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Topic: Fast Fashion vs Sustainable Fashion

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Topic: Fast Fashion vs Sustainable Fashion

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Low prices drive demand for clothing items

High price elasticity of demand

Fairly flat demand curve

A small change of prices made by a brand within the fast fashion market could quickly lose them quite a bit of market share. This would cause demand to decrease significantly and consumers would shop at another store for their cheap and trendy clothes.

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Stakeholders

Fast fashion brands

Sustainable fashion brands

The employees of both markets

Fast fashion consumers who prioritize low prices

Sustainable fashion consumers who prioritize ethics and quality

Winners

Fast fashion brands

Fast fashion consumers

Losers

Fast fashion employees

Sustainable brands

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Market Failures and Unintended Consequences - Fast Fashion

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Market Failures and Unintended Consequences - Fast Fashion

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Market Failures

Labor Exploitation

Unintended consequences

Weakened Local Industries

Job loss

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The opposite demand curve from the fast fashion model

Much lower price elasticity of demand

Steep demand curve

With sustainable fashion, there is emphasis on the quality of clothing, meaning consumers are willing to pay more for nicer clothes. This means that a small change in price will not necessarily deter consumers from buying the product.

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Economic and ethical analysis of Fast fashion vs Sustainable fashion

Fast fashion is a growing industry that offers trendy clothing at low prices, especially appealing to younger consumers

However, the low cost of fast fashion comes with hidden consequences, including environmental harm and poor labor conditions.

These negative effects are not reflected in the price, creating a disconnect between what consumers pay and the true social cost.

Sustainable fashion offers an alternative focused on ethical labor, longer lasting materials, and reduced environmental impact.

Understanding the trade offs between fast and sustainable fashion helps consumers make informed, value driven choices.

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Do you consider how your clothes are made before buying?

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Fast fashion leads to a market failure due to hidden environmental and social costs (Negative Externalities).

Negative Externalities: Fast fashion producers don't pay for the pollution and labor exploitation they cause, so these costs fall on society, not the business.

When negative externalities exist, markets overproduce harmful goods, which in this case is cheap clothing beyond what's socially optimal (Market Failure).

Companies externalize costs like pollution and unethical labor practices to keep prices low.

Consumers respond strongly to price changes, showing fast fashion has highly elastic demand (Price Elasticity of Demand).

Price Elasticity of Demand: Consumers are very sensitive to price changes in fast fashion. A small price increase could lead to a large drop in quantity demanded.

Possible policy implementation: Taxes (to reduce demand) or Subsidies (to support sustainable alternatives).

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Would you still buy from your favorite fashion brand if their prices increased by 20% to pay fair wages and help the environment?

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Yes - Ethics and sustainability matter more

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Maybe - It depends on how big the difference is

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Fast Fashion Today vs Sustainable Solutions Emerging

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Fast Fashion Today vs Sustainable Solutions Emerging

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Shein and Temu push rapid production and overconsumption through very low prices and trend cycles.

Patagonia and ThredUp promote repair, reuse, and reduce waste, showing how sustainable models can scale.

Patagonia’s Worn Wear Program repairs over 50,000 items a year, showing how circular fashion can reduce waste.

ThredUp, a resale platform, has grown 21 times faster than traditional retail, proving demand for sustainable alternatives.

The 2022 California Garment Worker Protection Act helped improve labor pay systems at the state level (not very impactful at a national level).

The proposed federal FABRIC Act could expand ethical production by shifting manufacturing back to the U.S vs overseas.

Comparing fast fashion practices to these solutions shows both the problem and a path forward.

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Would you support a fashion brand more if they offered repair, resale, or rental options instead of just selling new clothes?

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Yes – I’d love to keep clothes in use longer

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Maybe – I’d need to see how affordable or accessible it is

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Article: Ready to give up fast fashion? Give 'slow fashion' a try.

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Article: Ready to give up fast fashion? Give 'slow fashion' a try.

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Slow fashion promotes quality, ethical production, and mindful consumption as an alternative to fast fashion.

Consumers can practice sustainability by repairing, reusing, and buying secondhand instead of constantly purchasing new.

A higher price tag doesn’t guarantee better quality true value comes from durability and cost per wear.

Brands often use misleading tactics; shoppers must look beyond labels to find genuinely sustainable practices.

