Fast Fashion

Fast fashion is "fast" in several ways: the changes in fashion trends are fast, the rate of clothing production is fast, the customer's decision to purchase is fast, delivery is fast, and the garments are worn fast - usually only worn for a few times before being thrown away or falling apart. The fast fashion industry relies on consumers endlessly buying more clothes. Top brands tempt customers by offering ultra-cheap garments and almost constant new items. Some companies offer up to 6,000 new items for sale each day.

While fast fashion companies remain popular due to their affordable prices and quick jump on trends, it all comes with a heavy environmental price. Every year the fashion sector uses 93 billion cubic meters of water, which is enough to meet the water consumption needs of five million people. In addition, the industry is responsible for around 20% of industrial water pollution as a result of texture treatment and dyeing. The fast fashion industry also has a heavy carbon footprint, being responsible for up to 10% of total global carbon emissions. This value is estimated to increase by 50% within the next 7 years.

It is estimated that the average article of clothing is worn just 14 times, and about one in three women surveyed reported that they considered a clothing item worn once or twice to be "old." Due to super-fast production, modern fast fashion clothing is not made to last, partly because of cheap synthetic fabrics used in order to keep costs low. Because fast fashion plays into the idea that repeating an outfit is a fashion faux pas, much of the new clothing will end up in a landfill after only being worn a handful of times.

Quickly changing fashion trends means that producers are under greater pressure to manufacture clothes more rapidly than ever before. Factories are expected to produce new lines with only a few month's notice, meaning that the workload, and therefore the amount of employment they offer to workers, is unpredictable and insecure.

Numerous investigations into several fast fashion brands have tarnished their reputation into a manufacturing sector that does not abide by labor regulations, with reports alleging that workers have 75-hour shifts with limited time off, and that employees work in unsafe conditions without windows or emergency exits. In order for these companies to offer such low prices on clothing items, they must keep their costs low. One of the main ways they do this is to offer very low wages for the garment workers. It has been reported that Boohoo, a fast fashion brand popular in the UK, pays some of its workers less than half of the minimum wage. A general rule of thumb to remember is, "If an item is very cheap, chances are that the person who produced it was paid very little."

Chemicals in clothing are a complex and under-researched area that impacts consumers in addition to the workers. "There's not necessarily a lot of evidence that goes into deciding what is a safe limit of a chemical," Dr. Irina Mordukhovich, research associate at Harvard School of Public Health, said. The Center for Environmental Health in California has found high levels of the hormone-disrupting chemical CPA in polyester-spandex socks and sports bras by dozens of large brands, including Nike, Athleta, Hanes, Champion, and New Balance, at up to 19 times California's safety limit. In other tests, scientists have found chemicals such as tributyl phosphate, dimethyl fumarate, and disperse dyes can be acutely toxic or hazardous, causing skin reactions or asthma. Other chemicals have been proven, outside of their use on clothing, to have links to cancer, reproductive toxicity, allergies, and skin sensitization. In the US, there are no federal standards for what can be put on clothing and sold to adults. The EU has banned more than 30 substances for use in fashion, and it will reject some shipments at the border, but its testing program is very small.