You walk into Forever 21 (rip) and pick up a tank top. You try it on, it looks great, and it’s only $9. What a steal! You buy it and take it home with you. You wear it three times, then the strap breaks. You throw it away, and you buy a new shirt. ENTER: the fast fashion dilemma. You’ve seen what happens to the clothing that ends up in landfills (much of which sits there as waste and degrades into microplastics). You’ve read the news headlines about the atrocious conditions garment workers in other countries face, and how approximately 80% of garment workers are women aged 18-35 that aren’t paid a living wage. And you’ve likely read the stats that it takes approximately 2,700 gallons of water to make just one t-shirt, but what can be done considering you will need a new top this Friday for your Instagram post?!

Whether you are a sustainable shopper, or a victim of fast fashion, it’s no longer acceptable to be ignorant of the realities of the fashion industry. Clothing, like many other commodities in our society, have virtually become single-use items. Companies do not expect their items to endure and hope that you fall prey to the planned obsolescence of trendy clothing. If all else fails, their cheaply constructed goods will falter after a few uses, and you will feel the urge to head back to the mall (or the online shopping cart). Ideally, a society filled with the sharpest minds and equipped with the most advanced technology of all mankind could figure out a way to maximize the circular economy, so that clothing never goes to waste, and we do not need to utilize raw materials for each new item produced. Alas, capitalism.

Good On You, an ethical fashion rating app, defines the phenomenon of fast fashion as “cheap, trendy clothing, that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments in high street stores at breakneck speed.” According to their website, the way we produce fashion for online retailers and high streets used to be very different. Before the Industrial Revolution, all clothing was made slowly: one would have to source their own materials (like wool, leather or cotton) and weave together textiles. But with new technology (such as the sewing machine), came the emergence of easier, quicker and cheaper cloth-making. By the late 1990s and 2000s, online shopping took off and fast fashion reigned supreme. Top players like H&M and Zara grew from smaller shops in the ‘50s and ‘70s to global empires today.

While this may all seem like “business as usual”, fast fashion has a hefty price tag when it comes to environmental and social issues. Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Fashion Fast (2012), noted in her novel that quickly-made fashion merchandise is priced much lower than the competition to uphold the low quality / high volume business model. Zara was the first to implement this scheme by producing fashion bi-weekly when Crocs and capri pants were cool (back in the ‘00s). Before, there were two fashion seasons: Spring / Summer and Fall / Winter. Fast forward to 2014, and we have 52 “micro-seasons” per year. Cheap garments won’t last more than a week without a new trend coming every 7 days. And consequently—more and more clothing is headed to landfills. In fact, fast fashion waste is enough to fill 1 and a half Empire State buildings per day. Consider another statistic: clothing that is made from polyester material (essentially a plastic) takes 200 years to break down. The trend may be dead, but that top you tossed surely isn’t. 

Not to mention, all the other hazardous materials in fast-fashion clothing. You’ll need a HAZMAT suit for synthetic dyes, as accidental absorption during the dying process causes skin tumors, as well as other detrimental health effects in garment workers. The Guardian reported that child workers in Bangladesh are exposed to a conglomerate of chemicals including formaldehyde, hydrogen sulfide and sulfuric acid. It doesn’t stop there: as a part of the coloration procedure, a large percentage of the dye does not bind to fabric. About 10-15% of dyes seep into our waterways, rivers, and oceans. Dye-polluted water means dead aquatic life, the ruined soil, and poisoned drinking water. Although leather seems like the most durable natural material, you’re wearing chemicals, too. The way in which leather is produced is justification enough to resist buying leather for the same reasons animal agriculture for food is horrible for the environment. Methane and carbon emissions, energy and water use, rainforest destruction -- you name it, it’s there. Unlike the misconception, leather is actually not a ‘by-product’ of cows and other animals. Unfortunately, it is a ‘co-product’, meaning that the driving demand for leather contributes to the raising and killing of more innocent animals. 

Garment workers are also suffering, all the while big businesses like Gap Inc. and Guess are banking off the monstrous mounds of clothing they churn out. Like we said before, people (approximately 80% of which are women) who work at factories overseas for fast fashion companies constantly put their health at risk. The towns with these garment factories are often plagued with health risks due to exposure to these chemicals (what chemicals?) For their labor, these workers are being paid slave wages, particularly in underdeveloped countries. In Bangladesh, an average sweatshop worker maybe makes 28 taka an hour, or around 33 U.S. cents. Even working 60 hours a week, the worker may struggle to pay their bills. Underpaid, underfed, and overworked, these human beings that make these clothes (for you to throw away, btw) are jeopardizing their lives every single day. Ultimately, if you buy from fast fashion, you are complicit in subjugating the people who make them. 

 Remember that living sustainably is taking simple measures to reduce your individual, environmental impact as much as humanly possible. It requires you to consider all aspects of how you live. From your habits at home, to the products you buy and the companies you support. This certainly doesn’t stop at the clothes you wear. To make things easy, we’ll cover 6 fast tips you keep your shopping habits sustainable.

6 Sustainable Shopping Tips

1.     Purchase new clothing only when you need it. When it’s that time again, buy products from all natural (plant-based) fabrics such as hemp, organic cotton, bamboo, linen, and ahimsa silk. 

2.     Support Certified B Corps over companies that are not certified. They are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. And this is something we can get behind. Some examples are Patagonia, Athleta, Eileen Fisher, Veja, Toms, and Allbirds. 

3.     Buy thrifted / second hand clothing. The tech revolution made everyone’s job so much easier with eBay, Poshmark, ThredUp, Vinted, Grailed and other second hand apps. Check out your local consignment store.

4.     Trade with friends, rotate clothes by season / year so you have new clothes and don’t tire of them as easily. 

5.     Buy new clothes from sustainable companies - reference GOOD on YOU for a companies’ human rights and environmental record. 

6.     Buy clothing sparingly, avoiding trends that will make your clothes obsolete within a certain period of time. Get classic pieces and classic cuts, and don’t be afraid of re-wear.

Bonus tip: Make a Buyerarchy of your own - which level of dedication can you hit? Any improvement is better than no improvement.

Above all, the best way to be a sustainable shopper is to vote with your dollar. This doesn’t imply expert level knowledge about all corporations, but to spend and invest your money to supporting local businesses, sustainable investments, fair wages, and a health(ier) planet. Your wallet also holds an immense amount of power when it comes to taking out the fast fashion fad. 

 Graphic Design By Marielle Bachman

Written by Margaret Cyr, Laura Matusheski