Sustainability and Fast Fashion
By: Ariana Lim
Fashion has always been deeply rooted in culture and to this day, is still used as a vessel for self-expression. Centuries ago, fashion was a slow industry. However, the industrial revolution in the 1800s brought about new technology that made clothing cheaper, quicker, and easier to make. As you can probably assume, this is what fostered what is iconically known as fast fashion.
The Wave of Fast Fashion
At this point in history, companies were very focused on marketing ploys and sales tactics. The fashion industry in particular was extremely successful with this because stores could draw consumers in with affordable prices and trendy clothing. Unfortunately, in order to remain competitive, companies had to minimize production costs in any way that they could. This often-included underpaying garment workers, polluting the air and water systems or using unsustainable fabrics (such as polyester). For a lot of fast fashion companies, this is still true. The fashion industry is now the second-largest polluter of clean water globally, after agriculture.
Because of high production volumes and ethical shortcuts, these companies are able to sell their products at such affordable prices. Companies will often release new pieces every season and encourage quick inventory turnover for their products by having sales or selling leftover inventory to big-box retailers like Winners. But clothing doesn’t have to be cheap to be considered fast fashion. In fact, even some designer brands employ unethical practices.
High production levels inevitably lead to lots of textile waste. In Australia alone, more than 500 million kilograms of unwanted clothing ends up in the landfill every year. Imaginably, textile waste is a huge problem that doesn’t really have a simple solution. The more clothing is being produced, the more is going to be thrown away.
What Can We Do?
As much as fast fashion has negative impacts on both the environment and is often produced unethically, sometimes cutting it out is not possible. This could be because ethical (slow) fashion is not made available, it’s not an affordable option, or because slow fashion rarely considers plus-sized people, along with countless of other possible reasons.
Tying into a concept called white veganism, sustainability is often poorly represented as an aesthetic rather than a practical lifestyle. The way that most people idealize sustainability is often unattainable to people who are not extremely privileged. For instance, buying clothing from more expensive “ethical” brands is not something that everyone can do. Either way, reducing the number of clothes that we buy from fast-fashion retailers makes an enormous impact, even if it can’t be cut out completely.
Here are some tips regarding fast fashion if you want to be more sustainable:
1. Wear what you already have
2. Consider mending the clothes you need to replace
3. Try looking in thrift stores first. You never know what you will find! If accessing a thrift store is a challenge for you, there are plenty of online thrift and consignment shops that are more accessible and make shopping for a specific size a lot easier.
4. Don’t beat yourself up about it if you need to buy fast fashion on occasion, as long as you are practicing conscious consumption.
If you need to buy something that you can’t find secondhand or would prefer to purchase new, try to support small businesses that produce ethically, look for brand certifications (such as B-Corp or Fairtrade) that you care about, and beware of greenwashing!
Source:
Rauturier, S. (2020). What is fast fashion? Retrieved from https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/
