Fast Fashion by Angela Rieck

It seems like every time we try to make positive changes to the environment, such as electric vehicles, or buying organic, another ugly environmental destructor appears.

Fast Fashion is one of those destructors.

Fast Fashion has revolutionized the apparel industry, and not for the better. Fast Fashion is a term for mass-market retailers that produce cheap, poor-quality clothing quickly and in bulk. Their goal is to increase sales by creating consumer trends. Gen Zs are the primary consumers.

Fast Fashion companies produce new designs at staggering rates. Most clothing is designed to appeal to the young, especially pre-teens. While many companies could be classified as Fast Fashion, here are some of the major players.

• SHEIN is a retailer that produces new designs every three days.
• Forever 21 produces new designs every two weeks.
• Zara, the pioneer of Fast Fashion, produces more than 10,000 new designs each year.
• H&M, while not producing at the rates of other companies, is another leader in producing high-fashion clothing cheaply and quickly.
• Temu is a Chinese mega-company that offers many cheap products in addition to Fast Fashion.
• Boohoo has many brands of trendy clothing at cheap prices and is one of the few that includes plus size and petite choices.
• Fashion Nova, known for its dresses, appeals to a wider range of consumers including our generation. They release around 600 new products (mostly dresses) every week. They claim to use psychology to sell their products.
• Primark sells trendy clothing and accessories at low prices and promotes high inventory turnover.
• Brandy Melville was featured in a documentary that revealed its sexism, and predatory behaviors toward young girls, and yet, remains strong. Pre-teens regularly post their purchases on TikTok and Instagram.

The garment industry is historically one of the largest polluters, and Fast Fashion puts these problems in overdrive. They produce more apparel than can be worn. Their clothes are cheaply made and are designed to be worn fewer than three times before they find their way into landfills or clothing bins.

You know those clothing bins; we see them at most shopping centers. Most of these clothes are shipped overseas to poor countries that don’t want them and can’t even use them. Most Fast Fashion clothes are not recyclable and these countries end up with mountains and mountains of unwanted clothes, some spewing into oceans.  Here are some scary statistics.

Clothing is manufactured with highly toxic dyes and heavy metals that are flushed into water systems. It is estimated that producing cotton t-shirts requires over 700 gallons of water and produces the same greenhouse gas emissions as driving a car for about 10 miles. Every year the garment sector uses 93 billion cubic meters of water, which is enough to meet the consumption needs of five million people. They are responsible for around 20% of industrial water pollution from textile treatment and dyeing.

And there is more. The industry razes 150 million trees for cellulosic fabrics.  Cotton is one of the world’s most pesticide-intensive crops. 69% of all clothing includes synthetic fibers which are not biodegradable. Our laundering of synthetic clothing is believed to be the largest source of microplastic pollution in the oceans.

The inhumane treatment of garment workers throughout the world is well documented. In order to make garments so inexpensive, most Fast Fashion brands use cheap labor and unethical working practices.

But it is not just Fast Fashion and Gen Z’s, throughout the world, people are buying more clothing. Overall clothing production has doubled since 2000.

But the biggest culprit is Fast Fashion, which is not about quality, it is about quantity, buying as much as you can for as little as you can. The goal of Fast Fashion is a short lifespan so that consumers can buy more.

Europe is reacting to this trend. While this is not possible in the United States, France is challenging Fast Fashion. In March 2024, the French parliament approved a bill that targets Fast Fashion. It will ban the advertising of certain fast-fashion companies giants (e.g., SHEIN and Temu) and penalize low-cost items with a surcharge to cover their environmental impact. The bill would also mandate that Fast Fashion retailers include an item’s reuse, repair, recycling, and environmental impact next to the product’s price. The EU announced its intention to vastly expand clothing design rules on recycling and sustainability. Within 7 years, all textiles sold within the EU must be recyclable, free of hazardous substances, and contain a high percentage of recycled fibers.

Even though I am not a consumer of Fast Fashion, while doing this research for this column, I began to think of my impact. I began to research ways that I could rethink my clothing purchases.

• The simplest approach is to buy fewer clothes and wear them longer.
• Choose thrift. We have several good sources of buying used clothing locally. In addition, there are websites that offer second-hand clothing. The company where I purchase my dresses now has a “used” site where I can buy the same dresses for half of the price. Everyone wins.
• Choose natural materials when buying clothes or buy 100% recycled fabrics. There are a number of sustainable clothing companies now and even the larger companies, such as Patagonia, offer recycled and sustainably made items.
• Donate your clothes to charitable thrift stores.
• Many people also sell their used clothing via local marketplaces or consignment stores. This is especially the case with children’s clothing.
• My daughter rents some of her clothes. She lives in New York City, where closet space is at a premium, so she rents a certain number of clothing items each month. They can be special occasion clothes, everyday outfits, and work clothes. Each month she selects the clothing she wants, returns last month’s clothing, and voila, a new wardrobe.

After researching this article, I can’t say that I will be perfect, but now that I am an educated consumer, I can consider the impact of each clothing purchase.