The Cost of Fast Fashion The Cost of Fast Fashion The Cost of Fast Fashion The Cost of Fast Fashion The Cost of Fast Fashion

By: Casey Gallagher

As the international community becomes more deeply intertwined in the process of globalization, exploitative resource and labor use by those in power has sunk its claws deep into the fashion industry. According to York University’s Department of Biology in “The Environmental Impacts of Fast Fashion on Water Quality: A Systematic Review, “fashion is the second most polluting industry, with an 8% contribution to global carbon emissions in total with an estimated 50% increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Production processes for fast fashion operations rely on cheap or even unpaid labor overseas, as well as finite water and material resources, which have obvious ethical and environmental implications. However, when considering the full extent of the fast fashion industry’s impact on the planet, it is essential to recognize the inherent socio-political industry structures that have allowed the aforementioned abuses.

The excessive water usage in fast fashion is only one of the major environmental abuses in the industry, but an extremely damaging one nonetheless. The fashion industry consumes one tenth of all water used in industrial processes and factories. This occurs because, according to the Princeton University paper, “The Impact of Fast Fashion on the Environment - PSCI,” it takes up to 10,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton and 3,0000 liters to produce a cotton t-shirt. Annually, the fashion industry uses 93 million cubic meters of water and per capita fiber consumption has almost tripled from 1950-2008. Given the even higher rates of global population growth since then and the recent power of online fashion marketing and accessibility, these numbers have grown and will likely continue to grow over time. Massive water usage and toxic cycling of micro-plastics and viscose into larger ecological systems– contaminated volatiles in runoff that interact poorly with natural nitrogen and phosphorus cycles– are extremely destructive forces in the fast fashion industry. Degradation of water quality is just as huge of an issue in fast fashion as excessive water usage is. 20% of the world’s wastewater results from this process and is often toxic and unable to be treated. In fact, over 1,900 chemicals have been identified in textile manufacturing processes, which often contain suspended solids, have dangerously high pH levels beyond an acceptable range, chemical oxygen demand, and turbidity levels.

These characteristics contaminate water through all stages of fashion manufacturing processes. This occurs due to the advancement of globalized capitalism and neo-colonialism in which larger Western nations and corporate actors depend on labor overseas to avoid higher minimum wages and obstructing environmental regulations–something the fast fashion industry is extremely guilty of. Manufacturing in nations that have little to no environmental restrictions and regulations on water treatment has allowed the fast fashion industry to dump millions of gallons of toxic water into precious marine ecosystems and starve the communities they exploit of clean, accessible water. With the advancement of the climate crisis, water availability and accessibility is already threatened–especially for marginalized communities and the global South–and corporations affiliated with the fast fashion industry, or textiles in general, are massively encroaching on the only supply we have now through excessive use and contamination. With the understanding of the contaminant and water usage harm, it is important to draw the distinction between fast fashion specifically and the industry as a whole. The data surrounding these environmental abuses are largely reflective of the entire industry; however, fast fashion sits at the forefront of this conflict. Fast fashion as a subindustry operates in a manner indicative of the system it perpetuates: advanced global capitalism. Let’s look into the most extreme example: SHEIN. SHEIN is currently the most popular fast fashion brand and “in April, Shein reportedly raised $1 billion to $2 billion in private funding. The company was valued at $100 billion— higher than the combined worth of fastfashion titans H&M and Zara, and higher than that of any private company in the world besides SpaceX and Byte-Dance, the owner of TikTok” (via Wired). The Chinese-born company with over 10,000 employees in China alone has expanded to unprecedented heights of profit and growth, with its main selling point being its affordability and, thus, accessibility. The problem, of course, is that the main customer base of the website includes some of the globally wealthiest nations–the United States, Brazil, France, Spain, and Canada respectively–which is not to say that there are not massive circumstances of economic inequity in nearly all of these nations, but the justification often made for shopping at SHEIN, given its ethical implications, is that it is affordable for low-income shoppers and that there is already “no ethical consumption under capitalism.”

However, when a percentage of SHEIN’s virality can be attributed to $500 TikTok “hauls,” that’s a problem. When the data shows that SHEIN alone emits 6.3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, that’s a problem. The minority shopping on SHEIN out of genuine necessity, are the absolute least of the problem. What’s worse is that the reason the prices are so low is because “about ninety percent of the world’s clothing production is outsourced to low- to middle-income countries (LMICs), where these clothing articles are produced cheaply, at low quality, and are then sold at low prices for faster production and subsequent consumption. Without even addressing the litany of more specific labor abuses–data leaks, intellectual property theft, and unsafe chemical usage– it is evident that SHEIN is a perfect example of why fast fashion is so problematic for the health of our planet and people.

In considering all of this, water use is clearly not the only issue embedded in the ethical and environmental abuses of fast fashion. However, the threat posed by the fast fashion industry’s excessive use and contamination of water– all while accessibility is already being limited by climate change– is not a threat to take lightly.

So maybe the next time you’re in search of a hot new wardrobe, give secondhand markets and online sellers a shot. You won’t find the unique pieces, reliable basics, or silly trinkets of your wildest dreams until you give it a try–and hey, the planet will thank you for it!