The Toxicity of Fast Fashion Culture
What is Fast Fashion, and why is it destroying our planet?
Fast Fashion is cheap, trendy clothing that is used to hop on the newest clothing trends as fast
as possible. Fast Fashion companies sell roughly 53 million tons of clothing
annually. Even though the majority of the customers don't see any problem with it, there are actually
many problems with Fast Fashion culture.
Have you ever ordered or bought something from a very low priced clothing company and wondered how they get enough money to support their business? The truth is, companies such as Shien, H&M, Forever 21, and many more are taking advantage of poor women and children in foreign countries like Bangladesh. These companies force them to work for little to no payment, and under unsafe working conditions. Throughout history, Fast Fashion has been linked to child labor and extremely unsafe working conditions. In a Borgen magazine, it gives an example of how badly the unsafe working conditions the employees were under when the Rana Plaza collapsed in 2013, killing over 1,000 workers, (Independent magazine). This was the result from of the fact that Mr. Rana was placing profits over the people working there and their safety, and the underpayment underpayment of the employees.
Although Fast Fashion seems like a fun and easy idea to be able to buy trendy clothes for little money, underneath it there are even more problems. Not only is Fast Fashion culture toxic for the employees, but for our environment as well. Fast Fashion companies put out 150 billion articles of clothing every year. Since the materials of the products are cheap quality, the buyers eventually throw them out to buy new clothes. Many of the chemicals that are in these cheap clothes end up in landfills and back into the environment after they’re thrown away. Another problem with the clothing produced from these companies is that 500,000 tons of tiny non-biodegradable materials end up in our oceans every year. This is caused by just washing or throwing away these cheap clothes.
What will you do to make a change in this culture? Resist the sales? Either way, Fast Fashion culture needs to be put to an end because the negative affects of it are much stronger than the positive ones.
Citing Resources
The negative effects of fast fashion. BORGEN. (2020, November 21). Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://www.borgenmagazine.com/the-negative-effects-of-fast-fashion/.
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