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Ready to give up fast fashion? Give ‘slow fashion’ a try.

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Experts explain why a higher price tag doesn’t mean better quality—and how slow fashion can be found at a range of price points.

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Article: The Apparel Industry’s Environmental Impact in 6 Graphics

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Article: The Apparel Industry’s Environmental Impact in 6 Graphics

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Fast fashion has drastically increased global clothing consumption and production, leading to major environmental stress.

The apparel industry is a significant contributor to water pollution, water scarcity, and greenhouse gas emissions, especially through cotton and polyester use.

Without major changes, clothing demand will triple natural resource use by 2050, putting long term sustainability at risk.

Some brands are beginning to shift to circular, low impact models like rental, repair, and recycling, but large scale transformation is still needed.

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Roughly 20 pieces of clothing per person are manufactured each year. Growth of the multi-trillion-dollar apparel industry has been fed by "fast fashion," which makes clothing cheaply and quickly with a low price-tag. These visuals illustrate why the apparel industry must embrace a new approach to sustainably meet demand in tomorrow's markets.

Increased Production and Consumption

Fast fashion uses innovative production and distribution models to dramatically shorten fashion cycles, sometimes getting a garment from the designer to the customer in a matter of a weeks instead of months. The number of fashion seasons has increased from two a year - spring/summer and fall/winter - to as many as 50-100 microseasons.

Fast-changing trends and low prices have allowed people to consume more. The average consumer is now purchasing 60 percent more items of clothing compared to 2000, but each garment is kept half as long.

Water Stress and Pollution

Cotton is the most common natural fiber used to make clothing, accounting for about 33 percent of all fibers found in textiles. Cotton is also a very thirsty crop, requiring 2,700 liters of water-what one person drinks in two-and-a-half years-to make one cotton shirt. In areas already facing water stress, cotton production can be particularly damaging. In Central Asia, for instance, the Aral Sea has nearly disappeared because cotton farmers draw excessively from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. (Check out WRI's Aqueduct tool to see where cotton production and water risks intersect.) Cotton farming is also responsible for 24 percent of insecticides and 11 percent of pesticides despite using about 3 percent of the world's arable land.

Water use and pollution also take place during clothing production. About 20 percent of industrial water pollution is due to garment manufacturing, while the world uses 5 trillion liters (1.3 trillion gallons) of water each year for fabric dyeing alone, enough to fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Climate Change

The carbon footprint of a garment largely depends on the material. While synthetic fibers like polyester have less impact on water and land than grown materials like cotton, they emit more greenhouse gasses per kilogram. A polyester shirt has a greater carbon footprint than a cotton shirt (5.5 kg vs. 4.3 kg, or 12.1 pounds vs 9.5 pounds). Polyester production for textiles released about 706 billion kg (1.5 trillion pounds) of greenhouse gases in 2015, the equivalent of 185 coal-fired power plants' annual emissions.

What's apparel's future?

Apparel spending is projected to grow tremendously. This is particularly true in Asia, as hundreds of millions of people in China and India enter the global middle class.

By 2030, there will be 5.4 billion people in the global middle class, up from 3 billion in 2015. We can expect increased demand for clothes and other goods that define middle-income lifestyles. If consumption continues at its current rate, we'll need three times as many natural resources by 2050 compared to what we used in 2000.

Assuming infinite resources in a finite world is not a sustainable business model. Beyond environmental concerns, unchecked consumption will undermine the world's economic and social goals. Some apparel companies will ignore those signals and continue with traditional take-make-waste business models. Others will embrace innovative new models that work within planetary boundaries and are a better fit for tomorrow's markets.

What to do?

Apparel is just one sector competing for natural resources, but it's important that clothing makers start transforming their business models now given the industry's strong growth trajectory. Many companies are aware of the environmental risks and are ready to act.

The first step is for companies to measure their environmental impacts and understand areas where they can improve. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition's Higg Index lets companies measure the environmental, social and labor impacts of their products and services, and work is being done on Science Based Targets guidance for the apparel industry.

Some companies are working to improve their resource efficiency. H&M and Zara, both purveyors of fast fashion, joined 33 other fashion companies in a pledge to increase their clothing recycling by 2020 and are collecting and recycling used clothing at many of their stores. Reformation, a smaller Los Angeles-based clothing brand that is gaining popularity, claims that it produces its clothing with far less water and emissions than typical clothing companies, and even publishes the spared water and emissions quantities on each product webpage.

