fast fashion. Even getting a little bit more mindful about what you buy helps tremendously.

If you’re just looking for a few pairs of jeans, find your nearest second-hand shop. If you remember how much water it takes to produce one pair of jeans, then simply increasing the life span of someone else’s discarded jeans means you’re helping to conserve the world’s water supply. Every little bit counts.

Start a Recycle Bag

You don’t want to donate clothes to a second-hand store that are covered in stains or full of unrepairable holes. But you also shouldn’t just throw them away. Start a recycle bag of garments that can’t be used anymore. When the bag is full, look up your nearest textile recycling factory or bank (I found two near me in less than 1 minute of on-line searching). Textile banks take old garments and turn them into new items such as industrial blankets, upholstery for furniture, and cleaning cloths.

The Take-away

It’s easy to bury our heads in the sand, to continue buying as we always have, and just hope that other people will drive the change while we hang out in the backseat. Trying to be a more mindful and sustainable consumer can be tricky, frustrating and sometimes more expensive. But you don’t always need to buy 100% ethical, sustainable garments. No one said you have to be perfect all the time, all we need is for you to think a bit more about what you buy. You might keep slipping off the sustainable eco-wagon, but what matters it that you keep trying to climb back on again and again.