It's a familiar situation. You open up your closet to select your outfit for the day. You go through seemingly every piece in there. There's quite a bit -- your closet is filled. But still, there's nothing to wear. As millennials, we've been trained to spend less. We've lived through the recession and we work harder for our money than our parents had to. So when you go to the mall to fill your already full closet, you don't immediately head to Nordstrom's or Lord and Taylor's. Nope, you march right on over to fast fashion retailers like Forever 21, H&M, or Charlotte Russe. Fast fashion has been taking the world of fashion - and consumers by storm, increasingly popular among a wide variety of age groups and appealing particularly to thrifty millennials.
Fast fashion, as the name implies, takes current trends and whips out line after line of the latest trends in fashion, as fast as a new line a week, with the mutual understanding between the consumer and retailer that in exchange for low priced garments one sacrifices most notably quality, but also perhaps originality, and definitely sustainability. How fast fashion companies are able to be so fast and inexpensive remains a mystery to consumers. Yet, the appeal of fast fashion can perhaps be attributed primarily to such a low price. Why pay more if you don’t have to? But at what cost?
The environmental impact of fast fashion is a heavy thought. The majority of our fast fashion pieces ends up in the landfills, leading to three million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. The textiles required for fast fashion, primarily polyester and cotton are unsustainable themselves. Polyester requires the production of petroleum, which has steadily decreased as fuel is harder to find and cotton has a seemingly insatiable need for water. In order to pan out a new line a week, fast fashion is reliant on air freight shipping, which is both expensive and requires a lot of fuel; another environmental hazard. As a clothing retail worker for children, I can vouch for environmental unsustainability that others don't even think of. If shipping is costly and environmentally depleting, packaging of the garments is destroying it. Many garments are individually wrapped in their own plastic bag to avoid the rubbing of fabrics and transfer of dyes. Most garments come with a hanger and if they go on the table rather than hung, each heavily petroleum concentrated plastic hanger is simply thrown out. Heating in the winter, cooling in the summer, lighting, bathrooms, and disinfectant sprays are all required in each store. The resources needed to run each store require more energy than it costs to run three houses.
The societal costs of fashion have been argued for decades, but is coming into more light with documentaries like "True Cost," (free on Netflix) opening the eyes of fashion lovers everywhere. The abuse of the workers that occurs in factories globally is unimaginable by many Americans. When you look around your closet you don't immediately think of whose hands made that dress or those jeans. It might be a 16-year-old girl in Bangladesh working 13 hours a day. It might be a 70 year old man in India making $10 a week. The truth is, fashion is decimating the world in so many respects. But you will never meet the 16 year old Bangladeshi. It's hard to be empathetic when you feel so disconnected.
I don't have the solution. I can only inform and encourage. I encourage you, as a college student, a young adult, to try to find the source of your clothing and to consider both its environmental and social impact. I know it's hard. How can ethical clothing be part of your lifestyle when you're already drowning in student debt? The first step is perhaps assessing what you already own. Websites like ecotextile.com open the eyes of consumers by evaluating the number of environmental damage units (EDUs) their wardrobe holds. All I ask is that you be more conscientious of what you buy and how you shop.
