G07: I&S - In the Driver's Seat: Fast Fashion

The drop in garment prices over the last 20 years has allowed us to buy more and more clothes. We now have 5 times more clothes than our grandparents had. It felt great until we found out what was hiding behind this trend.

In reality, this continuous accumulation of cheap garments is only possible because of a constant reduction of production costs. This, in turn, has serious consequences on our health, our planet, and on garment workers’ lives.

There are many dark sides to SHEIN’s rapid growth. But the brand’s lack of transparency makes it hard to know how bad it really is. We investigate the known evidence—and it’s not a pretty picture.

Fast fashion makes shopping for clothes more affordable, but it comes at an environmental cost.
The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity's carbon emissions, is the second-largest consumer of the world's water supply, and pollutes the oceans with microplastics.

Why is fast fashion a bad thing? Some of the answers are here.

In parts of China and India, farmers are predicting the colour of the next fashion season by the colour of their rivers due to run-off from the textile industry.

There are other disturbing statistics on the impact the fashion industry is having on the environment. In Australia alone, more than 500,000 tonnes of textiles and leather end up in landfill each year.

Visitors who stepped into fashion retailer H&M's showroom in New York City on April 4, 2016, were confronted by a pile of cast-off clothing reaching to the ceiling. A T.S. Eliot quote stenciled on the wall ("In my end is my beginning") gave the showroom the air of an art gallery or museum. In the next room, reporters and fashion bloggers sipped wine while studying the half-dozen mannequins wearing bespoke creations pieced together from old jeans, patches of jackets and cut-up blouses.

"Every piece of clothing we buy has had an impact on our planet before we even bring it home".
First, there’s water consumption. 2 billion pairs of jeans are produced every year, and a typical pair takes 7,000 litres of water to produce. For a t-shirt, it takes 2,700 litres of water to make just one – that’s the amount of water an average person drinks over the course of 900 days!

Secondly, there’s the dyeing process of which 1.7 million tonnes of various chemicals are used; not to mention the hazardous chemicals like PFCs that leave a permanent impact on our environment.

This article has some challenging vocabulary but the Graphics really help to explain the impact of Fast Fashion.

What happens when fashion is cheap?

Across Women’s Lives’ “Wear and Tear” podcast series traces the roots of women in the garment industry from textile mills in North Carolina to sweatshops in Los Angeles to crowded factories in Bangladesh, where the memory of the deadly Rana Plaza disaster lingers but real change has been slow.

"Our shopping choices have a huge impact on how businesses treat people, the planet and animals. So we created the Good On You app to make it easy for anyone, anywhere, to shop their values."

"How much are you willing to pay for a pair of jeans? Forty or fifty dollars? A few hundred dollars? An ecosystem? The welfare of other human beings? Your own health?"

What is Eco-Fashion? Defining Eco-Fashion
The “official” definition of eco-fashion is a focus on clothing that takes into account not only the environment, but the health of the consumers who will be wearing the clothes and the working conditions of the people involved with making the clothes.

Eco-fashion has become a big, booming business that is no longer limited to niche designers. Sustainable and recyclable materials are now making their way into boardrooms and onto catwalks. Just as eating organic went from niche market to expansive trend, sustainable fashion is becoming more readily available and affordable.
But what exactly is eco-fashion?

Before dawn six days a week, Norma Ulloa left the two-bedroom apartment she shared with four family members and boarded a bus that took her to a stifling factory on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles.

She spent 11 hours a day there, pinning Forever 21 tags on trendy little shirts and snipping away their loose threads in the one-room workshop. On a good day, the 44-year-old could get through 700 shirts.

The privately held chain helped popularize so-called fast fashion. However, now it appears to have moved too slowly for the new generation of young customers.
The Los Angeles, California-based chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 29.
With that, Forever 21 became yet another victim of rapidly changing shopping tastes among teens who are increasingly moving away from traditional malls toward trendy online sites.

Patagonia has always enjoyed its outsider status. Since Yvon Chouinard started the company with a few adventurous friends in 1973, he’s happily rebelled against expectations: To this day, Patagonia has never collaborated with a fashion brand, nor does it work with influencers or advertise in fashion magazines. It began investing in regenerative agriculture long before we were talking about soil health, and it has never hesitated to take a stand on political issues

In this guide we’ll cover everything you need to know about fast fashion including:

What is fast fashion?
The four elements of fast fashion
What are the problems with fast fashion?
Fast fashion’s cumulative impact on biodiversity
What can you do to combat fast fashion?
Hopes for the future of fast fashion