The woman ahead of me in the checkout line has three plastic shopping bags full of clothes. Right now, her purchases look like brightly coloured rectangles with price tags hanging off them. £3 t-shirt. £8 dress.
She’s buying more clothes today than I have in the last two years. Clothes I’m actually wearing, not just buying. And something about seeing all of those items — things that will bring her joy for a few wears before they’re relegated to the bin bag — made me angry.
Angry because I’ve worked in clothing factories where mountains of these clothes end up. Mountains of new clothes that will quickly be replaced with newer models because clothes today are not meant to last.
That isn’t because people are inherently wasteful, it’s because someone has sold them a carefully constructed system. One that makes throwaway clothing feel normal. One that’s now producing more carbon emissions than every car in Germany output annually just from producing clothes that will likely end up in landfill within the next twelve months.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an article about personal shopping habits. If you buy clothes from sustainable brands, carefully pick materials that will last, and dry everything on a line outside then great. More power to you. I’m trying to do the same thing. But until your clothing decisions matter on a macro scale, throwing money at ‘good’ brands doesn’t solve the systemic problem.
I’m writing this because I want you to understand why an industry creating an essential product has gone from having zero planetEarth-friendly-controls stick to it, to becoming one of the biggest polluters on the planet. And why every attempt to address climate change within fashion hits the same wall, again and again. The reason is surprising, and it can’t be fixed by buying different things.
## Understanding The Problem
If you’ve tried learning about fashion’s impact on climate and felt immediately discouraged by the stats, I understand how you feel. They aren’t just bad, they’re designed to make you feel depressed and uninspired to do anything about it. I’ve spent most of this year researching these numbers and reading reports that make me want to throw my laptop out the window. So allow me to translate the true scale of the issue into English.
Lets talk carbon emissions first. At 10%, the fashion industry is responsible for around the same amount of global emissions as international flights AND maritime shipping COMBINED (Earth.Org via UNEP). To break that down into just textile production, it’s an estimated 1.2 billion tonnes CO2e per annum (UK Parliament Environmental Audit Committee). Clothing.
Take a moment to let that number sink in.
Now lets look at waste. Every second THE EQUIVALENT OF ONE garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burnt (UNEP). ONE garbage truck of textiles every SECOND. I had to triple check that number when I first read it. Let me repeat that. Every second.
To put it bluntly, if you were scrolling through this guide long enough that you stopped reading, tonnes of clothing has been wasted while you read that sentence.
### Water Use/Pollution
As grim as these stats are, the worst part of fashion’s environmental impact is still to come. Textile dyeing is the world’s SECOND largest polluter of water. It takes around 2000 gallons of water to produce a single pair of jeans (UNEP). Enough water for one person to consume for just under three years.
But rather than being absorbed harmlessly into the environment like we’re taught rivers and oceans do in school, those jeans have been polluting water systems with chemicals from dye production. The textile industry produces nearly 20% of industrial water pollution (ScienceDirect) and release around 40,000–50,000 tons of dye into natural waterways each year. Synthetic dyes. Chemicals that will stay in the water long after the jeans have rotted.
There’s also microplastic pollution to consider. Every time you wash polyester or fleece clothing, thousands of tiny plastic fibres break off and pass through your sewage system and out into the ocean. Around 35% of microplastic pollution comes from laundering synthetic textiles (Greenpeace via IUCN). So every time you wash your clothing made with synthetic fibres, you’re polluting the oceans with plastic.
And finally, there’s actual garbage. Up to 85% of textiles are put into landfill each year (UNRIC). Landfills that will eventually leak old fabrics and synthetic microplastics into soil and waterways. Recycling is nowhere close to solving the problem because less than 1% of clothing gets turned into new clothing (Ellen MacArthur Foundation). An industry producing more clothes than we could ever need is built around the concept of trash.
So what do we do with all this information? Why does any of this matter if changing your shopping habits isn’t enough?
