In the world of sustainability, fast fashion is a design, manufacturing, and marketing method focused on the rapid production of huge volumes of clothing. The motivation is to do it in the shortest time possible so that in this way we consumers have a new trend to buy.
If our society is hungry for something, it is fashionable, so fast fashion has three main components from a consumer perspective: It is cheap, it is fashionable and it is disposable; And it is that after the energy industry, fashion is the most polluting industry in the world.
It generates irreversible damage to the planet with emissions of polluting gases, non-renewable energy, pollution in the water by chemical substances. Animals are also affected. In nature, toxic dyes and microfibers released into waterways are ingested by terrestrial and marine life alike through the food chain with devastating effects; without forgetting the people who work making these clothes. In many cases, clothes are manufactured in countries where workers’ rights are very limited or non-existent, taking advantage of the fact that they are offering them a job, but the reality is that they are exploiting misery and taking advantage of poor populations who have no more remedy than working for any salary.
More than half of the total volume of clothing manufactured by brands such as Zara and H&M ends up in the trash in less than a year. The great paradox in our consumption habits is that today we buy four times more clothes than in the nineties and 40% of the clothes we keep in the closet are never worn. The average use of the garments before throwing them away is 7 times. This means that some of them we use fewer times, or even once, or not at all.
Reduce our purchases by being aware of the material of the garments, promoting the reuse of clothes by finding small treasures in vintage clothes or second-hand stores, buying fewer clothes, giving second chances to the clothes that we already have in the closet and do not wear. These are small changes to make the world more just and sustainable.
Photo credit Getty Images
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