How Fast Fashion is Killing Planet Earth, One Shirt at a Time

Fast fashion is basically inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass market retailers in response to the latest trends. Often based on designs presented at Fashion week events, these designs move quickly from the catwalk to the stores. I’m talking familiar lines like H&M, Forever 21 and Zara. These clothes move even quicker from selling outlets to our bodies. But you know what’s quickest? The way these clothes move from closets to the trash.

Time for a brief history lesson in fashion. The world’s fashion industries before the twentieth century typically had four seasons in a year. You guessed it! The biggest names in designing at the time divided the production of output according to winter, spring, summer and autumn. They would plan ahead for three months, guessing what they thought people would want to wear, and then release a whole catalogue for that season. It was a more organized methodological approach for doing things-but it was only reserved for the extremely wealthy.

Then the industrial revolution happened in Europe and the less wealthy masses decided that they too would like to wear things other than potato sacks. The overwhelming growth in industrialization meant that this dream could become reality as designers begun to copy latest trends of the rich and rapidly replicate them using low quality materials. That way, the general public could also participate in one of humanities greatest loves…fashion. The result? Cheap, trendy clothes. So now we see fashion growing from only four seasons to up to 52 “Micro-seasons” in one year!

Remember in 2014 when Chris Brown released his music video for loyal and everyone was in tears because he tied a plaid shirt around his waist?  Remember how you probably went out and got yourself one (preferably red and black) because any one who was any one was tying plaid and flannel around their bums and topping it off with a snap-back or whatever cringe-worthy accessory humanity saw trendy at the time. I should know, I fell for that look-hard. Lines like forever 21 and Zara were chugging out plaid T-shirts by the thousand. Celebrities and social media icons were all sporting this look.

Fast forward a few months down the road and hardly a plaid shirt could be seen on Kampala streets or around the rest of the world for that matter. I guess y’all just decided you were bored and moved on to skinny jeans or whatever. Fast Fashion.

But where did all the scores and scores of plaid and flannel shirts go? They didn’t just disappear into thin air. It’s time you learnt the truth that the glamourous world of fashion has ugly skeletons in its closet. Fast fashion is harmful to the earth, human well-being and let’s be honest…our wallets.

Let’s start with the economic cost. How many times have you found yourself getting rid of a perfectly good top not because it’s damaged or ill-fitting but simply because it’s not cool anymore? If fast fashion were an institution on its own, “easy come-easy go” would be its motto. But it is not an institution, because we are fast fashion. Buying into the latest fads and throwing them out as soon as we get bored. The bigger question still disturbs many, are we the ones who set the trends or is it actually fashion companies who decide what they want to sell-and make us think that we started it? I don’t know. But the definite here is that while fashion trends can be fun, they are exhaustive and expensive.

Human well-being is another factor to consider when analyzing the whole fast-fashion debacle. How is it that these companies manage to make such huge profit margins selling clothes so cheaply? Well to quote Lucy Siegle, author and journalist in her fashion documentary The True Cost, “Fast Fashion isn’t free. Someone, somewhere is paying.’

Legions of under paid women and children slave in factories that are unsuitable for human existence, working tireless hours to make these clothes.

The fashion world follows a rigid deadline, people get bored really fast so the workers (read: slaves) have to work even faster if sales are to be maximized. No toilet breaks, no pausing to drink water. No falling sick. All this done in inhumane conditions. Take for example the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh that killed 1,130 people and injured 2500 when a run-down eight story factory complex making cheap clothes for some of your favorite Western brands collapsed.

You probably never heard this story and the industry continued normally because that is the accepted cost for fast and cheap clothes.

The third concern is an inescapable one, I’m not here to mince words-Fast fashion is KILLING us all. Textile production is one of the world’s dirtiest polluters.  Dangerous chemicals are often discharged, untreated into sensitive water-ways, where they contaminate groundwater with bio-accumulative, hormone-disruptive and carcinogenic pollutants. We put on our bodies materials that have been laced in a cocktail of poisons to get them to that trendy state. Even the plainest of cotton shirt is costing the earth. The fashion industry is estimated to consume around 79 billion cubic meters of water per year in cotton crop irrigation and industrial processing. (That is enough drinking water for 110 million people for an entire year) A cotton shirt that you’re just going to trash when it goes out of style. Where does it go after you throw it? Where did all those plaid shirts in 2014 go after we stopped wearing them? 30 percent of all garments are never sold because they are no longer fashionable. Where. Do. They. Go?

The answer to that is landfills; acres and acres of land strewn with toxic and non-biodegradable clothes that were too out of style to be worn. Co-founder and creative director of activist group Fashion Revolution describes land-filling and outright burning of clothes as fashions “dirtiest open secret.” And it is. We seemingly don’t care about the fact that our irrational need to keep up with the latest fashion trend by any means possible is actually killing us.

So what options do we have? I’m not saying we should not indulge and enjoy trends. Heck, they’re fun, something different to look forward to, a change of scenery, a form of creative expression. But we definitely need insight on how to smartly navigate them and cause as little damage as possible. Most of the solutions are little things that we are already aware of. We live in a generation that’s so afraid of being seen repeating clothes that rightfully belong to them because it’s apparently a sign of poverty to repeat one’s own clothing. There is such a thing as re-directive design. Embrace circular and slow fashion alternatives. Timeless pieces that you won’t throw out for years but simply tweak and complement. And who says you have to throw out? Swap, donate and choose natural or semi-synthetic fibers. Buy less, buy better quality, mend clothes, and recycle. Learn to love the clothes you own and take longer considering future purchases.

Obviously the brunt of the responsibility falls on the companies who make and release toxins into the environment to begin with, for example London Fashion Week in 2018 modelled clothes made from recycled plastic, Adidas is transforming ocean plastic waste into high-performance foot wear.

But it’s seemingly easier to turn plastic scrap into a shoe than to change consumer attitudes. Hun, you’re saving the earth when you repeat clothes. You’re saving others, you’re saving yourself.  Do more research, find out what you can do to make fashion greener, support fashion houses that recycle, support Uganda’s local garment makers and designers, re-use old clothes in arts and crafts projects-and say no to clothes that leave a toxic trail.

Beautiful fashion shouldn’t cost the earth. Fast fashion needs to go- and fast.

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