Fast Fashion: Bullies of Earth
Unfortunately, fast fashion brands take advantage of your thirst for style from all across the globe and mass produce these stylish clothing in unsafe manners. In today’s generation the fast fashion industry has become a big phenomenon with brands such as Fashion Nova, H&M, and Zara being the most popular as well as the most destructive to our environment. As trends and styles are constantly in flux, these brands pump out garments that use factory labor, pollute the oceans, as well as create tons of landfill waste which are just some of the many harmful effects to these large scale brands.
An example of unnecessary pollution would be the fact that brands destroy large portions of their own merchandise: it was noted that ,“[b]rands destroy products as a way to maintain exclusivity through scarcity”(Lieber ). According to this Voxx blog, it describes how brands like to keep their titles to a high caliber and in doing so they must destroy any merchandise that may be too old, off trend, or not up to par with the company’s current standards. However, this is a blatant example of how fast fashion brands care more about profit and “exclusivity” as the clothing items that aren’t used can be put towards thrift shops, second hand clothing stores and even the homeless who are in need of new clothing.
It is revealed how these perfectly new items are slashed and burned in such a manner that they weren’t usable, this not only highlights the wastefulness of the companies by polluting our landfills with brand new clothing items, it exploits the fact that these same clothes went through terrible manufacturing processes to create and assemble the garments in the first place. Not only is it destroying the planet to create the textiles and fabrics to construct the garments, the planet is destroyed further by the outlandish practices of destroying the same garments that didn’t sell well or fit the new trends.
Source:
Lieber, Chavie “Why fashion brands destroy billions’ worth of their own merchandise every year” VOX sep. 2018
