Whether inspired by fashion events or the trends of everyday consumers, the inner-workings of our fashion industry have undergone some intense changes in recent decades.

A Quick Take on Fashion

Before the development of the sewing machine, clothing was made exclusively by hand. The effort took a lot of time and was very costly. For this reason, lower-income households often were making clothes out of resources that were available to them while middle and upper-income households were able to purchase their goods from established artisans. An artisan-made article of clothing still took a lot of time, but this effort was reflected in their high cost.

The sewing machine was patented in 1846 and allowed for a new functionality in clothing production. Clothing manufacturing increased as a result. With more clothing available, people were able to make purchases for much cheaper (increase in supply to match demand!).

On to the 1900s

The fashion industry went through another great shift during World War II. The war called for restrictions on an array of products, with fabric among them. Having to work with less meant that clothing manufacturers had to churn out more functional, standardized styles. The standardized styles began to work their way into the general public throughout the war, becoming widely accepted and purchased.

Mass to Fast Fashion

The 1960s mark the transition into what we know today as fast fashion. Fast fashion is a term used to describe companies who quickly make cheap, often poor quality clothing. The desire for cheap clothing arose in the ‘60s due to change in aesthetic. Young people wanted to embrace cheaply made clothing.

With the minimum wage being implemented decades’ prior, clothing companies could only make clothing so cheap. Some companies altered their actual clothing. Mary Quant was one such designer. She developed disposable, one-time wear paper dresses as a way to keep up with young consumers’ demands. For other apparel brands, the solution was in outsourcing labor. Textile mills began opening up all across the developing world, run by US and European companies.

Fashion Today

The fashion industry hasn’t stopped changing. As a global market, we’ve seen the rise of fast fashion all over – whether it be in physical locations or with exclusively online web-stores. Think stores like H&M, Shein, or Forever 21.

For some, fast fashion is an exciting! Individuals can shop more consistently, with lower and lower price margins. But, quite a bit of our clothing is ending up directly in the garbage and this is proving to have a rough impact on our environment.

Fashion in the Environment

Our environment is impacted by the fashion industry at two different ends; The Manufacturing and the Disposal.

The Manufacturing

Just in the creation of our clothing, we are causing harm to the environment. Part of this is dependent on the materials we choose to make our clothing with – natural versus synthetic fibers. Synthetic fibers are materials like nylon and polyester while natural fibers are cotton or wool. More than 60% of our fabric fibers right now are synthetic. Synthetic fibers are constructed and derived from fossil-fuels, which creates durable products that won’t decay over time, but also heavily contributes to our global resource loss.

Globally, our apparel and footwear industries are contributing more than 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Recent textile industries release 1.2 billion tons of Co2 – this is more than all combined international flights and maritime shipping! Outside of what is being emitted, the industry also relies on non-renewable resources to construct the clothing. These brands will often require oil to produce the synthetic fibers, fertilizers to grow the cotton, along with various chemicals needed to produce any dyes. After all is said and done, the textile industry uses roughly 98 tons of non-renewable resources annually. These processes also have dramatic effects on our water. Per pound of clothing, the industry can require several gallons of water. Coupled with the fact that textiles make up 20% of industrial water pollution globally, you can see how our clothing manufacturing is doing some serious damage.

The Disposal

On a global scale, humans are wearing specific articles of clothing a lot less often. How often we wear a piece of clothing – known as clothing utilization – is down 36% compared to just 15 years ago. In the United States, we’re wearing clothes for a quarter of that global average. By being so quick to toss our clothing out, our global economy is suffering. We’re losing out on $460 billion each year.

What about the clothes we choose to donate?

In America, we’re not donating all that much. Though Americans are buying 5x as much clothing as we did in the ‘80s, we’re only recycling or donating 15%. Of all reusable material, our textile industry has one of the poorest recycling rates.

If we do get the clothing donated, there’s only a small chance it’s going to be accepted and resold, or upcycled. Resale charity shops aren’t even selling 20% of what gets brought in and donated. When we donate to our local resale shops, there’s only 15-20% chance we’ll see our clothing worn by someone else in our community.

Why is that?

The United States exports most of our used clothing to developing countries every year. We end up shipping over a billion pounds! In dollars, this is roughly $705 million that we’re exporting out. Originally, I thought this might be not a terrible situation. While we’re losing out on money and potential resources, we’re could be helping communities that are still working on development. Unfortunately, that’s atypically the case. When we ship clothes to developing communities, we are often causing great harm to their local economies. Kenya, for example, had a booming textile industry. After a shift in trade laws that made rules laxer, Kenya was overrun with mass imports of donated clothing. With the influx of clothing being shipped in, the local textile industry struggled like never before.

The negative effects don’t always end at the landfill eiher. Of the clothes that go to the landfill, 85% ends up in the incinerator. Remember the synthetic fibers? Those fossil-fuel derived fibers end up releasing methane into our environment when toasted at the landfill – and methane is one of the top greenhouse gas contributors to climate change. If our clothes aren’t burned, they can break down at the landfill. The broken down pieces of synthetic-fiber-based clothing is also known as microplastic. Microplastic can travel from the landfill into our sources of water, potentially causing unforeseeable havoc on our wildlife, and potentially us!

So what is the Good News?

The clothing industry is still changing. In 2019, big-name corporations (one of which is fast fashion brand H&M!) voluntarily signed on to a “Fashion Pact” dedicated to making the fashion industry more sustainable.

For now though, eco-friendly clothing can be hard to find and when we do find it, it can understandably be expensive. Thrift stores are an amazing way to buy new-to-you clothing without contributing to fast fashion’s supply and demand. As Emma Watson, advocate for slow fashion, once said, “As consumers, we have so much power to change the world by just being careful in what we buy.”

We can also upcycle our clothing! Some of the most prominent zero-waste advocates suggest making old t-shirts into dish towels, making bags, or using the materials as a make-shift gift wrap. If we’re interested in cutting down our waste, using what we have to its absolute end is a change with tangible impact! When we are careful about not throwing out what we can continue to use, we’re able to see shifts not only in the environmental impact of our choices, but also our wallets! After all, clothing should be a fun and guilt-free way to express ourselves.

Fast Impacts of Fast Fashion

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