SLOWING down on fast fashion
As the seasons change, so do our wardrobes. We switch out the tanks for the sweaters, the shorts for the jeans, or if you’re from the Pacific Northwest, maybe you’ll be keeping the Birkenstocks year-round. With these changes comes the urge to stay up to date on the latest fashion trends, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, you’re probably hitting the online shops more frequently these days.
When the time comes to transition to fall, the Action Mary team urges you to take fast fashion out of your haul this season.
What is fast fashion? Fast fashion is defined as taking highly fashionable trends straight from the runway and mass-producing items at a low cost to the consumer. Some notable brands include Fashion Nova, Shein, and Zara, whose low prices lead people in droves to their sites to snag fashion pieces at, what seems to be, an impossibly low cost. But the real cost lies in their business model’s real-world impacts. These business models are infamous for being exploitative to both the workers tasked with churning out these pieces and has a detrimental impact on the environment.
Aside from fast fashion, the fashion industry in general can share part of the blame for negative environmental impacts. One cotton t-shirt and a pair of jeans takes around 700 and 2,000 gallons of water to produce, respectively. This poses not only a water usage problem, but water used for textile dyeing is often dumped into streams and rivers, making it the world’s second largest water polluter.
What can be done about these issues? Some alternatives to slowing down our contributions to our fashion carbon footprint is to buy hemp clothing, do your own research on sustainable fashion brands, or (safely) venture out to your nearest thrift shop for your next clothing purchase. There are even websites that take thrift shops online, so you can shop sustainably from the comfort of your own home.
With the availability of so many ethical and sustainable fashion choices, also comes the possibility of corporate greenwashing, or a company conveying a more ‘green ideal’ within their brand to make their products seem more environmentally sound than they actually are. As with every decision you make, we at Action Mary urge you to spend some time researching brands before purchasing to draw your own conclusions.
So, whether you’re buying some new outfits for school, work, or preparing for the cold months ahead, think about shopping sustainably this season to do your part. The choice is yours (and ours!) to save our planet. We only get one.
