Fast Fashion Slow death
Overconsumption of fast fashion is an unsustainable business model that leads to global pollution, health issues and labor rights violations
"Fast Fashion Is Cheap, Trendy, And Destructive—It’s Time To Slow It Down" AUDREY STANTON
Fast fashion is not as pretty as brands are advertising.
Fast fashion has been defined as inexpensive and trendy clothing that emulates ideas from runway shows and celebrity styles that are sold in high street stores and are produced at jaw-dropping speed to meet and sometimes exceed the demand of consumers. Fast fashion has been known to be extremely harmful to the environment. Specifically, the high number of green house gas emissions that these clothes produce and the high amounts of waste it contributes to Municipal landfills. Furthermore, the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions each year according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Some examples of stores that fall under the fast fashion industry includes Rainbows stores, H&M, and Zara. These are just a few of the stores that contribute to these negative trends that ultimately harm the environment.
The planet pays for the discounts offered by fast fashion.
From the consumer's perspective, three components make up fast fashion. These three components of fast fashion are cheapness, trendiness, and its disposal. It makes impulsive purchasing of clothes by consumers easy and affordable. Shopping based on constantly changing trends, means that people are always buying and diposing clothing materials. The ease of disposability means that people do not have to take time and think about what they are buying when they can throw the clothes away without losing much money. The clothes are made to be worn less than a handfull of time, they are not made to last. They are made to be on trend. This also allows consumers to be up to date with the latest fashion trends as these high street stores can quickly produce and market clothes that consumers want to be seen in as trends are ever-changing.
Sites of over consumption
H&M and Rainbows store locations in NYC with income (left) and race (right) layers repectively.
In our graphs we focused on illustrating the locations where fast fashion brands are sold. Using NYC as a case study we see a link between the locations of fast fasion stores and communities with lower median income. There is a realtionship between race, income and the locations of these stores. Communities with lower access to income, typically communities of color, have limited disposable income to spend on clothing. These communities are sought out and targeted by fast fashion brands.
Fast fashion focuses on high turnover and short trend cycles.
Fast fashion is especially appealing to populations that have less net and disposable income. As seen above Rainbows is primarily located in communities of color throughout the city. Their prices are extremely low and their inventories are constantly changing to reflect the trend of the day.
These prices while appealing to customer, do not properly reflect the true cost of producing these items. The quality of the clothing also makes it extremely likely that the clothes will not last and will have to end up in a lanfill sooner rather than later.
Some fast fashion brands are more mainstream than others and their reach is global. H&M is a fast fashion brand with most notoriety.
Even with bigger retailers that have higher prices, their prices are still extremly low. Stores like H&M appeal to a different dempgraphic, one with a little bit more disposable income. Their practices are still similar to that of every other fast fashion brand. They have high style turnover, lower clothing quality (to match the price), and high disposability.
Brands like H&M, also engage in green washing. Green washing is when retailers created promotional material so that consumer think that they are lowering their negative impact without actually taking those steps. Their support and ethical stance does not beyond a promotional campaign.
Store locations and ESRI generated market opportunities. The green layers show areas where clothing availability is greater than the need. This means that people have access to more clothes than they need, which could lead to over consumption.
If we look into the environmental effects of fast fashion we can see that lots of clothes end up in landfills, more specifically, municipal waste sites. Landfills hold tons of non-biodegradable and harmful textiles that sit and are sometimes burned which puts our ozone layer at risk.
Consumers pay very little money for their clothing, but there are also environmental cost that are the result of fast fashion.
This also is very harmful to communities that are built around these landfills as burning these clothes and pushing pollutants into the atmosphere can create public health concerns, especially in low-income communities with a substantial population of people of color.
Fashion Waste
Fast fashion also contributes to a high amount of water usage and up to 20% of the world's wastewater is due to the dying and treatment of fabrics. 10,000 items of clothing being sent to landfill every five minutes both through overconsumption from consumers and low quality products from brands.
We also find that the fast fashion industry introduces other harmful practices that have a negative impact on the environment such as toxic dye and chemicals are used, microplastics that come from synthetic fibers in the fabrics end up polluting our waterways, and the carbon footprint of the industry ultimately contributes to climate change and the rising surface temperature of the earth.
The emissions due to fast fashion are large and overshadows some of the most infamous polluting industries.
Landfill locations with income (left) and race (right)
Young child playing in waste pile, the air quality surrounding this site is also poor. The presence of the waste and the treatment of the waste, are a health hazard to every community.
Along with the health cost that are associated with emissions from landfills, global communities of color also bear the labor cost of fast fashion. In the U.S. the waste management system prevents some, though not all, of the health burdens of lanfills.
Globally that is not the case, countries that do not have fully established waste stream managements are force to confront the burdens of richer country's fast fashion addictions. These items are manufactured in countries like China, Bangladesh, and India where workers rights are largely ignored.
Global Air quality
The labor force of these country are overly burdened by fast fashion. Though it is not pretty, fast fashion can be summarize by the following images.
The ignored costs of Fast fashion
The life cycle of a t-shirt - Angel Chang
It doesn't have to be that way
Things you can do
Resources
close
