When out shopping, people don’t often put much thought into where their clothes came from, or how the production processes may have affected the environment; but they should. Clothing has a large adverse impact on the environment, and the problem only continues to grow. The developed world possesses a sustainability challenge regarding their closets. Durability of clothing has been reduced and trend cycles have accelerated, incentivizing consumers to purchase more clothing and dispose of it more frequently (Claudio 2007). However, there are a few potential solutions to this issue, from laundry filters and Cora balls to instilling regulations and restructuring the market itself. All of these solutions are necessary to mitigate the effects of fast fashion, with some being more effective than others. Some are control measures— meant to reduce the harmful effects of textile pollution—whereas others are preventative methods, meant to fix the problem at the root. They are all helpful in some manner, and are imperative to solving the issues posed by fast fashion and overconsumption.
The notion of accelerated consumption, paired with lower clothing quality, is called fast fashion. It also entails a sped up manufacturing process with little regard for the garment laborers making the clothing. Due to the rise of fast fashion, clothing has shifted from being a durable good to a disposable good, motivating consumers to buy more and keep less. Clothing was once handed down through several people to be repurposed and reused multiple times, and even passed down in wills (Blumberg and Pierre-Louis, 2022). Now, it is discarded at high rates: the average consumer tosses nearly 70 pounds of clothing a year, with 60% of new clothing purchases being tossed within the first year (Claudio 2007; “The Price of Fast Fashion” 2018). In the last fifteen years alone, the number of times an article of clothing is worn has decreased by 36%. This heightened consumption has flooded the oceans with microplastics, which negatively affect aquatic and marine life. Nearly 35% of all microplastics found in the ocean originate from synthetic textiles, with trillions more entering public water systems daily. Microplastics fall off of garments during production and general use when submerged in water. A single load of laundry can emit as many as 700,000 microplastics back into the water system (Lui et. al 2021).
Correspondingly, one of the control methods of the effects of fast fashion is in people’s laundry. As established, thousands of microplastics emerge from a simple load of laundry, but recently some new technologies have developed to stop them from entering the water system in such high amounts. Cora balls—made of recycled plastic —were designed on the principles of coral. The product aims to catch and filter plastics in water. The brand states that with each load of laundry a Cora ball could reduce the emission of microplastics by 35%, which has been partially disproven. However, this does not mean that they do not work at all. Independent researchers found that if every household in Toronto used Cora balls in their washing, they could reduce 61 to 92 billion microplastics that enter the environment at the municipal level. Or, if only 10% of the United States population used Cora balls, equivalent to 30 million water bottles would cease to exist in the water ways each year. Not to mention, Cora balls are not the most effective remover of microplastics from laundry. The Guppyfriend bag acts as a filter to reduce emission of microplastics. Dirty laundry is placed in it, and then the bag is placed into the washing machine. In the case of the Guppyfriend bag in particular, not only was it proven to collect the emitted microplastics, it actually reduced the shedding of microplastics to begin with. Other non name-brand laundry bags proved to work, but not with the same efficacy of the Guppyfriend: likely due to a difference in the shape of the holes. (Ramasamy, R. and Subramanian, R.B. 2021) In a separate study, the Guppyfriend demonstrated a nearly 40% reduction in the transmission of microplastics. Additionally, it was concluded that the bag did not interfere with the cleaning process: stains of cream cheese and blackcurrant were reported to be removed after being washed in the Guppyfriend (Kärkkäinen, N. and Sillanpaa, M. 2020;2021). Despite these two products being very promising, there are a few drawbacks. Both products rely on the user to clean it after each wash, which may deter some from using them— as well as the fact that they may not dispose of the microplastics appropriately. Since the Cora ball is made from recycled materials, it is still inherently plastic, and will nonetheless shed microplastics over time; the same can be said for the Guppyfriend, with it being made out of nylon (Ramasamy, R. and Subramanian, R.B. 2021: Kärkkäinen, N. and Sillanpaa, M. 2020;2021). Regardless, these are a great start at mitigating the effects of fast fashion. Larger solutions will be more effective in the long run, but these two products allow individuals to contribute, and are still imperative.
Moreover, third party certification and rating entities aid in holding companies accountable, as well as promoting sustainable and ethical methods of production. Original fair trade movements sought to rectify trade injustice, and hoped to overcome the division between producers in the Global South and consumers in the Global North (Kemper, L. and Partzsch, L. 2019). Fair trade certifications denote a product being produced with laborers in mind, as well as a general notion of sustainability. Fair trade is a broad term that can exist under many different organizations, but the most famous is the Fair Trade Certified/Fair Trade USA nonprofit organization. When their certification is on the tag of an item of clothing, the consumer knows it was produced with safe working conditions, environmental protections, and community development initiatives (Fair Trade Certified 2022). Other organizations include the Better Cotton Initiative, Cotton made in Africa, the European Union Organic Regulation/Ecolabel, and Naturland. These certification organizations bring environmental issues onto public agendas, such as water conservation through the BCI, highlighting that political agenda-setting increasingly happens in the market sphere. Consumers who wish to obtain more environmentally conscious products can look for certification initiatives on clothing tags to ensure that they are not unwillingly supporting detrimental practices. Producers hope that consumers will put their money where their mouth is, and voluntarily pay a higher price for their products, in turn avoiding purchasing non-certified products. Certified cotton now makes up approximately 10% of the world’s cotton, with inclinations that it will only continue to grow. The Better Cotton Initiative alone stands to certify 6.89% of global seed cotton production and 6.4% of the global cotton area, working with over 750,000 farmers certifying over two metric tons of cotton lint in one growing season from over 2.2 million hectares in 23 countries (Kemper, L. and Partzsch, L. 2019). These certifications allow consumers to thoughtfully make purchasing decisions, and hold companies that wish to be certified accountable. Although this solution is not an outright ending of fast fashion, it is still integral to achieving sustainable fashion.
