A Call on Consumers: Can Fashion be Sustainable?

Before buying that new pair of shoes you’ve been eyeing since last month or that dress you thought would be perfect for your next social event, have you ever stopped to think about where it was made, who made it, or out of what material it is made of? In an age of technology, the answers to these questions are not hard to find. Fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world, after oil, and it is the most labor absorbent industry in the world. Can it really be environmentally and socio-economically sustainable?

Up until the 1960s, around 90% of clothing for Americans was made in the United States; nowadays, only 3%. The perpetrator of this huge shift towards offshoring is called fast fashion. According to the dictionary, fast fashion is “inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends”; what this fails to assert is that fast fashion is the biggest contaminator in this industry. In total, fast fashion brands like Zara, H&M, and Topshop, generate 80 billion pieces of clothing each year. Consumers celebrate this by looking at these brands superficially. We love how trendy, cheap, and fast it all is; new shipments of clothing arrive at a frequent pace to stores so we get to experience the most recent trends with budget-bearing prices. In the early 1900s, a dress would cost $200.00, in the mid 1900s, it would cost $70.00; today, we can easily pay $20.00 for it .

Clothing has become significantly cheaper, yet our world is becoming significantly poorer.

In most countries where clothing is produced, textile dyeing is contaminating clean water. Toxic waste waters from textiles that contain harmful substances like lead and arsenic, are frequently dumped into lakes and rivers. This is deathly menacing to the life underwater and the health of the millions of people that live nearby. In addition, the use of toxic chemicals in agriculture, especially in the harvesting of cotton, has had gruesome consequences on people living around the cotton farms and on the soil as we can see in The True Cost, a documentary that rawly depicts the appalling consequences of fast fashion. In a town nearby a genetically modified cotton farm in India, the filmmaker Andrew Morgan learns how 1 out of every 60 children is born retarded. In a genetically modified cotton farm in Texas, two cotton farmers have died of brain tumors due to chemical residuals. These are just some of the devastating damages the fashion industry has on the environment; and as the industry continues to expand, so does its impact.

With pressure to produce a product in the most inexpensive way at the fastest pace, fast fashion companies completely neglect their effect on the environment. Water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals, the impressive levels of textile waste are just some of the reasons why fashion is a strong polluter to our health and our environment.

Not only has fast fashion created an industry that struggles to be environmentally sustainable, but it also fails to succeed socio-economically. US based companies moved their factories to where labor was cheaper and government was less restrictive, such as India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and China. With the need to produce huge quantities in small time slots, there are 40 million garment workers who work in sweatshops around the world. Almost 90% of these garment workers are women.

Garment workers are paid around $2.00 to $5.00 an hour and are forced to work up to 20 hours a day in sickening and dangerous conditions. With child labor, going below minimum wage, forced labor, and verbal & physical abuse, sweatshops are a battlefield. Sickening tragedies have occurred where people have died because of how unsafe it is. For example, in 2013 a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh was so structurally dangerous that it collapsed killing around 200 garment workers and injuring around 1000. The most heartbreaking part is that these workers had previously told the managers of the factory of the threatening working conditions and demanded a safe environment. The managers deliberately ignored them at the cost of their life.

Fast fashion companies’ job is to meet their consumers’ demands. Thus, I believe that the movement towards a sustainable and fair industry has to start from the consumers. I am a firm believer that anything is possible, yet the belief is as important as the initiative. Consumers need to be aware of how poisonous our actions can be to our future and start taking responsibility. Yes, we want cheap clothing; but at what cost? Start buying clothing that is not harmful to the environment or that has not been produced from the exploitation of women. Do your research: look for sustainable brands, look for fair and transparent companies, think before you shop. People need to begin to find value in clothing, value in money, and value in the work of others. At the same time, companies need to begin to adapt their business models to a world where our environment and social equality is a priority, or there will be no world to adapt to in the future.

A few years ago, people looked at clothing differently. They would buy, make, exchange, reuse, and revamp their clothing. Because it is so cheap, people no longer find the same value in clothing, creating an unhealthy disuse culture that is directly connected to poverty and pollution. As consumers ask companies to function towards an ethical and responsible business model, efforts from the consumers are as, or if not more important. “The juxtaposition between thinking sustainably and acting consciously is the big gap that needs to be filled”. Engagement and education in sustainability will continue to grow, but it means nothing if we fail to develop a new consumption routine.

Time is of the essence, fashion has a higher chance of being sustainable if both consumers and companies take part in this collective happening. Guaranteeing a company’s sustainability to meet consumer demands is a necessary piece of how we can ensure and develop fashion’s sustainable future.