The Harms of Fast Fashion: Our Environment and Our Children
The Harms of Fast Fashion: Our Environment and Our Children by Lizzie Morris
Fast fashion, as defined by Merriam Webster is “an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers”. What this means, is that fast fashion is the rapid production of clothing items, often by factory workers in third-world countries with horrible factory conditions and very low pay. Not only do these workers already have awful conditions to work in and limited job availability elsewhere in their country, but they are also oftentimes children. The production aspect of fast fashion is not only harmful to the countries in which these factories preside, but fast fashion is also incredibly harmful to our environment.
Child Labor in Third World Countries
The laws in third world countries are so abysmal that child labor and cheap labor are considered normal. The lack of laws in these countries makes it easy for large companies from other countries to come in, set up low grade factories, and employ thousands of workers at a very low cost. These countries have minimal to no laws because of how under developed and poor they are, labor laws are not a priority, and a large population of these countries rely on their children to have jobs to help support the family and household.
One such example of a family depending on their child to work to earn money to support the household is depicted in an article by Harvard Business Review in which the story of an American employee for the company Timothy & Thomas visits a textile factory in Pakistan. This employee, Jonathon Stein, is shocked to find that the working population of the factory consists of women, and more often than not, their young daughters, often under the age of 14. The Pakistani sourcing manager for the company, Yusuf Ahmed, is with Stein while he tours the factory and begins talking to a young girl in Punjabi. The girl responds that she enjoys her work, the plant owner treats them and pays them well, and she claims she is old enough to be working, even though, to Stein, the girl looks to be about the same age as his 8 year old daughter. Stein is concerned as to why these young girls are not in school and is met with the response “the families need them to work,” Ahmed said. “I think at least half of the kids in Pakistan don’t make it to primary school, and it’s more important for boys to get an education, if the families can afford it.”
Although Pakistan has its fair share of problems with child labor, child labor can be found all over the world. Child labor can not only be detrimental to the child’s education, and therefore their chance of making it out of poverty, but often times many of the chemicals in these factories are harmful for the proper development and health of these young children. The children are also robbed of a childhood in which they develop critical skills such as social development, cognitive development, and speech and language development. These skills are important to be learned during your early years of life because it shapes how you interact with others and your surroundings for the rest of your life.
Environmental Effects
While fast fashion has multiple negative impacts, the biggest is its effects on our environment. The reason for fast fashion being harmful to our environment is mainly attributed to the sheer amount of gases and pollution released by the factories in which the clothing articles are made. Fast fashion is all about trends, and when a trend is over, the new one already needs to be stocked on the shelves of stores, which means items are constantly being produced, and at very fast paces. These companies have no care for our environment and take many shortcuts when it comes to meeting standards of first world countries pollution policies. Fast fashion is also damaging to our environment in the sense that it creates too many goods.
The central idea of fast fashion is to quickly and cheaply produce clothing articles to then be sold to customers at a low price, while the company still makes a profit, who then turn around and throw the piece out after only a few months. Oftentimes, in the United States, a specific clothing article is only worn 7 times before being thrown away, and in China, only 3 times. When people are constantly cleaning out their closets and throwing things away, second hand shops can often be overwhelmed, if people bother to take their clothes there, and many clothing articles end up in landfills. When the articles say many clothing articles end up in landfills, they mean 11.2 million tons annually in the United States alone. These numbers are astronomically high, and are only increasing as the years go on. Although many consumers may not realize it, fast fashion is a serious issue for both our environment and third world country citizens.
What Can You Do?
While fast fashion has been a growing trend for the past decade, there are ways to limit the items being produced and ways to help our environment. Approximately 5 billion pounds of waste is generated through clothing returns each year, so what can we do about this? Well, to start, each individual can limit how many items they are buying each month, and to start slowly, try to limit your monthly clothing purchases by half. Once you have consciously made the decision to reduce the number of items you are buying, you can begin to change the location in which you shop. If your typical go to brands include Forever 21, Urban Outfitters, Zara, H&M, and other similar brands, these places are of the most well-known fast fashion companies. Shopping second hand or ethically is a much better alternative for our environment. One more tip to reduce your personal impact on the environment is to hold onto your current clothing articles for longer. That means no more spring cleaning your closet and try to hold onto items as long as possible, or donate your items.
