Tag: Fast fashion

Counting on … day 102

4th July 2025

Fast fashion is as destructive of our environment as fast tech and is fuelled by many of the same features. Fast fashion is cheap (in terms of purchase price only – its lifetime cost is considerably more when factoring in disposal); its new and trendy and it – and its advertising – is designed to attract our attention; it’s intended to have a short life. 

Yet just like fast tech, fast fashion produced vast amounts of waste that cannot easily be recycled. And like fast tech, a lot of the materials used in production are plastic based (ie synthetic fibres, plastic zips etc). Instead discarded clothing ends in landfill sites, in incinerators, clogging up oceans, and strewn across deserts. 

Again we need to ask ourselves: Do I need this item of clothing? Should I buy the cheapest, or should I look for the durable, repairable option? Will I value it?

And we also need to ask questions about the system that allows so many cheap (and not so cheap) items of clothing to be produced and as quickly discarded. Does the fashion industry  need to be held to accountable? Should manufacturers also be responsible for end of life disposal or recycling of garments? Should manufacturers be reviewing how much plastic goes into their garments? And on a related issue, should manufacturers be reviewing how much they pay those who actually do the making?  Cheap products are often cheap because wages are cheap.

Further reading –

How fast fashion fuels climate change, plastic pollution, and violence
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20201208STO93327/the-impact-of-textile-production-and-waste-on-the-environment-infographics
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Counting on ….day 1:017

17th January 2023

Clothes and the fashion industry contributes about 10% of all global carbon emissions. These stem from the production of synthetic materials as well as the large footprint of growing cotton; shipping and manufacturing; and the trend towards fast fashion. People buy more clothes than ever but wear them less often. Barely worn clothes plus a large number of unworn clothes (those that have overnight become unfashionable) end up in landfill. With cheaply made clothes, replacement is cheaper than repair. As clothes are often made from a mixture of different material types, recycling is not straightforward and can be expensive. 

But change can and is happening. Buying clothes that are made to last, maintaining and repairing clothes, rewearing or swopping clothes, buying from vintage and second hand sources, altering and adapting clothes to new circumstance, all helps to reduce the carbon  – and environmental- footprint of what we wear. 

I still wear a skirt that was my mother’s, a kilt which was second hand when I had it as a child, and my wedding dress (for dances not weddings!)

For more information –

 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211105-how-carbon-might-go-out-of-fashion https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/fashion-industry-carbon-unsustainable-environment-pollution/