Fast-Fashion: The Dirty Secrets Of Vogue Clothing

 

With a growth rate of 5.46%, the global fashion industry was valued at $1.5 trillion by 2020; and now it is expected to reach $1.7 trillion in 2022. Statistics from the global fashion industry suggest that the industry could reach between 103% and 108% of its 2019 size in 2022.

According to Fashion United, the industry has a labor force of 3,384.1 million. Its value is equal to 3 trillion dollars. This means that it is equal to 2% of the world's gross domestic product (GDP). Fast-fashion industry statistics show that the apparel and clothing sector is the fourth largest sector in the world. Unfortunately, it’s also now one of the biggest polluters in the world.

From environmental impact and animal cruelty to human rights abuses, fast fashion has a lot to answer for, which doesn't look like it's slowing down anytime soon though. Let's talk about it……

Environmental impacts of this fascinating and ever-changing fast-fashion trend,

Fast-fashion means continuous growth for brands. It involves copying the latest looks and celebrity styles to create clothes very quickly at low production cost i.e. new collections every week, every season and get pumped quickly through stores in order to maximize on current trends.

Now, the fashion industry’s operating model is exacerbating the problem by stepping up the pace of design and production. After the automobile and technology industries, the fashion industry is the world's third-largest manufacturing sector which badly affects our environment.

The fashion industry is responsible for 10 % of annual global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. 50 billion new pieces of clothing were produced in 2000; nearly 20 years later, that amount has more than doubled. At this pace, the fashion industry’s greenhouse gas emissions will surge more than 50 % by 2030.

We all know that fashion collections are no longer seasonal; clothes’ stocks are replaced on a much more regular basis. Every week, many low-cost clothing stores introduce new designs. The rapid pace of apparel manufacture has also spurred consumption: the average person now purchases 60% more clothing than in 2000. 

According to the Ellen MacArthurFoundation, 50 billion new pieces of clothing were produced in 2000; nearly 20 years later, that amount has more than doubled.

If the same demographic and lifestyle patterns continue in future, global consumption of apparel will increase from 62 million metric tons in 2019 to 102 million tons in 10 years; Which will certainly lead to increased purchases as well as increased abandonment of clothing.

Somewhere growing the mechanised fashion industry lead 'throwaway society we live in.  Each year, more than 100 billion garments are made and around $450 billion worth of textiles are thrown away around the world.

Only a fraction of what’s manufactured gets recycled. Eighty-seven percent of the total fiber input used for clothing is ultimately incinerated or sent to a landfill. Fashion brands have come under criticism for practices such as destroying unsold products and sending piles of clothes to landfills across the Global South, on top of often exploitative and dangerous conditions for workers.

According to studies conducted by the World Bank, every year, the fashion sector consumes 93 billion cubic metres of water, which is enough to meet the needs of five million people. Fabric dyeing and treatment account for approximately 20% of global wastewater. 87% of the total fibre input used for garments is burned or disposed of in a landfill. The industry accounts for 10% of yearly worldwide carbon emissions, which is more than all international flights and shipping combined.

Do you know how your favorite jeans manufacturing and its harmful effect on the environment?

According to the UNEP, making just one pair of jeans requires vast quantities of water. A pair of jeans, for example, needs up to  10,000 liters of water  to be made; 3781 liters of water starting right from cotton production to delivery of the final product  is equivalent to at least 33.4 kilograms of carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, Denim's trademark blue color is mostly achieved by using a synthetic indigo dye that's linked with toxic chemicals such as cyanide, known for its use as a poison. To avoid paying for wastewater treatment, companies dump these chemicals into rivers. A study from 2019 found textile dyes from factories in Bangladesh in crops grown nearby.

Once the jeans have been finished and shipped out to retailers for sale (in itself a process incurring significant emissions of greenhouse gases), the jeans are then bought and taken home by the consumer. But their polluting ways do not end here – each time they’re washed, they release a plethora of chemicals and microfibres into the environment. Indeed, the research revealed that just one wash could be responsible for the release of 50,000 individual microfibres.

