The True Price We Pay for Fashion
I love clothes. I love following fashion blogs to keep up on the latest trends, splurging at the mall on the season’s staple pieces, and then eventually shoving everything to the back of my closet after wearing them a couple of times just to move onto the next thing. Clothes are so cheap and easily accessible that it’s easy to get caught up in this cycle. However, this “fast fashion” industry has a detrimental impact on the environment. In fact, it is the second most polluting industry, following shortly behind oil. Unfortunately for fashion lovers, it’s time for us to take a good look at the long-term impact that our actions can have so that we can start planning to make better decisions for the sake of our precious planet.
It might be hard to believe that the fashion industry is so harmful because as consumers, we only see the pretty, refined products neatly lined up on shelves and displayed on mannequins. The unsettling reality is that the mass production techniques used by many popular stores like Forever 21 and H&M take a huge toll on the earth. Textile plants consume a lot of energy, thus leaving a huge carbon footprint. In addition, processes like bleaching, dyeing and printing clothes use harmful chemicals that are released right back into the environment as pollutants. One of the worst things about the entire manufacturing process is that its effects are felt all across the world, as fast fashion is a global industry. Before a garment reaches the store where you buy it, it’s most likely been to several other countries: the cotton or wool it’s made from are from one country, it was sewn in another, the zipper and buttons were added on in another, and so on. It takes a crazy amount of energy and fuel to transport all these clothes from place to place, and that certainly can’t be healthy for the environment. To top it all off, the working conditions for the people who produce and assemble clothes are often inhumane and unsafe. If you really think about it, it doesn’t seem worth it just for a cute new tank top or skirt that will ultimately end up clogging up a landfill.
Because we all buy clothes, we are all responsible for making sure that we make good decisions as consumers which won’t cause too much harm. Thankfully, there are tons of small things that we can do to decrease our environmental impact in this aspect. For one, we could just stop buying clothes so often, as that would be the simplest way to take our support away from the system. However, this might not be the most realistic option, so when you do buy new clothes, check the labels to see if they are made from environmentally conscious and recycled materials or if they were made domestically in the US. It’s also a good idea to opt out of buying a lot of really cheap products in favor of a few nicer, more expensive garments that are more versatile and will last you much longer.
One of my favorite alternatives is to buy used clothes. Thrift shops, second hand stores, and garage sales have a lot of hidden gems if you look enough for them, and the thrill of the hunt makes finding something you love that much more rewarding. If manually sorting through used clothes isn’t really your thing, there are online stores and apps that sell used designer and brand name clothes at a fraction of the original price. My personal favorites are ThredUp and Poshmark, which both offer cute, just-like-new clothes at a discount and ship everything to you. Buying second hand is better for the environment because it saves the raw materials and energy that would have been used to make the product brand new. Less waste ends up in the landfill because there’s not as much packaging involved in buying something used as there is buying the same thing new; in addition, there’s one less wearable piece of clothing in the trash and one more in your closet.
Another thing that we can all do to alleviate this problem is to be more conscious about throwing away our unwanted clothes, meaning that we should try to avoid trashing clothes at all costs. The average American tosses out about 82 pounds of textile waste a year, which adds up to a staggering 11 million tons produced by the US alone. There are some simple things that we can all do to make sure that our personal waste production isn’t that high. For instance, it’s easy enough to take unwanted clothes and drop them off at a thrift store or donation center, and many of these places also serve as charities, which is an added bonus. If you have a lot of nicer designer and brand name clothes it’s even possible for you to sell them online and make a nice profit. If nothing else, repurpose old clothes. There are tons of cute Pinterest tutorials that teach you how to turn old clothes into everything from rugs to tote bags to jewelry. Whatever you decide to do, it would make a huge environmental impact if you make simply throwing your clothes away a last resort.
Learning about the huge environmental impact that my shopping habits have alone really woke me up to what a huge problem fast fashion is overall. Because the market targets young women like us, we’re accountable for being smart consumers and making an effort to be conscious of our environment. All the little things that you can do might not seem like much, but would make a huge difference if we all decided to do them together.