The next step is to recognize that companies must do more than improve efficiency to sustainably meet demand in the years ahead. They must produce less stuff. Some companies have already acknowledged this and are testing new models, though these examples are still the exception rather than the rule. Patagonia's Worn Wear program offers a service to fix old clothes rather than only sell new ones. Companies like Mud Jeans, Rent the Runway and Gwynnie Bee are experimenting with rental models. Some companies, such as Zady's, are calling for a return to "slow fashion," promoting it as a key component to their business model.

To keep the apparel industry viable in tomorrow's markets, the issue of consumption must be brought to the forefront-and it must begin now.
Editor's note 1/16/2019: The sentence "A polyester shirt has more than double the carbon footprint of a cotton shirt (5.5 kg vs. 2.1 kg, or 12.1 pounds vs 4.6 pounds)" has been changed to "A polyester shirt has more carbon footprint than a cotton shirt (5.5 kg vs. 4.3 kg, or 12.1 pounds vs. 9.5 pounds)."

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The Apparel Industry's Environmental Impact in 6 Graphics

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Growth of the multi-trillion-dollar apparel industry has been fed by "fast fashion," which makes clothing cheaply and quickly with a low price-tag. Six graphics show how this trend and others can add to water stress, pollution and other environmental impacts.

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Article: Fashion and the circular economy – deep dive

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Article: Fashion and the circular economy – deep dive

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The current fashion system is wasteful and clothes are made cheaply, worn briefly, and then discarded, creating massive environmental and economic losses.

A circular fashion economy keeps clothes in use longer, uses safe and renewable inputs, and recycles garments into new products, reducing waste and environmental harm.

Innovative models like rental (examples: MUD Jeans, Rent the Runway), resale (examples: Reformation x ThredUp, Stella McCartney x The RealReal), and in store repairs (examples: Patagonia) are paving the way for industry change.

Durability, care, and consumer education are essential, better quality garments and services like repair/restyle can extend lifespan and reduce overconsumption.

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This deep dive explores how the principles of the circular economy can be applied to the fashion industry, beginning by covering why the fashion industry of today is not fit for purpose.

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Reshoring the U.S. Garment Industry to Make a Global Improvement in Working Standards

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Reshoring the U.S. Garment Industry to Make a Global Improvement in Working Standards

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Fashioning Accountability and Building Real Institutional Change Act

Proposed by: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)

Key Points:

Fair Wages: Mandates hourly minimum wage for garment workers; prohibits piece-rate pay unless it exceeds the minimum wage

Accountability: Holds brands and manufacturers jointly liable for labor violations

Transparency: Establishes a national garment industry registry through the Department of Labor

Domestic Manufacturing Support:

$40 million annual grant program for equipment, safety, and workforce development

30% tax credit for companies reshoring production to the U.S.

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Show your support on social media!

Suggested Post 1: I stand with America's 100,000 garment workers! The #FABRICAct creates good jobs with dignity and revitalizes domestic apparel production. Congress, let's #PassFABRICAct!

Suggested Post 2: The #FABRICAct will ensure American garment workers are fairly paid while revitalizing the entire American garment manufacturing industry. [I'm/"Organization Name" is] proud to endorse it! #PassFABRICAct

Additional social media posts and stories can be found here.

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The FABRIC Act introduces groundbreaking new workplace protections and manufacturing incentives to cement the US as the global leader in responsible apparel production.

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California Just Passed a Landmark Bill to Protect Garment Workers- Here's What It Means for the Entire Fashion Industry

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California Sets the Standard With the 2022 Garment Worker Protection Act 

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California Sets the Standard With the 2022 Garment Worker Protection Act 

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Impact on Workers:

Improved Wages: Addresses wage theft and ensures fair compensation for approximately 45,000 garment workers in California, many of whom are immigrant women.

Law Enforcement: The Labor Commissioner can issue stop orders and citations for violations.

Fair Labor Model: This will inspire similar legislation (FABRIC Act) in other states and countries that aim to improve labor conditions in the fashion industry.

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After two years, thousands of phone calls, and a precarious recall election, California finally passed Senate Bill 62 on Monday. Known as the Garment Worker Protection Act, the new law makes California the first state to require hourly wages for garment workers; it will also prohibit piecework, a pervasive system in which workers are paid per garment (often resulting in less than $3 per hour), and it will penalize both manufacturers and brands for wage theft and illegal pay practices. For designers, the bill introduces a kind of accountability never seen before in the industry.

