Fast Fashion

It's just so easy for us; to buy a new dress when we need to show up at that awesome party and then never wear it again. Clothes have such a short life in our life and our closets. And it's not important because of the amount of money that we payed for it.

Pieces of clothing have lost any importance to us. It's so easy for us to buy a new piece of clothing any time we want and just throw that one we do not like anymore. Even some people actually buy stuff and the never ever wear it. It just stays forgotten in their closet.

Thanks to Fast Fashion which makes clothing cheaply and quickly with a low price-tag.

But like everything that is too good, it's just not so good. And easy for me to hate.

Everything that is hiding behind that cute t-shirt you just bought for 5$, and that you can easily wear twice and throw out, is just not as cute. This way of buying and selling clothes is not sustainable. The world now consumes about 80 billion new pieces of clothing every year. This is 400% more than the amount we consumed just two decades ago. The average consumer is now purchasing 60 percent more items of clothing compared to 2000, but each garment is kept half as long.

Fast fashion uses innovative production and distribution to dramatically shorten fashion cycles. The number of fashion seasons has increased from two a year (spring/summer and fall/winter) to as many as 50-100 microseasons. Fast-changing trends and low prices have allowed people to consume more.

The problem is that cotton requires 2,700 liters of water to make one cotton shirt. Cotton farming is also using about 3 percent of the world’s arable land. More than 90% of the cotton is now genetically modified, using vast amounts of water as well as chemicals. Water use and pollution also take place during clothing production. 5 trillion liters of water is only used each year for fabric dyeing alone. That's 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Synthetic fibers like polyester have less impact on water and land than grown materials like cotton, they emit more greenhouse gasses per kilogram.

But the susteinability it's not the only thing, we don't realize it but we are completely disconnected from the people who make our clothing as 97% of items are now made overseas. Those garment workers do not share the same rights or protections that many people in the West do. They are some of the lowest paid workers in the world. The human factor of the garment industry is too big to ignore; as we consistently see the exploitation of cheap labor and the violation of human rights in many developing countries across the world.

Today we have some of the highest levels of inequality and environmental destruction the world has ever seen. We must find a way to continue to operate in a globalized world that also values the people and planet that are essential to this growth.

Global fashion brands are bigger than ever before but basically all your favorite brands are continuing to hugely profit from their use of cheaper labor in foreign countries, and keeping on polluting our planet. Just to sell us more and more, and earn more and more.

We should stop caring how we look, and start caring about the enviroment and human rights.