Fast Fashion's Impact on the Environment
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
Danny Xu
12/25/20242 min read
Fast fashion, a way for companies to mass produce cheap replicas of currently trending clothing that are cheap and easily disposable. Since fast fashion clothing is made, produced, and put up in the market quickly, it allows people to not have to spend the full price for the real versions as they can resort to fast fashion instead. However, despite the convinces it may have for some people, fast fashion clothing has a huge negative impact to the Earth's environment.
As mentioned previously, fast fashion clothing is quickly made, not containing the best quality and is also sold cheap will gives this idea for people that buy fast fashion products that as soon as the trend starts dying or the clothing quickly get beats up, because it was not worth much to begin with, it can be easily thrown away. This leads to lots of pollution for these clothes especially in landfills where the breaking down of items in landfills produces a lot of methane which is a greenhouse gas that increases global warming.
Creating fashion also requires the use of a lot of water, taking about 2000 gallons of freshwater to produce just one pair of jeans. Dying clothes for purposes like fast fashion also is factor of why water pollution is such a huge issue as the leftover water from the dye is poured into natural sources of water like lakes and rivers which are both sources of freshwater. However, these sources lead into oceans which can provide harmful water for marine life. So, not only does it use up an already very limited but vital resource but the rapid production of fast fashion clothes also leads to more rapid pollution of the Earth's water.
Additionally, creating fashion products requires a lot of energy through burning things like coal which leads to a lot of greenhouse gas emissions which worsens the problem of global warming. As fast fashion is constantly and quickly producing a ton of clothing, this only adds to those emissions. In fact, it is said that the fashion industry as a whole produces more greenhouse gas emissions then both the total emissions from flights and ships combined.
Lastly, the fashion industry as a whole is a big contributor to plastic pollution. A lot of fashion comes from synthetic clothing which using entirely artificial material instead of using natural materials like animal furs and takes very long to break down and contains plastic particles in it. Mass production of this material through fast fashion results in a lot more microplastics in the ocean.
In conclusion, fast fashion is very detrimental to the environment as it worsens issues like global warming and pollution. Instead of fast fashion, people could choose to prioritize buying higher quality clothing, repurpose or recycle used fast fashion products instead of instantly throwing them out, or buy more eco-friendly clothing.
Sources:
https://pirg.org/articles/whats-the-problem-with-fast-fashion/
https://psci.princeton.edu/tips/2020/7/20/the-impact-of-fast-fashion-on-the-environment
https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/
