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Fast Fashion and its Environmental Impact 

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Fast Fashion and its Environmental Impact 

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Fast fashion refers to the rapid production of inexpensive clothing inspired by the latest trends, enabling consumers to frequently update their wardrobes, which has severe environmental impacts. It drives massive overproduction, leading to mountains of discarded garments ending up in landfills. It also guzzles water—for instance, growing cotton and dyeing fabrics consumes vast amounts, straining water resources in many areas.

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Fast Fashion: The Environmental Impact | Geography, Life Skills | ClickView

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The fast fashion industry, driven by relentless cycles of production and consumption, faces a critical business ethics issue: systemic overproduction. This practice, which sees brands producing 40-60% more clothing than demanded, creates a cycle of environmental degradation and labour exploitation (Business of Fashion & McKinsey & Company, 2023). In the contemporary global business environment, where profit motives can overshadow social and environmental responsibilities, examining such ethical dilemmas is crucial for fostering corporate accountability.

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This paper will analyze this pressing issue by drawing on Smith’s (2022) journal article “The Sustainability Crisis of Fast Fashion: Ethical Conflicts Between Overproduction and the Circular Economy.” It will explore how overproduction fundamentally conflicts with the principles of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production), and evaluate the ethical dimensions through the lenses of stakeholder theory, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics to propose pathways for sustainable reform.

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Smith, J.'s (2022) article, "The Sustainability Crisis of Fast Fashion: Ethical Conflicts Between Overproduction and the Circular Economy," published in Business Ethics Quarterly, explores the ethical concerns surrounding the systemic overproduction inherent to the global fast fashion industry. It identifies systemic overproduction as the core ethical issue in fast fashion. The study shows brands produce far more clothing than demanded to capitalize on micro-trends, leaving a large share of garments unsold—these are then landfilled or incinerated, causing severe environmental harm and labor exploitation. Smith (2022) frames this linear "take-make-waste" model as being in fundamental conflict with circular economy principles, arguing that a transition is an ethical imperative.

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Smith (2022) argues that this profit-driven model forces a choice between corporate financial gain and environmental and social welfare, creating severe ethical tensions regarding corporate accountability. This tension is amplified by the industry’s reliance on digital platforms to stimulate demand: livestreaming e-commerce, for instance, leverages "real-time engagement with streamers" to create a "sense of flow" that makes consumers "lose their self-awareness" and engage in unplanned purchases—ultimately driving higher production volumes to meet artificially inflated demand (Rosely et al., 2024, p. 335; p. 335). The article further examines this conflict through the lens of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), highlighting the industry's failure to balance shareholder interests with the well-being of workers and the environment.

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Stakeholder theory posits that a business has ethical obligations to all parties affected by its operations, not just its shareholders (Freeman, 1984). Smith's (2022) analysis of fast fashion overproduction reveals a systemic violation of these duties.

The theory demands balancing the interests of employees, communities, suppliers, consumers, and the environment, yet the fast fashion model prioritizes shareholders’ short-term profit. Smith (2022) notes workers are treated as disposable inputs, facing exploitative conditions to sustain rapid production. Local communities (especially in the Global South) bear environmental and health costs of textile waste and dyeing-related chemical pollution, including contaminated waterways and air pollution linked to “bronchitis and cancer” (Ting & Stagner, 2023, p. 860)Future generations are left with depleted resources and a degraded environment. Even consumers are often misled by marketing that obscures the true environmental and social cost of their purchases.

Smith (2022) further documents cases where brands, despite internal awareness of devastating environmental consequences, deliberately continued or intensified overproduction to meet financial targets — a major ethical failure from a stakeholder perspective, as it consciously shifts costs to vulnerable parties with no say in corporate decisions.

