Why You Need to Ditch the Trends

Every day we are bombarded with consumerism. Commercials telling you to buy this or that. That your life will not be the same if you don’t give in to the new trends. Celebrities modeling the cool new stuff. It can be overwhelming. It hurts our self esteems and breaks our bank accounts. Not only does it harm our mental health, but it’s harming the planet faster than we might realize.

Fast fashion is one of the worst contributors to the global climate change crisis.

What is fast fashion? Fast fashion is inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers to keep up with changing trends, think forever 21 or H&M. Fast fashion is what most of us, shopped at in high school or college because we couldn’t afford to keep up with the it crowd.

Fashion is almost never brought up when discussing environmental problems and climate agreements, but it is the second most polluting industry on the planet. How is that? Well, today there are about 150 billion items of clothing made each year. The clothes are made of and use a ton of oil, not to mention the factories that make them are not known for their ethical labor standards. The clothes are then shipped to stores worldwide, increasing their carbon footprint. Since the clothes are so cheap, people no longer see them as an investment, rather something they can consume. Most people no longer keep their clothing, so most of it gets thrown out. In addition, when a trend fades, the millions of items never bought from the stores also get tossed. Even people who try to make better decisions by purchasing more classic items that shouldn’t go out of style are still forced to toss their clothes because the mass-market retailers are producing low-quality clothing designed to not last very long so that you can go back and buy more.

Clothing is clogging up our landfills and they will be there for many many years to come. A recent study found that one garbage truck of textiles is wasted every second. Clothing from fast-fashion retailers is as bad as plastic water bottles but no one is discussing it!

In addition to the energy used to produce clothing, fashion is also consuming mass amounts of land and water. Fast fashion is the second-largest consumer of water, producing 20% of all wastewater. It also produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.

As discarded textiles are breaking down, toxic chemicals leach into the groundwater and microfibers drift into our rivers and oceans. If you refer back to our blog post on the Great Pacific Garbage patch, microfibers is another micro-plastic that is killing our marine animals and turning up in more and more fish bellies.

Fast fashion is as bad as our food industry, yet not many people are talking about it. Like food, most people do not know where their clothing is coming from, so they have no idea how bad it is.

So what can we do?

If you are financially able, you should be striving to shop at sustainably based, eco-friendly shops that are made to last. Focus on a small collection of clothes that can be transformed into many different outfits.

If you are not financially able, like most of the population and myself, shopping second hand or attending clothing swaps are one of the best options. Although big named thrift shops are not as ethical as they seem, they do recycle some clothes that would otherwise be thrown away. You can also shop at smaller thrift shops that are operating ethically.

You should learn to mend and repair your own clothing. I, as a 24-year-old, still have some clothes from when I was in middle school or high school because I air dry my clothes (dryers can destroy your clothing) and I know how to sew and patch holes. Mending your clothing can extend its life by double, sometimes triple the amount of time.

Since fashion is entirely consumer-driven, we can “vote with our dollar”. By boycotting retailers that do not have sustainable missions, that do not treat their workers ethically, and supporting small local shops we can convince the big retailers to reconsider their strategy. Companies are already starting to see their impact and are making adjustments.

As always it’s important to do your research before buying. It’s also important to remember that trends are just trends. Who cares if you wear something that is “out of style” if it brings you joy, you should be proud of it.

Thanks for reading, let me know how you plan to stop fast fashion in the comments below!

Hannah

Wild and Growing

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