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Works Cited

Assoune, Alex. "Fast Fashion Social Impacts And How It Affects Society." Panaprium, www.panaprium.com/blogs/i/fast-fashion-society. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

---. "How Does Fast Fashion Affect the Economy." Panaprium, www.panaprium.com/blogs/i/how-does-fast-fashion-affect-the-economy. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

Bowman, Emma, and Sarah McCammon. "Can Fast Fashion And Sustainability Be Stitched Together?" NPR, 27 July 2019, www.npr.org/2019/07/27/745418569/can-fast-fashion-and-sustainability-be-stitched-together. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

"Chile's Desert Dumping Ground for Fast Fashion Leftovers." Aljazeera, 8 Nov. 2021, www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/11/8/chiles-desert-dumping-ground-for-fast-fashion-leftovers. Accessed 22 Mar. 2023.

Davis, Nicola. "Fast fashion speeding toward environmental disaster, report warns." The Guardian, 7 Apr. 2020, www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/apr/07/fast-fashion-speeding-toward-environmental-disaster-report-warns. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

"Fast Fashion: 'We All Have to Face up to Clothes' Climate Impact.'" BBC, 28 Oct. 2021, www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-59055817. Accessed 22 Mar. 2023.

Idacavage, Sara. "Fashion History Lesson: The Origins of Fast Fashion." Fashionista, 8 June 2016, fashionista.com/2016/06/what-is-fast-fashion. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

Komazova, Iryna. "Fast Fashion is Destroying Our Planet: What You Can Do." World Cleanup Day, 29 Sept. 2022, www.worldcleanupday.org/post/fast-fashion-is-destroying-our-planet-what-you-can-do. Accessed 28 Mar. 2023.

Perri, Janine. "Shein holds largest U.S. fast fashion market share." Bloomberg Second Measure, 4 Jan. 2023, secondmeasure.com/datapoints/fast-fashion-market-share-us-consumer-spending-data-shein-hm-zara/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

Storey, Frances. "The politics of fast fashion." Sustainability Institute, www.sustainabilityinstitute.net/the-politics-of-fast-fashion/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

Wang, Evelyn. "How Fast Fashion Became Faster — and Worse for the Earth." The New York Times, 22 June 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/06/22/learning/how-fast-fashion-became-faster-and-worse-for-the-earth.html#:~:text=Fast%20fashion%20is%20a%20relatively,became%20cheap%2C%20convenient%20and%20consumable. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

The World Counts. www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/slavery-and-sweatshops/sweatshop-workers-conditions. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

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There are actually many things we can do to slow down or stop fast fashion. One example, Zara is looking to be more sustainable; saying that in 8 years all of their products will be made out of cotton or recyclable materials. So, some big fast fashion companies realize that they are causing huge problems for the environment and society, so they are trying to do their part in helping the earth. The solution to stopping fast fashion is also personal, so you have to do your part by doing these things. World Cleanup Day says to, “Buy less and more durable clothes—choose slow-fashion; Avoid fast-fashion companies and support small local businesses instead; Rent clothes you’re only likely to wear once; Buy pre-owned items; Swap clothes with friends; Repair and up-cycle your clothes; Resell or give clothes for free online. Pull out clothes from the back of the wardrobe and try to introduce them into your daily style; Change the purpose of your clothes (for example, clothes for special occasions can become office outfits or casual T-shirts can become clothes for the home and end their lives as cleaning rags, once totally worn out).” Saving our planet is not a job for only certain people, it is a job for everyone. Everyone has to do their part or we will get nothing done, so I recommend at least considering these ideas of how to be more sustainable with your clothing.

