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FAST FASHION:
I want it know and I want it cheap
Article by Giulia Serio
Fast fashion has become an integral part of consumers’ experience as an easy and fun way to stay trendy without spending a fortune. While fast fashion’s origins began in the 1960s, it has gained momentum at the turn of the 21st century. With time, it has become increasingly admirable to combine trendy low-cost fashion with high fashion items.
Today, the concept of fast fashion is challenged by educated consumers and environmentalists worldwide, calling for its replacement with sustainable fashion, eco fashion, slow fashion, or ethical fashion. And what is about fast fashions environmental impact? Can fashion ever be 100% sustainable?
1. What is fast fashion?
The term “fast fashion” refers to “cheaply produced and priced garments that copy the latest catwalk styles and get pumped quickly through stores in order to maximize on current trends”.
The fast fashion model is so-called because it involves the rapid design, production, distribution, and marketing of clothing, which means that retailers can pull large quantities of greater product variety and allow consumers to get more fashion and differentiated product at a low price.
The term was first used at the beginning of the 1990s, when Zara landed in New York. “Fast fashion” was coined by the New York Times to describe Zara’s mission to take only 15 days for a garment to go from the design stage to the stores. The biggest players in the fast fashion world include Zara, UNIQLO, Forever21 and H&M.
2. Why is Fast Fashion Bad?
The fashion industry is the third-largest manufacturing sector after the automotive and technology industries and it’s responsible for 10% of the annual global carbon emissions, as much as the European Union. According to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, emissions from textile manufacturing alone are projected to skyrocket by 60% by 2030.
The most common fabric in the clothing industry is the oil-based polyester. Being durable, lightweight, and cheap, it may take hundreds of years to decompose. The fashion industry is also wasteful when considering its water consumption. Annually, it uses 93 billion cubic meters of water – enough to meet the needs of five million people. Furthermore, around 20% of global wastewater comes from the treatment of fabrics and its dyeing process.
To satisfy the growing demand of the new trends, the designers and producers of the fast fashion brands are often underpaid yet overworked, having to meet tight deadlines over a short time span. There are cases indicating fast fashion workers work gruesome 14 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, in unsafe and unhealthy conditions.
Not only is the production process unsustainable, but so is the fast fashion’s end-of-life. Less than 1% of used clothing is recycled into new garments, whereas most are being incinerated or end up in landfills.
The time it takes for a product to go through the supply chain, from design to purchase, is called a “lead time”. In 2012, Zara was able to design, produce and deliver a new garment in two weeks; Forever 21 in six weeks and H&M in eight weeks.
Apparel sales have risen dramatically in recent years, thanks to several trends that appear likely to continue. Zara offers 24 new clothing collections each year; H&M offers 12 to 16 and refreshes them weekly. Among all European apparel companies, the average number of clothing collections has more than doubled, from two a year in 2000 to about five a year in 2011.
While sales growth has been robust around the world, emerging economies have seen especially large rises in clothing sales, as more people in them have joined the middle class. In five large developing countries—Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Russia—apparel sales grew eight times faster than in Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
3. The relationship between fabric and waste
So far, clothing companies have been unable to match their sales gains with commensurate improvements in environmental and social performance. Cotton, accounting for about 30% of all textile fiber consumption, is usually grown using a lot of water, pesticides, and fertilizer. Since countries with large fabric- and apparel-making industries rely mainly on fossil fuels for energy production, we estimate that making 1 kilogram of fabric generates an average of 23 kilograms of greenhouse gases.
Washing and drying 1 kilogram of clothing over its entire life cycle, using typical methods, creates 11 kilograms of greenhouse gases, an amount that companies could reduce by altering fabrics and clothing designs.
When it comes to disposing of clothing, current technologies cannot reliably turn unwanted apparel into fibers that could be used to make new goods: markets are not large enough to absorb the volume of material that would come from recycling clothes. As a result, for every 5 garments produced, the equivalent of 3 end up in a landfill or incinerated each year. Germany outperforms most countries by collecting almost three-quarters of all used clothing, reusing half and recycling one-quarter. Elsewhere, collection rates are far lower: 15 percent in the United States, 12 percent in Japan, and 10 percent in China.
4. Do as I Say, Not as I Do
Most discouragingly, statements from fast fashion brands - such as Primark - that promise to “make more sustainable fashion affordable for all” are representative of the shift in zeitgeist. But several common steps that companies are taking are not having their intended effect.
When Timberland issued its first corporate social responsibility report (CSR) in 2002, it was an outlier. Two decades later, all public fashion companies present their environmental, social, and governance performance in thicker forms, even though most CSR reports do not accurately quantify the full carbon emissions profile of fashion brands and remain unaudited by external parties.
Worse yet, recycling does little to limit environmental damage while exacerbating inequality. Recycling bins in H&M and Zara stores are a guilt-free placebo that encourages ever more consumption. At the same time, a recent life cycle analysis (LCA) on cotton jeans revealed that the climate change impact of buying and disposing of a pair of jeans is almost the same as upcycling the jeans into a new pair.
While these new business models are attracting capital, it is not yet clear if they are viable businesses. For example, Rent the Runway has burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and remains unprofitable. According to their figures, Rent the Runway lost $171 million on $159 million of revenue in 2020 – more than a decade after it was founded
5. What’s Next? What then, can be done?
Projections forecast that the fashion industry will continue to grow over the next decade and the trends that have powered its growth will overwhelm gains associated with bio-based materials and new business models. Unit growth will continue to be concentrated in lower cost, more damaging synthetics fiber products thereby exacerbating a raft of other environmental challenges including water scarcity and the growth of microplastics.
Remember: less unsustainable is not sustainable.
Fashion companies should not be allowed to simultaneously profess their commitment to sustainability, while opposing regulatory proposals that deliver the same end. Nike, for example gets a poor rating from ClimateVoice for lobbying (as a member of the Business Roundtable) against the Build Back Better legislation and its provisions to address climate change.
Ultimately, businesses must disclose their lobbying efforts. To demonstrate progress, stewardship reports should become mandatory, more quantitative, thinner, more attune to planetary thresholds, and subjected to annual external audits.
6. Rewrite the Rules
Government rule makers must price negative externalities.
A governmental committee in the UK has also recommended a tax on virgin plastic (that would cover polyester). For the fashion industry, this would increase the price of synthetics making natural materials more attractive.
At the same time, governments should adopt extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation (as has been done in California for several categories, including carpets, mattresses, and paint). Such laws require manufacturers to pay up front for the costs of disposal of their goods.
At present, a law is being developed in the state of New York that would mandate supply-chain mapping, carbon emissions reductions in line with a 1.5-degree Celsius scenario and reporting of wages as compared to payment of a living wage. Brands with more than $100 million in revenue that are unable to live up to these standards would be fined 2% of revenue.
Conclusione
La situazione italiana nell’ambito delle modalità e delle tempistiche di svolgimento del processo in ambito civile e penale sembra non essere cambiata nel corso degli anni.
Certamente vi sono stati miglioramenti a seguito delle condanne ricevute da parte dell’Unione Europea, ma la lentezza delle decisioni è divenuta ormai un tratto caratteristico del nostro sistema giurisdizionale, che trasforma una forma di protezione e di garanzia in un iter lesivo dei diritti del singolo cittadino, contaminato da errori giudiziali, pregiudizi investigativi e cronica lentezza, ormai associata ad un modus operandi prettamente italiano.