The fashion business is famous for producing large amounts of garbage because the seasons of fashion change so quickly and many of the “old” clothing, which are frequently not made to last, wind up in landfills. When fashion companies produce inexpensive clothing quickly, or “fast fashion,” they gain more money, but this leaves their environmental impact ignored.
The following are reasons to avoid fast fashion.
Landfills
The amount of clothing that ends up in landfills is fast fashion’s most evident effect.
Cheaply produced clothing doesn’t survive very long in people’s closets, but once it’s discarded, it doesn’t biodegrade, so it can remain in landfills for up to 200 years. The amount of textile waste dumped in landfills increased to seventeen million tons in 2018 alone.
Investing in staple pieces and repairing or upcycling them when you’re done with them is the simplest approach to reduce the amount of waste going to landfills!
Water usage
First off, the materials used to produce our clothing require a lot of water, particularly cotton, which, according to the WWF, accounts for half of all textiles. One cotton shirt requires approximately 2700 litres of water to grow, making cotton one of the most water-intensive crops.
Not to mention the water used during production; almost 20% of the wastewater produced worldwide originates from treating and coloring textiles.
Carbon footprint
Clothes manufacturing and delivery have a significant carbon impact, as do other consumer products, but fast fashion has an even larger carbon footprint due to the enormous amount of clothing created and consumed. The entire fashion business contributes 10% of annual global carbon emissions, which is “greater than all international flights and maritime freight put together.”
