Fast fashion: What is it and why is it a problem?

Fast fashion is inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends. The excessive textile production needed to keep up with fast fashion results in overwhelming CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions, increased levels of textile waste, and many fabrics are made using toxic chemicals. In addition, workers in the fast fashion industry are treated poorly.

Fast fashion workers work long hours with poverty level wages in poor working conditions. In addition to these poor working conditions, there have been many accidents such as factory fires or building collapses.

"From the growth of water-intensive cotton, to the release of untreated dyes into local water sources, to worker's low wages and poor working conditions, the environmental and social costs involved in textile manufacturing are widespread," said Christine Ekenga, assistant professor at the Brown School and co-author of the paper "The Global Environmental Injustice of Fast Fashion," published in the journal Environmental Health.

What is the fashion industry doing to our environment?

It is the 2nd largest polluting industry in the world.

The fashion industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions, more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. Greenhouse gases are emitted during the processes of production, manufacturing, and transporting clothing.

"Cheap synthetic fibers also emit gases like N2O, which is 300 times more damaging than CO2." — James Conca (FORBES)

The fashion industry is responsible for 20% of water pollution, and uses 1.5 trillion liters of water each year.

"85% of the daily needs in water of the entire population of India would be covered by the water used to grow cotton in the country. 100 million people in India do not have access to drinking water." — Stephen Leahy, The Guardian

95% of clothes thrown out with domestic waste could be re-worn, reused, or recycled instead.

Approximately 85 percent of the clothing Americans consume, nearly 3.8 billion pounds annually, is sent to landfills as solid waste, amounting to nearly 80 pounds per American per year.