Fast Fashion

10,000 items of clothing are sent to landfill every five minutes – what can we do to reduce the impact?

Fast fashion is cheap, ‘on brand’ clothing that is made quickly to meet demand. Fast fashion is on the rise as social media becomes more popular as fashion trends are created more often.

Image by Laura Pink

Fast fashion contributes 8-10% of the world's global emissions according to the UN. As well as that brands use toxic dyes that pollute water and harm marine life.

To keep the costs of the clothes down they are made abroad where there are less health and safety regulations. This causes dangerous environments for the workers. They are also paid very little as this helps to make the clothes cheaper.

Fast fashion not only affects the environment, it's also causing a decline in local high streets. With the help of Covid more people started online shopping more. In January 2020 the proportion of sales online in the UK was 20%, compared to January 2021 when it was about 40% (Office for National Statistics). In January 2022 the proportions began to fall to just below 30% again.

Due to this increase in online shopping and fast fashion many high street stores went into administration, such as; Debenhams and Topshop. Both of these retailers were purchased by online brands. Boohoo bought Debenhams and ASOS bought Topshop. However, because these are both strictly online brands they rarely ever keep any stores open of the high street retailers they buy.

There are many ways you can spot a fast fashion brand;

• They sell thousands of styles.

• They have a short turnaround time between a trend starting and it hitting the shelves.

• They have a limited quantity of specific clothes to make shoppers buy them before it’s too late.

• The clothes are made using cheap materials e.g., polyester.

To prevent purchasing fast fashion you can buy second hand, this reduces the amount of clothing waste going to landfill. You can also go into sustainable stores or local businesses to keep the high streets thriving.

Another way you can help is by selling or donating any unwanted clothes instead of throwing them away. This way once you’ve had enough of a style someone else is able to love it.

Finally, if everyone buys a little less clothing, we can help the environment so much. Research by Leeds University and Arup shows that buying a maximum of 8 items of clothing a year could reduce fashion emissions by 37% in the world’s major cities.