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A runway knock-off outfit or a cheap T-shirt may seem like a great buy, but when the environmental devastation from fast fashion is considered, trendy clothes aren’t such a good deal.
The textile industry is a huge consumer of water while also polluting waterways across the globe. Clothing production is also a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Fast fashion, the quick production of low-quality clothing, compounds these problems with garments that often end up in the waste stream. Shockingly, nearly a third of new clothing never makes it to a store and is destroyed before being offered for sale.
“Unfortunately, fast fashion has become very popular with consumers, but it comes at a high cost to our planet,” U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree said on the House floor last June. She shared a satellite image of a huge pile of clothing discarded in a dump in Chile. The clothing came from the U.S., Asia and Europe. As a further example, Pingree noted that of the 17 million tons of textiles generated in the U.S. in 2018, more than 11 million ended up in landfills.
To combat these problems, Pingree, along with Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washington, and Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-California, last month announced the creation of the Slow Fashion Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.
They aim to persuade the apparel industry to reduce its environmental impact. It can do so by using fewer virgin resources, making clothing from fibers that require less water and pesticides and by encouraging recycling and reuse of fabrics and garments.
Consumers also have a role to play by buying fewer clothes that they are likely to never wear, by purchasing used or repurposed clothing, and by investing in more durable, better made clothing when possible, even if it costs more. This could also benefit the U.S. textile industry as its goods often cost more than lower-quality imports from countries with more lax labor and environmental regulations.
According to one analysis, the average American buys 70 pieces of apparel per year. That’s more than one piece of clothing per week. Globally, more than 120 billion garments are made per year, about 20 for every person on the planet. About 30 percent are never sold and half of the fast fashion produced ends up in a landfill within a year.
It all adds up to millions of tons of waste in landfills and millions of tons of pollution. Members of the Slow Fashion Caucus sent a letter to President Joe Biden in July stressing the environmental consequences of fast fashion.
“Capturing the moment with sustainable fashion will not only help the United States lead the way with this economic opportunity but it will also help address some of the significant environmental challenges with textile and fashion manufacturing,” the group said in their letter. “The fashion and textile industry is estimated to be responsible for approximately 4 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States, textile waste has increased by 80 percent since 2000, making it the fastest-growing waste stream in the country.”
And, it is not sustainable. Without changes, the apparel industry could see a big drop in revenues as resource scarcity decreases its output in coming years.
To counter these trends, the Slow Fashion Caucus suggested several steps the administration could take to improve the environmental sustainability of the textile and fashion industry.
The group suggested incentives for sustainable fashion efforts; policies that support innovation and decarbonization in manufacturing, and better regulation of poor environmental practices.
“For too long, the so-called ‘fast fashion’ industry has been given free range to pollute our planet, exploit workers, and shortchange consumers,” Pingree said in late June at the launch of the Slow Fashion caucus.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she added. “As lawmakers, we can create incentives for the apparel industry and consumers to reduce natural resource consumption and engage in reusing, repairing, rewearing, and recycling textiles.”
We all have a role to play in working to ease the degradation of our planet. Our clothing choices are part of that work.
