The recent release of the HBO documentary ‘Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion’ has sparked attention from social media users, regarding the environmental damages fast fashion brings. The term ‘fast fashion’ is defined as clothing that is ‘cheaply produced and priced garments that copy the latest catwalk styles and get pumped quickly through stores in order to maximise on current trends’. This term first emerged at the beginning of the 1990s, when New York Times described Zara’s mission to ‘take only 15 days for a garment to go from the design stage to being sold in stores’. Other brands like H&M, UNIQLO, and Forever 21 are also notorious for their exploitative environmental practices that often prioritise producing ‘on-trend’ clothing over quality.
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the fashion industry is one of the second-biggest water consumers. It is also responsible for approximately 10% of global carbon emissions, which adds up to more than all international flights and maritime shipping emissions combined. Many consumers are blindsided by the new, on-trend designs, and often are oblivious to the harmful production process clothing pieces go through.
A 2018 Quantis International report stated that the fashion industry has major pollution impacts that stem from dyeing and finishing fabric, yarn preparation and fibre production. Fibre production specifically has one of the largest impacts on freshwater withdrawal. Cotton cultivation puts pressure on local biodiversity, as existing plants are exterminated for cotton production. The process of preparing yarn and fibre for fabric also has a high impact on fossil fuel resource depletion due to its energy-intensive production process.
Rapid consumerism plays a large role in sustaining the ‘fast fashion’ craze. This leads to consequences such as the formation of massive, overflowing landfills (pictured below) that inevitably pollute nearby soil and water sources from toxin leachate.
Shouldering the burden … a mountain of waste at the Kpone landfill site in Tema, Ghana.
Photograph: Nipah Dennis/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Moreover, a lot of the discarded clothing is made up of textiles that were unsold to the consumer market. In the Ghana landfill site pictured above, approximately 40% of the clothing is unwanted clothes. The rise in production volumes can result from several reasons, including minimum order quantities required by manufacturers, a fast retail cycle that is driven by frequent deliveries of new products and also failures in reading the retail market.
The fast retail cycle is essentially ‘fast fashion’, and shows how disposable clothing is prevalent in developed countries. The most unfortunate fact is that the exorbitant waste hyper-consumerism produces does not remain in those developed countries, but rather shipped away and into less developed countries, and dumped into landfills.
It is important to remember that brands push extensive marketing mechanisms that lead to an oversupply of consumers. Marketing tactics such as social media campaigns, targeted adverts and a never-ending cycle of discounts and promotions all coerce consumers to purchase more clothing. The most feasible solution to reducing the fashion industry’s climate impact is starting with the consumer. Consumers have to consume less of a slowdown in garment production.
“Becoming more mindful about clothing means looking at every fibre, at every seed and every dye and seeing how to make it better. We don’t want sustainability to be our edge, we want it to be universal.” – Eileen Fisher, fashion designer.
Work Cited
EARTH.ORG (2021). 13 Fast Fashion Quotes to Inspire You Into Action. [online] Earth.org - Past | Present | Future. Available at: https://earth.org/fast-fashion-quotes/.
Horton, A. (2024). ‘A very odd and ugly worldview’: the dark side of fast fashion brand Brandy Melville. The Guardian. [online] 9 Apr. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/apr/09/brandy-melville-hbo-documentary.
Maiti, R. (2024). Fast Fashion and Its Environmental Impact. [online] Earth.org. Available at: https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/.
Tonti, L. (2024). ‘It’s the industry’s dirty secret’: why fashion’s oversupply problem is an environmental disaster. The Guardian. [online] 18 Jan. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2024/jan/18/its-the-industrys-dirty-secret-why-fashions-oversupply-problem-is-an-environmental-disaster.
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