What is Fast Fashion?
By: Caroline Jung
By: Caroline Jung
For background:
Fast fashion retailers, including Forever 21, H&M, Zara, and Fashion Nova, mimic trendy styles from expensive fashion brands and produce a mass amount of clothing in the shortest time possible without care for what happens before and after profit. It creates a culture of waste and contributes harm to the environment and the labor market. The fast fashion industry’s theme is more clothes for a lesser price.
Sweatshops are factories that break labor laws and operate for long hours, in poor conditions, and at low wages.
Greenwashing happens when a company exaggerates and labels themselves more green than they actually are or practice to be. They capitalize on the consumer demand of eco-friendly products by using broad language that doesn’t have a set legal definition.
Microfibers are particles of fibers/plastic smaller than 5mm that attract toxins (like nonylphenol), passed through the food chain, accumulate in cells and tissues, and cause chronic effects. They shed off of clothes not filtered by waste management and collect in freshwater sources.
The Citarum River in Indonesia is described as “the most polluted river in the world”; toxic chemicals like lead and mercury were identified, the water discharged from the firm was found to be very alkaline which can burn human skin and kill aquatic life, and 60% of fish species died out, forcing residents to collect plastic debris to live instead of fishing
Sources:
https://www.gao.gov/assets/80/77185.pdf
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10946-greenwashing.html
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/publication/7110/toxic-threads-polluting-paradise/