Los Angeles is the largest fashion manufacturing hub in the United States, and last year's COVID-19 lockdowns put thousands of L.A. garment workers in economic and health crises. Outbreaks spread through factories with insufficient distancing measures in place, while many workers lost their jobs or were denied pay when brands canceled their orders. The severity of the human rights abuses made national headlines and renewed the urgency around S.B. 62 (then titled S.B. 1399). With support from the media and citizens, garment workers were galvanized to fight even harder for the bill. "This two-year battle has really been led by garment workers themselves, along with the incredible leadership of the Garment Worker Center," explains Ayesha Barenblat, the CEO of Remake, which created a business coalition and led social media campaigns around S.B. 62. "It was galvanizing to see worker organizations, businesses, and citizens to come together on this. I think that's really the power here."

Newsom described the bill as "nation leading" and "momentous"; in the press release Remake sent today, they called it "life changing" for L.A.'s 45,000 garment workers and their families. Its significance cannot be overstated, particularly when it comes to brands that manufacture in L.A. Historically, fashion brands have not been responsible for the payment or treatment of garment workers; by hiring their factories as third-party contractors, they outsource the risk to them. That isn't to say brands don't care about garment workers; plenty of designers-both here in the U.S. and elsewhere-send detailed codes of conduct to their manufacturing partners and work closely with them to ensure their values are aligned. But unless you're physically visiting your factories every day, nothing is guaranteed, and Barenblat pointed out that brands' expectations haven't always matched the prices they demanded. "Their commercial practices and the low prices they set directly resulted in wage theft," she explains, because in order to produce clothes at a lower price, factories may be forced to cut corners with labor. "Now they can't get away with that-there is multilateral accountability in the bill, which means if workers aren't making their legal minimum wage, which is $14 an hour, manufacturers and brands will both be held responsible."

It's important to note that brands want this kind of responsibility. Zero fashion labels came out to oppose S.B. 62; in fact, Remake gathered signatures from 158 brands-including Reformation, Eileen Fisher, Mara Hoffman, Dôen, Another Tomorrow, and the denim mill Saitex-to illustrate the business case. "We wanted to show that this would be good for workers, but it's also really good for business," Barenblat says. "For the designers who want to do right by their workers, it's leveling the playing field [by outlawing] the sweatshop conditions that have hurt the reputation of made in L.A."

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California Just Passed a Landmark Bill to Protect Garment Workers-Here's What It Means for the Entire Fashion Industry

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After two years, thousands of phone calls, and a precarious recall election, California finally passed Senate Bill 62 on Monday. Known as the Garment Worker Protection Act, the new law makes California the first state to require hourly wages for garment workers; it will also prohibit piecework, a pervasive system in which workers are paid per garment (often resulting in less than $3 per hour), and it will penalize both manufacturers and brands for wage theft and illegal pay practices.

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Challenges to the Standard Equilibrium Model

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Challenges to the Standard Equilibrium Model

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Price does not reflect true cost:

The environmental and social costs of fast fashion are not represented.

More consumers purchasing fast fashion over sustainable fashion.

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Oligopolistic structure: Market power held by few large corporations.

Inditex (Zara)

H&M Group

Shein

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Fast Fashion vs Sustainable Fashion Conclusion

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Fast Fashion vs Sustainable Fashion Conclusion

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Fast fashion offers consumers cheaper prices and accessibility to more styles, but it comes at a cost, particularly to the environment and laborers

Negative externalities lead to market failure within the fashion industry

Fast fashion is price elastic whereas sustainable fashion is price inelastic

While there are many major fast fashion companies, there has also been an increase in sustainable fashion brands recently

In the fast fashion industry, there is labor exploitation, unrepresented environmental and social costs, and oligopolistic power

The fast fashion brands and consumers are technically the winners, but the negative externalities negate this

FABRIC Act and Garment Worker Protection Act are two examples of policies that have been implemented

Taxes and subsidies could be used in future policies to deter people from buying fast fashion and promote buying sustainable fashion, respectively

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After learning about some of the negative economic impacts of fast fashion, are you more likely to purchase sustainable fashion?