Cheap Sheep

Most people see fast fashion as a change in fashion between seasons which harms the environment. Fast fashion is much more than just that. It is a rotation of clothes every year, every month and even every week. These changes happen because there are often changes of trend in the fashion communities. There are so many trends that people obligate themselves to always keep up with the community. Therefore, some major brands like H&M, Zara, Shein, FashioNova and many more create a mass production of these clothes for a cheap price. This is so that everyone will buy these pieces of clothing since all these trending products are cheap, so they do not even think of the material. Everyone then becomes cheap sheep.

Fast fashion is also terrible for the environment for many reasons. All the products made by these fast fashion brands are made by suffering human beings in countries where labor costs are extremely low like Vietnam, Bangladesh, China, and Indonesia. The same people who make the clothes in your wardrobe are the same who are fighting against the exposure of toxic chemicals, overcrowding and poor air quality to just make enough to feed themselves. Because of these hindrances accidents often occur like the Ran Plaza collapse in 2013 that killed over 1,000 workers because the addition of bad infrastructure and overcrowding.

Fast fashion is not only bad for the workers but also for every other human on earth. The manufacturing of the products themselves produces over 1.2 million tons of CO2 each year and it is said that by 2030 the clothing manufacturing industry could produce up to 3 million tons of CO2. Not only does it destroy the Earth’s ozone layer, but it also uses up to 1.5 million liters of water every year. This water used is then thrown back into lakes, rivers, oceans, and seas once it has become toxic. This toxic water then expands because of diffusion and the currents and kills millions of creatures each year and even harms humans which use this water for their everyday life.

Although this fast fashion trend sounds like it is never going to end, there are some possibilities to save our world. People could start buying more from secondhand websites, thrift shops or even flea markets. A lot of people do not like the sound of this, but it is a lot better for many reasons. Not only does it help reduce manufacturing of new products, but it is also cheaper, people can find better and more unique items and most of these items are higher quality since they lasted a much longer time. Society today could also try to boycott these fast fashion brands in order for them to stop over manufacturing their products because a lot of their products end up unused. There are so many other reasons why our world today should stop buying new clothes from these massive companies each time a new trend comes out, instead we should embrace the fact that vintage clothes and products are being sold increasingly each day.

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