The Environmental Costs Of Fast Fashion -Are You Damaging The Environment?

Today's fashion industry is constantly evolving and everyday we see vibrant new trends. We are forever on the look out for inspiration and ways to freshen up our style for the new season or a particular event.

Despite this, buying new clothes frequently and throwing them away incorrectly can have more harm on the environment than we might think. The quick transition of styles from the runway to high street stores is described as 'fast fashion.'

Fast fashion is defined as "inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends."

Fast fashion has created a throw away culture which has serious effects on the environment (Image from pixabay)

The constant production of current fashion pieces is imposing an enormous amount of stress on the environment as the processes are extremely harsh. Water becomes polluted with microfibres and dyes and the processes carried out to produce these clothes produce large amounts of greenhouse gases.

So what can you do as a consumer? Well, there are many things the public can do to limit the amount of harm on the environment and they are:

• Buying less clothing and re-wearing the clothes in your wardrobe more times. By doing this you are not contributing to the use of resources in production and transporting the item to your home.

• Buying better quality clothing, that will last longer. This will encourage brands to improve the quality of their clothes and stop you from buying new items frequently.

• Never throw your clothes away. Repair clothes or donate them to friends and family or charity. Throwing away items has been found to contribute more to climate change than air and sea travel.

• Take a trip to a charity shop or vintage store and see what you can find. You might be surprised at the amount of fashionable pieces available and you will be buying clothes in a more sustainable way.

More needs to be done to educate the public on fast fashion and the importance of recycling (Image from World Resources Institute)

Fast fashion has created a culture in which items are bought for a single wear and then thrown away shortly after. Online stores like Boohoo and Misguided sell dresses for as little as £5, meaning their impact on the environment is significant. They have an extremely high carbon, water and waste footprint.

As consumers we need recent fashion trends in our wardrobes for the least expensive price but we spend little time thinking about the impact of this on the environment. Retailers are aiming for an increased manufacturing speed at a low price, in order to get the new fashion trends into high street stores quickly which has serious consequences for the envrionment. This needs to change.

I used Instagram as a platform to find out if the public think about the impact of buying clothes on the environment and what sorts of clothing items they buy.

The results show that most people do not think about the impact on the environment when buying clothes and most people often impulse buy cheap clothing items. Buying clothes at cheap prices rather than more expensive prices was more popular, highlighting the impact of fast fashion on consumers. More needs to be done to educate people on the processes of the fashion industry and the impact of this on the environment.

I spoke to 19-year-old Amy Cardwell about her votes on the poll and whether she will now think more about the consequences of the fast fashion industry.

She said: "I didn't really think about the processes of making clothes and the harm it can have on the environment before I voted on your poll. It has made me think about how much we are damaging the environment and what I can do to reduce this. I think I will be buying less cheap clothing items in the future and more items that will last me a long while."

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) which is a select committee of the House of Commons in UK Parliament, is responsible for examining how government department's policies will effect the environment and how they can be made sustainable. The EAC wrote to 16 British retailers in November 2018 to find out what retailers were doing to reduce their impact on the environment.

They found that brands such as Asos and Primark were acting sustainably through the use of recyclable materials but Boohoo, Misguided and TK Max had not signed up to targets set by the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan (SCAP). This is a scheme that encourages retailers to reduce the amount of water they produce and make the fashion production processes more environmentally friendly.

The EAC found that 235 million items of clothing were sent to landfill sites last year and around 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon emissions are produced by the global fashion industry every year.

The fast fashion industry does more harm than we think (Image from culture and couture)

So how are retailers attempting to reduce their carbon footprint and make processes more environmentally friendly?

• This year Primark started a 'take back' recycling scheme which allows the public to bring in their unwanted clothes and earn money for them. The scheme reduces the amount of clothes that end up in landfill sites, significantly protecting the environment.

• H&M also run a garment collecting programme which has collected more than 17 thousand tonnes of textiles since 2013. One bag of unwanted clothes can be swapped for a £5 H&M voucher to use in store.

• M&S set up a 'shwopping scheme' which helps the public give their clothes a second life. The scheme is in partnership with Oxfam to reduce waste in landfill sites and encourage recycling. Over 28 million garments have been donated since the scheme began in 2008.

• Zara also collect and donate items of clothing to non-profit organisations. The sustainability programme allows the public to bring in their unwanted clothes which will be donated, recycled or transformed into new fabrics.

Despite the negatives of fast fashion the constantly expanding industry provides millions of jobs and produces large profits quickly. Around 75 million people are making our clothes today and fast fashion is helping developing economies grow but are these positives enough to outweigh the substantial harm of fast fashion on the environment?

This research has made me think about the affect I am having on the environment when buying clothes. Before researching the topic I had no idea that the problem was this bad and I will definitely be making more of a conscious effort to buy better quality items and recycle my clothes correctly. If we start small and make little changes the fashion industry can hopefully become more sustainable in the future. Educating as many people as we can will make people aware of the term 'fast fashion' and begin to understand what it means. Retailers will start to work alongside the public to make processes more environmentally friendly and make better quality clothes, helping to reduce the amount of harm on the environment.