By Katie Koenig
With the Teach-In on Sustainability coming just around the corner—starting Wednesday, November 20th, for those who are interested—I’ll be taking a look at a few different topics related to sustainable living and development.
The first up, and a conversation you’ve likely heard before? Fast fashion and thrifting.
First off, some good news: If this topic interests you, you’re in luck. Emerson’s sustainability team is collaborating with three other groups this week to organize Sustainable Fashion Week on campus!
Fast fashion is the quick production of clothing based on ever-changing designs to keep up with recent trends, particularly making dupes—off-brand copies—of the most popular, high-fashion celebrity outfits. Popular fashion brand Shein dominates the market, pushing out clothing with a timeline of only three days between designs and sales. Vox goes into Shein specifically, but CNN covers a lot of concerns about fast fashion overall and is a great introduction to the topic if you want to read more.
To briefly summarize some of the major issues, fast fashion relies heavily on consumer culture, cheap labor and materials to sell at cheap prices, and producing more than even overconsumption can make use of. Synthetic materials like polyester, actually made from nonrenewable fossil fuels, and fast, cheap production lead to clothing that breaks down after a handful of wears. Working conditions are also problematic, since many companies outsource their production to places and factories with less strict working codes and appropriate pay.
Earth.org, a nonprofit online publication focused on environmental concerns, explains the numbers: the fashion industry, now dominated by fast fashion companies like Shein and H&M, produces almost a hundred million tonnes of trashed clothing per year. In the last fifteen years, people have started wearing their clothing almost a third less before throwing it away. Almost ten percent of microplastics that end up in the ocean each year come from textiles like the synthetic materials fast fashion brands rely on. Even more eye-opening is that fast fashion brands are producing double the amount of clothing today than they were in 2000.
Good On You is a leading analyst on sustainable brand ratings. One article details not just the environmental and human impacts of fast fashion on both the factory worker and the consumer, but also details the history of fashion development as faster trends and increased shopping fully peaked in the ‘90s.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though—there are plenty of ways to investigate where your clothes come from, and the environmental impact of your own shopping habits.
Good On You has a website brand rating database, and an app that offers the same features. They explain the pros and cons of various clothing materials, too, not just brands, so that you can decide for yourself if a particular item of clothing fits your sustainable shopping standards. They explicitly consider the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in their work, particularly Goal 12, related to sustainable production and consumption habits.
Fashion Revolution is the world’s largest fashion activism movement and pushes for policy, industrial, and consumer change to promote fashion habits from the companies to people’s closets that support the environment, the workers dealing with unfair pay and dangerous working conditions, and environmentally conscious mentalities among consumers.
The organization hosts an annual sustainable fashion week—Fashion Revolution Week—during one week in April on the anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, which is the fourth largest fashion industry disaster in history. The building housed multiple garment factories for major, global brands when it collapsed, killing over a thousand people and injuring several thousand. Fashion Revolution promotes not just environmental protections, mitigating the impact fashion development has on the world around us, but also human protections, promoting the welfare and respect afforded to the workers that make the clothing we wear.
There are also industry innovations attempting to make textile recycling more efficient to reduce clothing waste, although that has middling results so far.
On your end, you can thrift and clothes-swap with friends and at events for second-hand clothing. Finding clothing that is well-made and constructed from natural fibers like cotton and wool instead of polyester and rayon also means that it will last longer than cheaply produced fast fashion clothing, and will typically harm the environment less.
Still, keep in mind that overproduction, no matter the material, is still incredibly environmentally costly. Cotton itself takes massive amounts of water to grow and produce into textiles. Despite that, doing a little extra research into your brands—even just checking your favorites against Good On You’s brand ratings—goes a long way to informing you about the actual impact of your clothing.
Wear them a little longer, recycle them at textile recycling locations or donate them if they’re still intact, and buy better made items. Even when an article of clothing costs more than $5, it will likely last longer than Shein products, meaning that you will spend less since you won’t have to constantly replace your wardrobe.
Clothing is such a fundamental part of our lives, and it doesn’t take much to inform yourself about the impact your choices have on others. Even the minimum helps, too! If the average amount of wears per clothing is seven to ten, wear your clothing fifteen, even twenty times before donating or recycling it. If you mostly buy polyester, google some brands that make clothing from cotton or other natural fibers, or, better yet, find some of your favorite styles from the highly rated brands at Good On You.
There are entire systems and workers behind the clothing that you wear. They aren’t produced in a vacuum, and it doesn’t take much work to learn a little more about the process!