Have you thought deeply about where your clothes in the store come from? Many often simplify the process of making clothes and often think less of the environmental effects of clothes. Most of us tend to be more familiar with environmental practises such as reducing the use of plastic bags or reducing the usage of electricity or water. However, when some of us are enticed by advertisements from different brands, we tend to throw away our environmentally-friendly mindset. As we succumb to the lure of new and trendy clothes, we forget the amount of pollution being emitted. Perhaps we can switch away from fast fashion and not subscribe to fast fashion anymore. In this post, we will discuss the broader environmental effects of the fast fashion industry and how consumers could unintentionally disregard the detrimental environmental effects.
The amount of pollution that comes from just producing clothes is shocking as “the fashion industry produces 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions every year” according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and not to mention the pollution from chemical waste to microplastic (Davis, 2020). Also, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, also estimated the emissions from textile manufacturing alone to skyrocket by 60% by 2030. (Maiti, 2020). Such statistics really put forth the pollution that is done to our environment just for people to be caught up in trendy clothes. The fast fashion industry really disguises the environmental effects by having flashy and cheap clothes that will distract people from actually realising the pollution done by producing clothes.
Personally, more often than not, I realise myself getting clothes that are cheap and pretty, feeling happy from getting a good deal. But, during the COVID19 circuit breaker period and even now, I have realised shopping for clothes frequently is unnecessary. Many others, and even you, would probably feel the same. This could be the very reason why we see many clothing brands struggling to get more sales and even some facing closure or restructuring of their brand. Take for example, Esprit, Muji, Robinsons and many more are facing bankruptcy, downsizing or closure issues (Kong, 2020). This definitely shows that consumers stop buying clothes as they are going out less which definitely reflects the number of clothes that we need. As mentioned from our earlier post, COVID19 is a good time to change our consumption for clothes, those issues faced by the brands are definitely the effect of people reducing their clothes shopping. If such a trend continues in the long run, it will definitely reduce the pollution from the fast fashion industry.
More importantly, as people buy fewer clothes, pollution will reduce at and around factories which will benefit those workers in the factories and the residents living around the factories. Such social impacts are often overlooked by people as these social impacts from environmental pollution are often not seen from the nice clothes that are sold in the stores. Therefore, it is very important to advocate for reducing consumption of fast fashion so that the pollution from the fast fashion industry will decrease.
This post is hoping to make consumers more aware of their clothes shopping and to look beyond a good deal of getting cheap and nice clothes. It is also in hopes of a less polluted environment and having more environmentally conscious consumers that care about the pollution that they contribute from their consumption.
References:
Davis, N. (2020). Fast fashion speeding toward environmental disaster, report warns. The Guardian. Retrieved 15 October 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/apr/07/fast-fashion-speeding-toward-environmental-disaster-report-warns.
Kong, J. (2020). All the fashion brands that have announced closures or filed for bankruptcies during the COVID-19 pandemic. BURO. Retrieved 14 October 2020, from https://www.buro247.my/fashion/news/fashion-brands-closures-bankruptcies-covid-19.html.
Maiti, R. (2020). Fast Fashion: Its Detrimental Effect on the Environment | Earth.Org – Past | Present | Future. Earth.Org – Past | Present | Future. Retrieved 15 October 2020, from https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/.
