Everyone likes saving money, especially given the current financial climate. When many Americans work paycheck to paycheck just to get by, it’s easy to feel as if the cost of every purchase matters.
However, it’s important to be conscious about what your price-conscious shopping is supporting. Far too often we contribute to fast fashion without understanding the damage these trends and productions can cause.
Some fast fashion facts might help set the record straight on what kind of impact this element of the fashion world on the rest of society. What are some things you should be aware of when it comes to this portion of the clothing industry?
Read on and we’ll walk you through what you need to know.
1. Fast Fashion Carbon Emissions
We all are aware of the impact various industries have on the warming of the planet. Carbon emissions contribute to the warming of the atmosphere and worsen living conditions here on our home planet.
However, what you may not know is that the fashion industry is one of the main contributors to this problem. Of all the carbon emissions produced annually around the globe, the fashion industry produces a staggering 8-10%.
That’s quite a large chunk of current carbon emission levels. This is higher than all international flights combined. The emissions come from across the process of creating clothing, from harvesting and irrigating cotton, the production of pesticides, and the machinery emissions in factories around the globe.
Some elements of production and pollution might be inevitable in creating clothing for the world, but fast fashion cycles tend to put the bottom line on pumping out more clothing and more purchases.
There’s little focus given to sustainability or even quality. As such, purchasing from these fast fashion companies is helping to sustain an industry that is a huge polluter and culprit behind global warming.
2. Worsening Consumer Behaviors
Fast fashion has very literally changed the way that consumers think about their clothing. Gone are the days where one might consider a piece of clothing an investment that could last many years.
These days, an overabundance of clothing and quickly transitioning fashion trends have made consumers ready to move on to the next thing in a flash.
What’s the damage done due to this change in consumer culture and behavior? Well, you just need to look in the trash cans of Americans all across the country to see the results.
The average American throws away eighty-one pounds of clothing every single calendar year. Again, that is eighty-one pounds a person. That’s an incredibly large amount of clothing per individual and it is simply not a sustainable reality for our future.
Wasteful consumption patterns will continue to result in an overabundance of physical waste. Future generations might not be able to deal with the repercussions of the culture that we continue to engage in these days.
Learning about this all might be enough to make you switch up your shopping habits or even start a custom clothing brand of your own.
3. Garment Worker Wages
What are some other negatives of fast fashion? Many of these companies will do just about anything to better their bottom line. That doesn’t come across only in their lack of quality or their new-trend marketing.
There are negative aspects to the actual production chain of these products themselves. Where do you need to look to see the damage that is being done?
Consider the average garment worker. Most fast fashion production companies position their factories in countries that are less developed in order to obtain a cheaper workforce.
This helps keep costs down and increase their profit margin. The workers suffer, however. They are forced to work absurd hours for very little pay all in the name of producing cheap products with high-profit margins.
Most garment production workers don’t even make a reasonable living wage. It’s sad but true, and likely won’t change until the average consumer refused to support companies that treat their employees in this kind of fashion.
All of that even goes without mentioning that in many instances there are child workers in these factories that have to deal with the long hours and tough conditions.
There are few laws out there to product these workers, so fast fashion companies continue to get away with things.
4. Cheap Products Last Forever
Want more reasons to be skeptical about the fast fashion industry? They are contributing to the damaging of the environment in more ways than one. Not only does the production of these products contribute to global warming, but the products themselves can become a part of the issue.
Most cheap garments are made up of fabrics that are difficult to break down or recycle. For example, many fast fashion items are made out of man-made synthetic materials such as spandex, nylon, or polyester.
Unlike more high-quality materials, these products can take many years to break down naturally. A pair of spandex pants, for example, can take anywhere between twenty and two-hundred years to break down!
That’s a very long timeline, meaning this throwaway garment could be doing damage to the Earth long past the lifetime of the person who disposed of it. It’s important to look these realities in the eye when thinking about the impact of consumer fashion decisions.
Fast Fashion Facts to Open Your Eyes
There’s a lot that our unaware consumption habits impact that we may not be aware of. Getting educated via some of the fast fashion facts above might help to open your eyes to the damage that our current consumption habits impose upon the world.
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