Fast Fashion

Anna K. is a typ­ical 16-​year-​old European fash­ion ​con­sumer​. Like many teens, she likes to re­fresh her ward­robe fre­quently with trendy streetwear and styl­ish new ac­cessor­ies. Being a high-​school stu­dent ​on a strict budget,​ she fa­vours low-​cost brands and binges on Janu­ary ​sales​, treat­ing her­self to ​im­pulse pur­chases​ she may never wear more than once.



Anna ad­mit­tedly looks cute in her glit­ter t-​shirt, form-​fitting jeans, and chunky-​heeled gla­di­ator san­dals. But cute comes with a ​price tag​ that the planet can no longer af­ford.

(...) ​[​H​]​er thirsty cot­ton t-​shirt (...) guzzled nearly three thou­sand litres of water be­fore it ever saw a wash­ing ma­chine. The fash­ion in­dustry is es­tim­ated to con­sume around 79 bil­lion cubic metres of water per year in cot­ton crop​ ir­rig­a­tion​ and in­dus­trial pro­cessing: that is enough drink­ing water for 110 mil­lion people for an en­tire year.



Anna’s t-​shirt also ​leaves a toxic trail​. Roughly 3​ ​per cent of the world’s farm­land is planted with cot­ton, yet cot­ton ac­counts for an es­tim­ated 16​ ​per cent of global in­sect­icide usage and 7​ ​per cent of all herb­i­cides. ​Or­ganic cot­ton​ – though water-​intensive – is a more ​sus­tain­able al­tern­at­ive​, but it cur­rently rep­res­ents less than 1 per cent of the world’s an­nual cot­ton crop. (...)



The metal­lic print on Anna’s t-​shirt is eye-​catching for two reas­ons: it adds bling to her look, yet it also sig­nals the pres­ence of toxic phthal­ates. The in­digo dye, too, is a cock­tail of pois­ons. The bright col­ours and ap­peal­ing prints of many ​gar­ments​ are achieved with heavy metals such as cop­per, ar­senic, and lead, to­gether with haz­ard­ous chem­ic­als such as nonyl­phenol eth­oxylates.

The tex­tile in­dustry is among the world’s top pol­luters of clean water, with the dye­ing and treat­ment of tex­tiles ac­count­ing for 20​ ​per cent of all in­dus­trial water pol­lu­tion. (...)



Anna’s skinny jeans present a fur­ther prob­lem: they are made of poly­es­ter, a pet­ro­leum product. Syn­thetic fab­rics such as poly­es­ter re­quire more fre­quent wash­ing than nat­ural fibres – odour-​spreading bac­teria love noth­ing more than a sweaty poly­es­ter gar­ment. But when poly­es­ter is washed in a do­mestic wash­ing ma­chine, it ex­acer­bates an­other grave global prob­lem: ocean plastic pol­lu­tion.

Poly­es­ter, nylon, and ac­rylic fab­rics are all forms of plastic. Every time they are washed, they ​leach into​ the en­vir­on­ment: a single load of laun­dry is es­tim­ated to re­lease hun­dreds of thou­sands of fibres. These fibres pass through sewage and wastewa­ter treat­ment plants into wa­ter­ways and even­tu­ally the ocean, where they are in­ges­ted by mar­ine life and make their way up the food chain. Mi­cro­scopic particles of Anna’s oil-​based jeans might end up on your plate as a ‘secret in­gredi­ent’ in your next sea­food din­ner.



Last of all, Anna’s strappy san­dals show off her pretty ankles, but leave an ugly foot­print. On av­er­age, the pro­duc­tion of one shoe ​gen­er­ates​ 14 kilo­grammes of car­bon di­ox­ide. With 15 bil­lion shoes pro­duced each year, the in­dustry con­trib­utes sig­ni­fic­antly to one of the greatest chal­lenges fa­cing hu­man­ity today: cli­mate change. Tex­tiles pro­duc­tion re­leases green­house gas emis­sions to the tune of 1.2​ ​bil­lion tonnes an­nu­ally –​ ​more than those of in­ter­na­tional flights and mari­time ship­ping com­bined.