What is fast fashion?
Fast fashion is the practice of taking styles and ideas straight from the catwalk or current celebrity culture and churning out cheap, low-quality garments as quickly as possible to meet consumer demand.
The core principle is the trend: fashions go in and out of style, faster now than ever before. Businesses sell the newest styles to profit on their popularity and consumers, swept along by the need to stay relevant and enabled by affordable prices, flock to buy and wear the trendiest clothing, only to discard the garments when retailers introduce an even newer style the next week. It’s a toxic cycle of overproduction and overconsumption, with widespread impacts.
Environment impacts
The clothing industry is one of the most environmentally destructive industries on the planet. In 2015, the textiles industry emitted 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, more than those of all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Water use is high, and often in places that cannot afford it. Cotton production represents 4% of global freshwater use, and many of the key cotton-producing countries are the ones under high water stress. For example, in China, 80-90% of fabrics and fibres are made in water-scarce regions.
Plastic fibres used in clothing, such as polyester or nylon, may be even worse for the environment: When washed, they shed plastic microfibers that enter the water system, accounting for half a million tonnes of plastic entering the ocean every year.
Another important thing to note is that non-renewable resources are used in all stages of production, from the millions of barrels of oil needed to produce plastic-based fibers and the millions of tonnes of fertilisers used in cotton growing every year, to the millions more in dyes and finishing treatments. Environmental precautions are often ignored to save on costs, making the fashion industry the second largest polluter of clean water globally, after agriculture.
In the city of Hazaribagh, where 95% of Bangladesh’s tanneries are located, 22,000 cubic litres of toxic waste are dumped into its main river and water supply every day, where it is so polluted that the water is better described as “black gel”. No aquatic life survives there, but the people have no choice: Children grow up and work despite the severely polluted environment. Citizens report aches, rashes, acid burns, breathing problems, jaundice, and diarrhoea.
Lastly, after all of that, it’s not uncommon for shoppers to wear an item only once or twice—two in five Hongkongers keep clothing for less than a year and nearly 20% of clothing purchases are never or hardly ever worn—and most of what is thrown away goes to the landfill, where clothes make up 50% of the almost 400 tonnes of textiles waste discarded in HK every day.
Ethical implications
Around one in eight of the world’s workers are involved in the production of textiles and clothing, with around 80% of them being women, and yet the working conditions are infamously bad. To meet demand and keep prices low, the fast fashion industry is reliant on low-cost sweatshop labour, primarily in developing countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Most of these garment industry workers are people in poverty trying to find any source of income to make ends meet, but the systematic exploitation means that they cannot escape. A 2019 study found that 9 in 10 workers in Bangladesh could not afford enough food for themselves and their families, despite 14-16 hour workdays, and less than 2% were paid what could be considered a living wage. Often, they don’t receive their wages on time and aren’t compensated for overtime work.
Additionally, there are an estimated 250 million children between the ages of 5-14 working in sweatshops.
Working conditions are also notoriously dangerous. Physical, sexual, and verbal abuse in workshops have been well documented, and risks of injury and disease are high. Many factories do not meet safety standards, leading to frequent deaths from fires and building collapses, such as the Rana Plaza collapse of 2013, one of the worst industrial accidents in history, which killed over a thousand people and injured over 2500 more.
Most would call it no less than modern day slavery.
What can we do?
It’s hard to avoid fast fashion when practically every major brand—including H&M, Zara, UNIQLO, GAP, and Forever 21—participates in the practice, but there are a few key principles to follow to minimise the damage:
Buy less
The simplest thing to do is to simply buy fewer clothes— don’t buy anything you’ll only wear once or twice and wait a day before purchases to avoid impulse buys. Most people have more clothes than they need, and despite what celebrity tabloids might imply, there’s no shame in rewearing an outfit on different occasions.
If you want a new look, see if you can do it by combining or accessorising your clothes differently, rather than buying new clothes.
2. Buy smart
When you do buy clothes, try higher-quality classic styles that will last longer and stay fashionable longer.
Check the clothing labels and try to choose natural-fibre fabrics, which are more comfortable and biodegradable. Prefer options such as linen and hemp to cotton, as they are less water-intensive to produce.
Buy second-hand! Not only are they much cheaper—you can thrift clothes in Mong Kok for as little as 5 HKD a shirt—but it also keeps them out of the landfill and saves the resources needed to make new garments.
If you have the time, look for sustainable clothing brands (as easily as searching them up on Google) and check on how the clothes are sourced and produced, but be mindful that sustainable doesn’t mean zero-impact, and it’s always better to use less than buy more.
Some choices include:
Tove & Libra (https://www.toveandlibra.com/)
Aanya (https://aanya.com.hk/)
Cosmos (https://www.cosmosstudio-store.com/)
3. Learn to take care
At the basic level, learning how to sew a button back on, wash out a stubborn stain, or mend a tear or hole will save you a lot and allow you to wear your favourite clothes longer. Your first choice should always be to fix rather than to replace.
If you’re handier at sewing or just willing to try, learning how to alter and upcycle clothing you no longer want will let you create unique, individualised styles while reusing the fabric.
4. Throw less
Repurpose clothes that are too damaged to be mended—as patch material, as dishrags, as blankets, as cloth bags, as pillow stuffing. Hell, if you have a lot of material, braid a rug (https://www.cappersfarmer.com/do-it-yourself-projects/repurpose-and-recycle-zm0z19wzgor/).
If the clothes are still in decent condition, try passing them on to friends or family.
Donation isn’t ideal, given that most clothes given to thrift stores don’t end up sold and clothing charities that send clothes to third-world countries are known for devastating local textile economies. It’s still a better option than landfilling clothes, though, so do some research on to whom the clothing is being sent and the requirements for donated pieces—damaged and unclean clothing actually hurt charities, since it costs to sort them out, and they’ll probably end up in the landfill anyways.
Additionally, the “Community Used Clothes Recycling Banks” you might see around Hong Kong don’t actually recycle the textiles—rather, they split the donations between NGOs that accept second-hand clothing. They’re a straightforward way to offload large amounts of unwanted clothing, but it’s not easy to know which NGOs the clothes will end up at, and how beneficial they are.
In the end, the best way to responsibly dispose of clothes is to dispose of less, and the best way to do that is to buy less in the first place.
5. Spread the word
As always, one of the easiest things you can do to combat fast fashion is to learn more about it and encourage others to learn more too.
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Sources
11 Ways to Get Rid of Old Clothes Responsibly. (2020, August 18). Imperfect Idealist. https://imperfectidealist.com/get-rid-of-clothes-responsibly/
Call for Government Policies Addressing Textile Waste. (2020, November 4). Redress. https://www.redress.com.hk/updates/2020/11/4/redress-call-for-government-policies-addressing-textile-waste
Clark, C. (2015, October 9). These heartbreaking images show what it’s like to live and work in one of the most polluted cities on earth. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/living-and-working-in-hazaribagh-the-most-polluted-city-in-bangladesh-2015-10?international=true&r=US&IR=T
Community Used Clothes Recycling Bank Scheme. (2021, January 6). Home Affairs Department. https://www.had.gov.hk/en/public_services/com_clo_rec_ban_sch/faq.htm
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Writer: Katherine Yan
Editor: Anvita Verma
Graphics: Joyce Liang
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