We keep going. Because understanding where we’re coming from is the only way to understand where we need to go. We’ll cover solutions in the last section, but first: why did this happen?
## Why did Fast Fashion Become So Bad?
Fashion isn’t naturally destructive to the planet. If you went back thirty years everyone would’ve blamed sweatshops, but as we’ve learned more about climate change, it’s become painfully obvious that traditional fashion was bad for the environment too. Just not as bad.
Here’s how those mountains of textiles we saw earlier became normal.
### Speed Kills
Traditional/fast fashion used to operate on four seasons; spring, summer, autumn, winter. Manufacturers knew they had a set amount of time to create affordable clothes that customers would buy into until the next season started. This doesn’t mean the old system was perfect (far from it), but everyone from factory workers to retail workers had steady jobs and consumers were buying clothes that would last them at least until the next ‘seasonal update’.
By ramping up to 52 ‘micro-seasons’ per year, fast fashion has created a never-ending cycle of buy-new clothes weekly. Primarily driven by social media, new fashion trends are constantly being marketed at consumers who feel like they have to keep up with the latest update or be left out.
This sprint mentality has bled into how collections are created. With manufacturers rushing to get the newest styles imported into stores before the next trend comes along, there’s zero time to worry about ethics or the environment.
### The True Cost of “Cheap”
There’s a reason your favourite throwaway clothing costs what it does. Companies aren’t paying for carbon emissions, water pollution, textile waste, or microplastics. Someone else is.
When it comes to who “someone else” is, you could pick any human living in the last thirty years and they’ve been impacted by clothing pollution. Dumping waste in cheaper countries might have flown thirty years ago, but the world has woken up to clothing’s climate impact. The companies who profited off that system are causing millions of dollars of damage cleaning up their mess decades later.
We keep this cycle going because companies don’t pay the real price of environmental impact. They offload every single ‘external cost’ onto everyone else. But as long as they can get away with saying, “don’t worry we planted a tree” instead of accepting responsibility for the mess they’ve created, they’ll keep getting away with it.
### Quantity over Quality
Have you ever noticed how every item of clothing starts falling apart the minute you buy it? Missing buttons, snapping seams, unravelling thread. Fast fashion companies have literally incentivised wearing things once before disposing of them.
On top of planned obsolescence being terrible for the environment, it keeps customers locked into a system where they have to keep buying more. Fast fashion companies rely on selling more products more often. They don’t want you buying one good quality shirt that’ll last five years. They want you buying five low-quality shirts every year.
One part of this article that always makes me angry is reading how companies will proudly talk about making more durable clothes in interviews, then price those clothes 50%+ more than their lowest quality option. They won’t set consumers free because they know once you’re in the system, you’re locked in.
You think these companies would want to fix the problem? Think again.
## Why won’t the Industry Change?
Seeing how bad the problem is might make you think corporations are running around frantically looking for solutions. If you did, you’d also be very, very wrong. Large corporations have consistently fought any major change to how they do business, for three key reasons.
### Absorb, Slash, and Burn
Sustainability reports have become niche adverts for clothing brands. Every ‘major’ brand will have initiatives for reducing pollution and recycling textiles. But let’s be real: the Ellen MacArthur Foundation wouldn’t be publishing reports if 30-40% of clothes were currently being recycled, would they?
Most sustainability initiatives are a drop in the ocean compared to companies’ annual production. If H&M made a premium range of clothing using 100% sustainable materials that equals 1% of their output, they’ll make more profit advertising that line than they did producing it.
Additives like organic cotton or sustainable materials get customers to pay more for items that aren’t much better than what’s already on offer. It’s greenwashing.
### “Just you wait…”.
Haven’t we heard that one before?
“We need to wait for new technology before we can…” is a pretty predictable excuse. One that might be true… if we stopped ignoring the technology that already exists.
We know how to clean clothes using less water. We know how to produce clothing using fewer chemicals. We know how to make better clothes that actually last. The fashion industry isn’t waiting for ways to improve at sewing clothes together. They’re actively avoiding changing a business model that prints money.