Finally, once the jeans have become too torn or too stained to be of further use, they must be disposed of. However, the presence of metal zips, rivets and buttons means that they’re very difficult to recycle. As a result, the vast majority of jeans end up in landfill, further polluting the planet. So, Jeans are a fashion staple but also an environmental headache.

Devastating effects of garment fibres on our environment,

The fibres are the most responsible for emissions. Synthetic fibres, particularly polyester and nylon, are non-renewable and generated from fossil fuels, specifically crude oil or petroleum.

It has overtaken cotton as the main textile fibre of the 21st century, ending hundreds of years of cotton’s dominance. The global market for polyester yarn is expected to grow from $106 billion in 2022 to $174.7 billion by 2032. Yearly polyester fibre production is projected to exceed 92 million tons in the next 10 years–an increase of 47%.

For what, 342 million barrels of oil are anticipated to be utilised each year in the creation of synthetic fibers. Aside from the fact that synthetics are less expensive and more widely available, the obvious alternative is cotton, but cotton has its own environmental consequences. Cotton necessitates a lot of water, as well as insecticides and fertilisers. Fertilisers are a carbon-intensive product in and of themselves (with one estimate suggesting that one tonne of nitrogenous fertiliser produces seven tonnes of CO2).

The environmental effects of polyester’s dominance over the clothing industry are varied. First, polyester requires a large amount of energy to produce. In 2015, polyester production for clothing emitted 282 billion tons of carbon dioxide, triple that of cotton.

According to Business Insider, laundry releases 500,000 tons of microfibers into the ocean each year; equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles. These microfibers take hundreds of years to biodegrade, making them present in aquatic sources for longer periods of time.

Microscopic aquatic organisms such as plankton ingest these microfibers, which pass through the food chain into the human body from species such as fish, prawns and crabs, which has negative health effects and also a danger to the animals that consume them, inhibiting their growth and reproduction. According to a 2017 report by the International Union for Conservation of Research, 35 percent of microplastics in the oceans come from the laundering of synthetic fabrics such as polyester. Whereas, scientists in Australia estimate that between 9.25 to 15.86 million tons of microplastics can be found on the ocean floor.

Moreover, textile dyeing is the world’s second-largest polluter of water, since the water leftover from the dyeing process is often dumped into ditches, streams, or rivers. Modern textiles rely heavily on petrochemical products that come from many of the same oil and gas companies driving greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, half a million tons of plastic microfibers are dumped into the ocean every year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.

The danger? Microfibers cannot be extracted from the water and they can spread throughout the food chain.

Matter doesn't stop here, wood pulp is used to make fabrics such as rayon and viscose, due to which thousands of hectares of endangered and ancient forests are cut every year. More than 150 million trees are cut each year to produce these fabrics, the number of which is expected to double by the next decade. This loss of forests threatens the ecosystem and the livelihood of the communities living there.

High human cost of cheap fast-fashion,

Among other fast-fashion problems, the conditions of garment workers is another reason why the industry is unethical. In fact, it's inhumane.

Unbearably long working hours, terribly low pay below the living wage and extremely hazardous working conditions are just some of the issues workers in garment factories face.

How can one forget the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Dhaka which housed five garment factories, killed at least 1,132 people and injured more than 2,500. Only five months earlier, at least 112 workers had lost their lives in another tragic accident, trapped inside the burning Tazreen Fashions factory on the outskirts of Dhaka.

These disasters, among the worst industrial accidents on record, awoke the world to the poor labour conditions faced by workers in the ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh.

According to an April 2016 Oxfam report, more than 60 million people work in the garment industry to fuel fast fashion: more than 15 million of those are based in Asia and more than 80% are women, often young and from poor rural backgrounds. Asia supplies more than 90% of the garments imported into Australia.