On another note, a shift away from the current market system would greatly reverse fast fashion. Fast fashion is able to persist due to the nature of capitalism: the contemporary economic model is centered on unlimited economic expansion that equates human welfare to increasing material well-being (Ozdamar Ertekin, Z. and Atik, D. 2015). Consumers are fed media campaigns at a constant rate to push them to purchase more clothing; study participants reported distress generated by a multitude of seemingly inescapable prompts from the fashion system such as marketing and social media, merchandising, and seasonal changes (Joyner Armstrong et. al 2016). These marketing strategies have created a competitive social scale, preying on young women to uphold the unrealistic standards of beauty perpetuated by the fashion industry. This places enormous pressure on women to pursue these standards, which have negative effects on body image and self-esteem. In the sixteenth century, opulent gowns and frilly neck ruffs were reserved only for the elite: very few could afford the sheer amount of materials required. Once a royal was through with their gown, they would pass it onto a lesser member of the elite, who would wear it for a period of time. They would then pass it onto their lady’s maid, who would repurpose the grandeur into functional clothing for her whole family, who would then pass it onto a less fortunate family when through of its use, and so on, until it became rags (Blumberg and Pierre-Louis, 2022). In the twenty-first century, anyone can acquire fashionable clothing for relatively little money: the consumption of clothing has become competitive rather than collaborative. Consumers attempt to acquire status by emulating those with more wealth and power, considering there is still prestige and status associated with particular clothing brands and labels (Joyner Armstrong et. al 2016). Trends cycle at a rate that is too fast to need clothing that is durable. In order to keep up with one’s social image they will have to buy new clothing at least once every two to three weeks. A solution to this is absolutely necessary to reduce the effects of fast fashion, and shifting away from this system would allow that.
An economic paradigm shift towards slow fashion would curb the negative effects of such practices. Where fast fashion denotes the speed at which the trends and manufacturing process move, slow fashion denotes slowing down consumption and also protecting the well-being of the workers, communities, and the environment (Ozdamar Ertekin, Z. and Atik, D. 2015). Implementing slow fashion would have multiple different steps, with varying degrees of intensity. The first step would be to place home economics back into intermediate and secondary schools. Up until the 1960s, sewing was a common practice taught to nearly everyone. Thus, everyone mended their clothing and darned their socks, making their garments last longer. Today’s flimsy garments fall apart quickly, and learning how to fix them to increase their longevity would delay many garments from landfills (Blumberg and Pierre-Louis, 2022; Ozdamar Ertekin, Z. and Atik, D. 2015). The second step would be to intercept fashion students while they are still in school to promote sustainable and ethical creation of fashions. Many current programs emphasize profit maximization and industrialization, creating graduates who feed into the ideas of fast fashion, only worsening the problem. If these fashion programs were rejuvenated to emphasize durability and longevity, these graduates would go forward into the fashion industry making their decisions with the environment in mind (Joyner Armstrong et. al 2016). Additionally, there must be a shift in marketing strategies away from consuming as much as possible — instead focusing on purchasing quality goods. Finally, the last step would be to shift away from corporations altogether, in favor of smaller, local fashion businesses with personal ties to the area around them. This would likely increase the price of clothing, and in exchange people would purchase fewer items. The items that they would purchase, however, would be durable and able to withstand years of use. (Ozdamar Ertekin, Z. and Atik, D. 2015). This method of paradigm shift would uproot the cause of fast fashion and deter people from purchasing disposable clothing, which would pressure businesses to adopt more environmentally friendly procedures.
In conclusion, the garment industry has allowed for the emergence of fast fashion due to the market desire to maximize profits and correlate personal wellbeing with material items, pressuring consumers into buying more clothing at cheaper prices. This has caused garments to be made with lower quality materials that shed microplastics at an extremely high rate. There are strategies to curb waste — from Cora balls to the Guppyfriend bag — that serve their purpose in the short term, but will not change the landscape of fast fashion in the long term. Third party certification organizations such as Fair Trade USA and Better Cotton Initiative aid in promoting sustainable sources for fashion, but do not alter why consumers buy. Changing the economic paradigm would allow for fast fashion to fall and slow fashion to rise, ultimately creating a more sustainable fashion industry.
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