### Supply Chains that Span Continents
A common argument in the ‘why can’t they change?’ argument is the laundry list of suppliers and factories they work with. If you’ve ever watched a YouTube video explaining the woes of fast fashion, you’ll know this one.
“If we had to check every supplier in our supply chain we’d never get anything done!”. Sound familiar? For an industry where 97% of garments end up buried in landfill or incinerated, suddenly caring where your clothes come from will ground production to a halt.
I call bullshit. Big corporations like Zara (parent company Inditex) have supply chains that stretch across hundreds of countries because they want them to. Not only does it give them leverage to pit suppliers against each other on price, it also drastically reduces costs by sourcing materials from where they’re cheapest.
We don’t need shorter supply chains, we need corporations who don’t place profit before people to highjack theirs.
Okay, but why won’t they change? Surely there are major companies out there that want to do better?
## PROFIT.
There’s one unifying factor in every company that refuses to clean up their act, and every excuse they make to justify their inaction:
We’re too busy making money.
### Incentivised to trash the planet
Thanks to companies fighting like hell to avoid responsibility, the market is incentivised to create garments with the lowest possible environmental impact.
Let’s say there’s two t-shirt companies: Brand Dirty and Brand Cleaner. Brand Cleaner pays their workers a livable wage, they double the percentage of sustainable materials they use, and don’t use any hazardous chemicals. They charge £15 per shirt.
Brand Dirty makes their clothes where they can get away with it, source the cheapest materials possible, and do not give a flying fuck about the environment. They only charge you £10.
Who do you think will lose customers?
It’s called a race to the bottom my friend, and it will continue until companies are forced to change. Fashion produces more carbon emissions, uses more water, and destroys more land than most countries on Earth. And we let them get away with it.
As long as there’s no real consequence for pollution, corporations will continue polluting. And when there is? They’ll pay their fine and proudly tweet about how they’re ‘doing their bit’.
### Trapping shareholders in a cycle of consumption
Publicly traded companies or companies owned by investors have one goal: make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time. Don’t believe me? Next time earnings season rolls around, see how fast stocks drop when companies fail to meet investor’s profit projections.
Environmental responsibility requires investment. Fixing water pollution, paying workers enough so they aren’t exploited, and paying for carbon emissions all require money… Money that companies could be spending on themselves right now.
Move fast and burn the competition. Burn the planet.
That sounds depressing af, what’s the point?
### Someone has to say it.
Blaming the consumer is the last thing fashion companies say while they’re yelling at you to buy more clothes. “Our customers want cheap fashion”, “They won’t pay enough to support sustainable clothes.”
Yet. Nobody told fast fashion customers that buying thousands of dollars worth of cheap clothes every year was normal. Someone has to train them that it’s OK to stop. That fast fashion isn’t the only way to dress yourself.
Bonus points if you Google ‘Primark stop feeding’ screaming internally right now.
## Lies You’ve Bought About Fashion’s Environmental Impact
If you’ve read this far, you’re ready for the real world. The fast fashion companies have spent decades tricking consumers into thinking buying more = better and they won’t stop lying now.
Here are the biggest lies the fashion industry has sold you. No judgment if you fell for some (or all) of them, everyone did at first.
### Mistake #1: Changing where I buy will make a difference
There’s a reason sustainable and ethical clothing brands are so expensive. Unlike ‘throwaway’ clothing companies, they actually pay people enough to live on, they source eco-friendly materials, and they treat the environment as a priority.
So when you spend £80 on a shirt instead of £5, where does the extra £75 go? Employee wages. Sustainable materials. Pollution cleanups.
That doesn’t mean you should quit your job and start shopping at Arket instead. But supporting companies who give a fuck about the planet is the first step in disrupting decades of mindlessly consuming fast fashion.
