We’ve all done it before. You wake up in a crazy mood and walk into your local H&M or Primark. You buy a trendy shirt with a cool print or pattern on it, and afterwards only wear it once or twice. I don’t know about you, but in the past I myself did this multiple times. Retailers are gaining notoriety by releasing new stylish clothes at very low prices every season that pull trend seekers into their stores.

This is appealing to consumers because they want to keep up with the latest trends. Fast fashion brands order clothes in large amounts as an attempt to save the company money. Nonetheless, if these clothes don’t go off the shelf, they turn into textile waste. Meaning that, encouraging consumers to buy as often as trends change, unsold clothes end up in the nearest landfills. Not forgetting to mention that the textile industry is the second largest worldwide polluter after oil.

Not only do fast fashion brands produce allot of waste, but the clothing industry is responsible for about 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and consume more energy than aviation and shipping combined according to the united nations environment program. To get a visual picture of the situation: every second, a trash truck filled with textiles is either burned or sent to the landfill.

The real questions we should be asking ourselves is: Do we want to keep up with the latest temporary trends and if damaging our planet for a temporary euphoria is worth it? The answer is complicated. According to Dana Thomas who writes for the Fasionopolis: “If your business model is based on volume, that’s not what’s part of the sustainable movement in any industry”

Thankfully conscious customers are starting to notice this. In Europe and America people have already started expressing the need for sustainable clothes. Implying that a percentage of fashion consumers don’t want fast fashion in their lives anymore. According to a Nielsen survey, 48% of Americans are willing to change consumption habits to reduce their ecological footprint.

For other brands to act more responsible and environmentally conscious, consumers must make it clear what we want or desire. If large brands would only make clothes on consumer demand, this would solve a large part of the mass production issue that is currently happening. Alternatives us as consumers could look into are on- and offline thrift stores, trading clothes with friends and family or looking into local or international sustainable or environmentally friendly brands.

Sources:

Masunaga, S. (2019, November 9). Does fast fashion have to die for the environment to live? Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-11-03/fast-fashion-sustainable