Your purchase helps support NPR programming. There were five garment factories in Rana Plaza all manufacturing fast fashion for big global brands.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Overdressed Subtitle The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion Author Elizabeth L. 1,138 people died and another 2,500 were injured, making it the fourth largest industrial disaster in history. On 24 April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed. They are some of the lowest paid workers in the world and roughly 85% of all garment workers are women. There are roughly 40 million garment workers in the world today many of whom do not share the same rights or protections that many people in the West do. We are increasingly disconnected from the people who make our clothing as 97% of items come from overseas. This is more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. (McKinsey, 2020)įashion accounts for 20 to 35 per cent of microplastic flows into the ocean (McKinsey, 2020)ġ0% of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the clothing and footwear production. Washing, solvents, and dyes used in manufacturing are responsible for one-fifth of industrial water pollution. ( Better Cotton Initiative)įashion’s consumption of resources – especially water and oil – is projected to double by 2030. The same amount of water an average person drinks over the course of 900 days. ( Forbes)Ī single t-shirt takes 2,700 liters of water to make. But it takes more than 200 years to decompose. Nearly 70 million barrels of oil are used each year to make the world’s polyester fiber, which is now the most commonly used fiber in our clothing. Global clothing production has doubled in the past 15 years, with garments on average being worn much less and discarded quicker than ever before. Three out of five fast fashion items end up in landfill (Clean Clothes Campaign, 2019) ( Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion)įast fashion garments, which we wear less than 5 times and keep for 35 days, produce over 400% more carbon emissions per item per year than garments worn 50 times and kept for a full year.
With new trends coming out every week, the goal of fast fashion is for consumers to buy as many garments as possible, as quickly as possible. Fast forward to 2014 and the fashion industry is churning out 52 “micro-seasons” per year. Once upon a time, there were two fashion seasons: Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter.
The fashion industry is designed to make you feel “out of trend” after one week.
Fast fashion is a term used to describe a highly profitable business model based on replicating catwalk trends and high-fashion designs, and mass-producing them at low cost.
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