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Utilitarianism, as articulated by Shaw et al. (2021), evaluates the morality of an action based on its consequences, specifically its ability to produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Applied to fast fashion overproduction, a utilitarian analysis exposes a deeply flawed system: short-term benefits are far outmatched by widespread, long-term harms. These include global ecosystem degradation, pollution-related public health issues, and the severe suffering of millions of workers in poverty (International Labour Organization, 2022), resulting in overwhelmingly negative net utility. Smith's (2022) work supports this conclusion by highlighting how the pursuit of marginal financial gains for a few creates massive, distributed harm for many, making the current model ethically indefensible from a utilitarian standpoint.

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SDG 12: Responsible Consumption & Production

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SDG 12: Responsible Consumption & Production

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SDG 12, part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals launched in 2015, focuses on ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns. Smith's (2022) research, centered on the fashion industry, directly sheds light on the obstacles and routes to attaining SDG 12. SDG 12.

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Fast Fashion’s Conflicts with Key SDG 12 Targets

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Fast Fashion’s Conflicts with Key SDG 12 Targets

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The fast fashion model stands in direct opposition to several core targets of SDG 12 (UN SDGs):

Target 12.2: It contravenes the goal of “achieving sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources” through its excessive consumption of water, land, and petroleum-based materials (e.g., polyester, nylon).

Target 12.5: It flagrantly violates the mandate to “substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling, and reuse” by design—overproduction is a core tenet of its business logic, leading to massive unsold inventory and textile waste.

Target 12.8: It undermines efforts to “promote universal understanding of sustainable lifestyles” by marketing a culture of disposability and hyper-consumption, normalizing frequent, unplanned purchases of short-lived garments (United Nations, 2023).

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Pathways to Align Fast Fashion with SDG 12

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Pathways to Align Fast Fashion with SDG 12

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However, Smith (2022) also outlines a clear pathway for alignment: The transition to a circular economy serves as the operational embodiment of SDG 12 in the fashion context. This shift includes three key actions:

1. Implementing circular business models: Services like clothing rental let consumers access styles without buying new items, while repair services fix damaged garments—both extend garment lifespans and cut down on production demand, easing overproduction pressure.

2. Adopting radical transparency: Brands need to publicly share specific data, such as how many garments they produce per collection and their manufacturing-related environmental impact. This helps consumers make informed choices and holds brands accountable.

3. Developing industry-wide sustainable standards: Unified standards (jointly created by brands, policymakers, etc.) set baselines for resource use, waste reduction, and ethical labor. They avoid inconsistent sustainability efforts and prevent "greenwashing."

Backed by policies like the EU’s Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles (2022), these actions can separate fashion’s economic growth from resource depletion and environmental harm, directly advancing SDG 12.

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Stakeholder Theory, a key framework in business ethics first systematically presented by R. Edward Freeman in 1984, posits that businesses have ethical and strategic responsibilities not only to shareholders but also to all "stakeholders"—individuals or groups affected by, or able to affect, the firm’s operations, including employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, environmental organizations, and even future generations.

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What is Stakeholder Theory? - R. Edward Freeman

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Fashion Report: Fashion’s overproduction highlighted in new Source 

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Fashion Report: Fashion’s overproduction highlighted in new Source 

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Source Fashion's new report "Fashion’s Hidden Crisis" highlights the global fashion industry’s overproduction. It offers actionable models like on-demand production, circular design, retail-as-a-service and collaborative creation, noting brands can reduce production without hurting profits with case studies.

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Fashion’s overproduction highlighted in new Source Fashion report

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The global fashion industry produces between 80 billion and 150 billion garments annually yet up to 40% remains unsold, frequently ending up in landfill, incineration, or markdown bins.

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Smith's (2022) research argues compellingly that fast fashion overproduction is not just operational inefficiency, but a deep ethical failure rooted in a linear economic model. Its sharp conflict with SDG 12 highlights the urgency of systemic transformation: shifting the industry from volume-based to value-based—backed by stakeholder theory and utilitarianism—is no longer optional but essential. As Smith concludes, this requires a fundamental redefinition of the purpose of fashion business—from maximizing production volume to optimizing sustainable value creation for all stakeholders, thereby ensuring the industry contributes to, rather than undermines, a sustainable future.

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https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2021.45

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https://doi.org/10.1080/00207233.2021.1987048