How does the fast fashion industry affect the environment?

Since the 1990s, fast fashion has often been a strategy for small businesses. However, the origin of fast fashion is the 1960s, when Zara was launched. Zara is one of the biggest international fashion companies. The founder of Zara, Amancio Ortega Gaona, started using this method and popularized it by proving its effectiveness. Although other industries were mainly considering manufacturing efficiency, Zara was focused on the retailing strategy. The industry was run based on mass production with the latest trends. Their mission was “to declare that it would only take 15 days for a garment to go from a designer's brain to being sold on the racks.”
At first, there were some concerns because changing the product’s design continuously in the short term does not provide enough period for customers to satisfy their demands. They were unfamiliar with the clothing industry, following each trend and not getting constrained to one design. Nevertheless, they continued the method, which actually created a sense of exclusivity. Eventually, Zara became the starter of fast fashion and one of the most successful fashion companies adopting the strategy.
Since Zara started off the fast fashion industry with a global impact, other companies undoubtedly followed the method, hoping for the same achievement. Many companies, such as H&M and UNIQLO, also had great success. However, those successes were not perfect because the environmental considerations were neglected. Initiated by Zara, the environmental destruction from the fast-fashion industry had grown on a greater scale.

Trade-off: Environmental Devastation

A trade-off always exists. Although the products were prepared rapidly and had low prices, the quality of the products was low, which resulted in “quickly ending up in the landfills.” Each strength that the fast fashion industry has causes critical environmental destruction. Since consumers buy low-quality clothing items for a specific trend, they just throw them away after wearing those clothes for the short term. They are not considering deeply whether they keep it or not because it is cheap enough not to feel remorse by throwing it away. Also, as those clothes are cheap and the trend periodically shifts, they purchase them over time. This particular process continues and causes more problems in the environment. Waste of materials used in clothes is one of the biggest environmental problems. Specifically, 87% of the materials and fibers used to make clothing will end up in either incinerators or landfills. Only 20% of discarded textiles are collected. In situation, fast fashion is making the situation worse.

Carbon Emissions and Water Pollution

The harmful effects of fast fashion on the environment are large. According to the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, fast fashion is responsible for 2-8% of the entire world’s carbon emissions. Based on the fast fashion industry’s mass production, the waste of textiles is much larger than that of other industries. Another problem is the water pollution. In general, the fashion industry consumes a lot of water, being the second largest water-consuming industry. Since they use enormous tonnes of water, it negatively results in water pollution. Most fashion industries use the water dyeing the textiles, but the leftovers are mostly moving to the ocean or rivers. If the water is clean, it would not be a problem. However, those waters that are used for dyeing are the polluters of the water. Other industries are indeed using large amounts of water for their products, but the fast fashion industry requires more.

Since the fast fashion industries do not have any choices to stop their methods, recognizing them about the devastation is not going to be beneficial. Indeed, a lot of fast fashion industry firms, such as Zara, are already aware of their effects on the environment, which has led them to hold many eco-friendly events. To stop this chaos, the only way is to make more regulations for the fast fashion industry to reduce the devastation. However, it will be important to have agreements with those industries.