The global fast fashion industry is known for exploitative working conditions in its factories. We have discrimination against women, especially in India and Bangladesh. Women are sexually harass. The industry wants to hire women because they are seen as docile and they might not organize very easily.

When we talk about India, the nation exports 47 % of its overall fast fashion output to the United States and the European Union. Fast fashion companies refused to pay for finished orders in March 2020, sacked workers with no severance pay, and left garment workers with few security and safety nets. As a result, millions of Indian textile workers went hungry and also faced wage fraud.

Women working in formal and informal conditions boost India's fashion industry, allowing it to meet global demand for fast fashion. After China, India's clothing industry is the world's second- largest exporter and manufacturer. According to forecasts, the domestic market will reach $59.3 billion in 2022, while the global market will reach $1.3 trillion by 2025. Despite a thriving economy, Indian garment workers face abuse, low wages, and hazardous working conditions while working for fast fashion firms.

Fast-fashion hides animal cruelty,too,

The matter doesn't stop here, fast-fashion hides a brutal reality behind it. You may not know that the global textile and apparel industry kills billions of animals every year. Fast fashion is cruel toward animals and endangers ecosystems.

Every day, farm animals and endangered species are brutally trapped, enslaved, and slaughtered to produce cheap and trendy garments. And businesses that profit of animal cruelty don't want you to see how they make the suffering of living beings a commodity.

Even if animal skins and pelts have been used by men and women for thousands of years to make clothes, it's no excuse to continue the exploitation of animals in fast fashion today as it's cruel and unnecessary. Unfortunately, animal products and by-products are very common in the fashion world.

Do we have any solution?,

Without being an enemy of the environment all fashion- brands, clothing makers, governments should take it as a challenge To improve the situation.

Fashion brands must reconsider their production models and embrace scientific innovation, ethical practices, and increased transparency, rather than simply spending in marketing efforts that seek to greenwash their wrongdoings.

As a consumer we must make conscious choices like thrifting instead of mindless buying, recycling and reclaiming etc. is the need of the hour and is one of the first and foremost steps in the path to switch from fast fashion to sustainable fashion.

Before buying, ask if the manufacturers used sustainable criteria to make the clothing.

Be creative in combining garments and recycle them after they wear out.

Repair clothing.

Donate what you no longer use.                                          

Buy only what you need. In some countries, 40 % of purchased clothing is never used.

Consider quality over quantity. Every additional year a garment is worn means less pollution. Cheap clothing often doesn't survive the wash cycle, meaning that in the long run you don’t save money compared with buying better quality garments?

Buy second-hand clothing.

Be a smart laundry manager — wash full loads and use non-abrasive detergents, for example.

Look for Charity shops, pop-ups and online services like DePop and eBay all give us an opportunity to buy and sell second-hand clothes that are still good quality.

It is also possible to rent clothes. Right now, fashion services like Rent the Runway make up just a tiny fraction (>0.1%) of the fashion industry but are growing very quickly. These services allow you to choose from an online catalogue of clothing and rent an item, or items, for however long you need them.

Some apparel companies are starting to buck these trends by joining initiatives to cut back on textile pollution and grow cotton more sustainably. In March, the UN launched the Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, which will coordinate efforts across agencies to make the industry less harmful.

There are also many apparel brands that are working to make their supply chains sustainable through the use of ethical material and practices. Allbirds is a shoe and clothing company that uses renewable materials like wool. They measure their environmental impact through every step of their supply chain and offset all of their emissions, which makes them a completely carbon neutral business. Stay Wild is a sustainable swim brand that creates high quality swimwear from unwanted ocean waste and uses eco-friendly packaging and carbon neutral shipping practices. Bigger brands are also jumping on board, with companies like Adidas shifting to use 100% recycled polyester in their products by 2024 and Ralph Lauren committing to 100% sustainably sourced key materials by 2025.

Many small homegrown businesses in the form of thrift stores are coming up in India that support recycling and reclaiming old clothes, shoes, bags etc. to reduce the burden on the environment.