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Economical and Political Impacts of Fast Fashion

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Economical and Political Impacts of Fast Fashion

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Fast Fashion also impacts the economy, as the fashion industry is one of the biggest in the world. First of all, fast fashion is becoming really concerning with slave labour where people aren’t getting the money they worked hard for. Which is a problem for the government as well because it is their job to take care of people in need. There is also way to much wasted materials and clothing, as people use clothes for a week and throw them away immediately after. This causes piles and piles of scraps of clothing that pollute the environment and cause many more problems. The average amount of times consumers wear fast fashion clothing is 7 times, while the life expectancy of clothes are more than 2 years. So people are pretty much getting clothes just for the fun of it since they are getting clothes for really cheap prices. The average amount of money a woman spends on clothing per year is $545, which shows how cheap the clothing prices are in fast fashion companies. Also, a lot of big stores like Shein or H&M are only in it for the money, practically defining “Capital greed”, and using fast fashion as a way to spend less and gain more. Also, Because the fashion industry employs and holds the jobs of more than 300 million people around the world, it’s hard to cut down on fast fashion without forcing millions of citizens to lose their jobs. So, as you can see fast fashion has many economical and political impacts.

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We all know that dumping tons of clothes and fabric scraps in huge piles in a desert is horrible for the environment and many ecosystems, but it’s hard to understand how extreme it is getting. For example, did you know that Fast Fashion causes about 10% of the worlds emissions? Isn’t it crazy how only one industry or business can cause so much harm to the environment? The amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere from fast fashion is equal to all of the greenhouse gases that are released by Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all together, which is 4% of the world’s greenhouse gases. The Fast Fashion industry also harms the water cycle. One pair of jeans requires 2,000 gallons of water, so imagine how much clean drinking water is used to make 10 pairs of jeans. Another environmental impact is that many Fast Fashion companies use a fiber called Viscose as a cheaper alternative to cotton. However, this fiber is made of wood pulp, and to get enough wood pulp to use Viscose for many types of clothing, they have to destroy thousands of trees and forests. So much harm is inflicted on the environment just because people get obsessed with their looks.

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There are many human impacts of Fast Fashion that you may not know of. For example, Fast Fashion is famous for using sweatshops, where underpaid, underaged people are forced to work very long hours in horrible conditions. The amount of money these people get is even worse. The World Counts says, “People get sometimes less than 20 cents per day or about one cent per hour.” Also, Panaprium says, “Fast fashion also exploits local and underserved communities in sweatshops to produce cheap garments. It employs more than 300 million people in the whole world. Most of them are young women who frequently face terrible conditions and abuse. They work on farms and in garments factories, being exploited and even forced to abort their pregnancy to continue working.” Another very dangerous human impact of Fast Fashion is a fiber called Viscose, used as a cheaper alternative to cotton, can result in lethal side effects, such as higher levels of coronary heart disease, birth defects, skin conditions, and cancer for the workers who use it to make clothes. This shows how not only the environment or the economy is affected or harmed by Fast Fashion. Millions of people who are just like us, live like slaves and get treated horribly just because they are desperate for even the littlest amount of money.

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This picture was taken in Bangladesh. All of these scraps are called textile offcuts, and they are basically the scraps and remainders of making clothes.

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This chart shows how many people have bought from Fast Fashion companies since the start of 2020, and how much the numbers have increased.

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Many people know of Fast Fashion, but not many know how it started. Firstly, new textile machines, factories, and inventions made during the Industrial Revolution really helped to boost the start of fast fashion, as now people had a way to get new clothing frequently, and for less money. However, there were already bad outcomes from Fast Fashion and mass production as on March 25, 1911, there was a fire in the New York Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and about 146 young women died. Because they were working so long and so fast, and at that time there was no regard for healthy working conditions, the fire broke out very easily and very quickly. Also, because the companies wanted maximum work put in (so that they could get more money), they locked the doors and the girls couldn’t escape. After World War ll, standardized production for clothing became mandatory, which helped local businesses become big businesses, and made people start buying mass-produced products instead of hand-made or homemade products. Lastly, The New York Times says, “During the 1990s, retailers began to introduce trendy, cheaply-priced, poorly-made clothes on a weekly basis, intending to match the breakneck pace at which fashion trends move. Style became cheap, convenient and consumable.” This shows that despite many hints that Fast Fashion will turn out to be a very harmful industry and/or business, the big companies ignore them, as long as they are making money.