Fast Fashion is getting greener.
The fashion industry, especially fast fashion, is heeding the immense criticism and pressure to lessen its environmental impact. Fast fashion refers to businesses where affordable trendy clothing is quickly produced, priced cheaply, and then replaced by consumers when trends change, or when the garments need repair.. Examples of fast fashion companies are H & M and Forever 21. These companies have the items in stock for immediate gratification, they can pivot when new trends appear, and the clothing is relatively cheap.
Fast fashion is terrible for the environment because consumers operate on a ‘throw it away’ mindset. That creates waste, and precious resources are used to produce more clothing. It is very difficult to recycle textiles, and some recycling programs have had little positive impact.
- Today, the average American buys about 68 new items of clothing annually.
- As of April 2023, Americans spent on average $1,700 annually on cheap new clothes.
- In the fashion industry, a truckload of used textiles is either buried or incinerated globally every second.
- 92 million tons of garments end up in landfills annually.
- The clothes bought from fast fashion brands are usually thrown away within a year from purchase.
- The Ellen MacArthur Foundation reports that less than 1% of fibre used to produce clothing is recycled to make new clothing.
Repairing existing clothing is hoped to be the best solution for slowing the waste and reducing the fashion industry’s carbon footprint. Zara, Uniqlo, H & M and Cos are all launching nationwide repair services to encourage consumers to repair their items, not throw them out. The companies are rolling out their new repair programs slowly, H & M currently has repair stations in seven cities worldwide and would like to double its sales this decade and cut its environmental impact by half. Uniqlo has opened five Re.Uniqlo Studios in the U.S., and a total of 21 worldwide. Customers can pay $5.00 for a simple repair or have their items made into something new.
Other fashion companies (not all fast fashion) that offer repair or recycling services:
Most luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta, Hermès, and Barbour
Levi
Patagonia
Filson
Nudie Jeans
L.L. Bean
Net-a-Porter
Mr. Porter
The Outnet
Zappos offers recycling of most clothing items, with free shipping!
Other green initiatives in the fashion world:
Lululemon joined Australian recycling company Samsara Eco to make recycled nylon and polyester from the apparel waste generated by Lululemon’s athletic clothes. They will use the nylon and polyester to make brand-new clothes.
Sephora started a program called Beauty (Re) Purposed to target hard-to-recycle packaging waste in the beauty industry.
H & M’s Close the Loop program allows customers to bring their unwanted clothing to designated store recycling bins and get a coupon towards their next purchase.
Luxury shoe brand Sarah Flint, encourages customers to extend the life of the shoes they create, by offering a SEQUEL platform on their website where customers can sell Sarah Flint shoes they no longer wear.
Tatiana Schlossberg, journalist, and author wrote Inconspicuous Consumption in 2019 condemning Fast Fashion. She both highlights the waste and offers ideas about how we can each reduce it. Here is our ASE review, Inconspicuous Consumption.