### Mistake #2: Recycling fixes everything
Clothing recycling cannot possibly make up for how much clothing is being produced every year. Less than 1% of clothes get recycled into new clothing (Fibershed), the rest is ‘downcycled’ into plastic pellets or insulation. If someone tells you their aim ‘zero waste’ goal is achievable by putting your used clothes in a bin remember this statistic.
### Mistake #3: Sustainable materials can save us
Organic cotton still takes a freaking bathtub full of water to produce. Recycled polyester sheds just as many microplastics as the stuff straight from the factory. Bamboo might as well grow microfibres in it.
Going green won’t save us when we’re drowning in clothes.
### Mistake #4: Technology will save us
You know what will reduce emissions? Buying less crap. Seems too simple, right? That’s because you’ve been sold lies about how wonderful technology will be without changing consumer behaviour.
‘Now we just need to invent smart fabrics that sanitise themselves in the washing machine’
No, we don’t!
We need to buy less clothes and demand companies change before they burn the entire planet.
### Mistake #5: The fashion industry will fix itself
Want to know how you know a company isn’t serious about making positive change? They make vague promises with no hard targets. Water waste reduced? Gee thanks, tell me more about how you’re only going to recycle 5% of garments.
Voluntary commitments by fashion brands are marketing campaigns. They spend more money bragging about how sustainable they are than what they actually do to be sustainable.
The fashion industry doesn’t want to fix themselves. But that doesn’t mean we can’t force them too.
## Studies & Research Used in This Article
Each point made about environmental impact comes from environmental NGOs, Parliament groups, and scientific journals. There are too many sources to link to individually but you can find reports used above by clicking the links in the relevant sections.
All numbers are up-to-date as of April 2024, and were selected to represent a variety of viewpoints on fashion’s environmental impact. If you notice any misinformation or have a source showing a more accurate picture, please contact me and I’ll be happy to make changes.
TLDR: Everyone is saying the same thing. Fast fashion produces horrific amounts of pollution and emissions at a rate that’s only growing. Despite “sustainability initiatives” the industry as a whole is getting worse.
## Different Circumstances = Same Advice
**Money is tight: ** Environmental guilt is real, but you shouldn’t feel bad about purchasing clothes that you can actually afford. Hang on to the clothes you have for as long as possible, and when you do need something new, look at second hand options before shopping new.
**Got some spare cash: ** This still won’t change the systemic issues at hand, but you can reduce your waste output by a considerable margin. Look for second-hand options where possible, and avoid buying from fast fashion brands that use harmful materials.
**You have kids:** Kids clothes are the worst. Not only do they grow out of clothes faster than anyone, but the quality is intentionally bad so they’ll wear them even less. Donate old clothes to neighbours with younger kids. Swap clothes with friends. Accept hand me downs with love.
**You wear suits/jobs uniforms: ** Office wear is expensive for a reason; they’re built to last. Don’t worry about spending a little more if it means your clothes will actually fit in the wash.
## Benefits of Knowing the Truth
Except for number 3, not gonna lie thats gonna suck.
1. **Know what you’re fighting: ** Sustainability feels like a losing battle when everywhere you look people are telling you individual action can’t change anything. Knowing how greed and corruption at the top creates this problem means you can focus your energy yelling at the people who actually need to hear it.
2. **Save money & stop falling for marketing tricks: ** Fast fashion relies on selling you more than you need. Knowing how their profit incentive makes them prey on consumers will help you resist advertises and buy less crap.
3. **Vote wisely: ** Knowing who’s to blame for the worlds textile problem will help you weed out politicians preying on environmental anxieties. When real solutions are proposed you’ll recognise them.
4. **Stop stressing about the problem:** As mentioned before, this isn’t your fault. But blaming ourselves doesn’t get us anywhere. Understanding that corporations are the ones who need to change will help ease the anxiety that you should be doing more.
Fashion destroying the planet isn’t your fault. But as long as we keep blaming each other, big corporations will keep running their profit-over-people machine. <|end_of_document|>
