Fashion Needs And Consumption: Global Perspective

So now let me introduce to the global perspective of fashion.

Fashion is something now by which our society judge's our status and taste and it also plays a significant part in the economy of developing countries. And as I already said fashion is known as the second most polluting industry after Petroleum and people are unaware about this, so let's take a look into the other side.

Fast fashion is fashion now!

We want the feeling of luxury without paying full price. We want to look 'expensive-ish'.

Fast fashion-garments from a see now buy now kind of retail environment, inexpensive and widely available of-the-moment garments, has changed the way people buy them cheap and disposable. Each one of us buy so many clothes every year and half of which are worn 3 times or less, the only mass market retailer which can provide the variety right now at an average price point that anyone can afford is currently H&M and Zara. Instead of two seasons a year H&M practically have 52 seasons a year i.e each week they come with a new stuff.And that's why fast fashion is the only segment in the fashion industry that's growing faster. By selling large quantities of clothing at cheap prices, fast fashion has emerged as a dominant business model, causing garment consumption to skyrocket. While this transition is sometimes heralded as the “democratization” of fashion in which the latest styles are available to all classes of consumers, the human and environmental health risks associated with inexpensive clothing are hidden throughout the life-cycle of each garment. From the growth of water-intensive cotton, to the release of untreated dyes into local water sources, to worker’s low wages and poor working conditions; the environmental and social costs involved in textile manufacturing are widespread.

Clothing production has roughly doubled since 2000.

While people bought 60% more garments in 2014 than in 2000, they only kept the clothes for half as long.

In Europe, fashion companies went from an average offering of two collections per year in 2000 to five in 2011.

Some brands offer even more. Zara puts out 20-24 collections per year, while H&M offers 52 new collection in a year.

A lot of this clothing ends up in the dump. The equivalent of one garbage truck full of clothes is burned or dumped in a landfill every second.

In total, up to 85% of textiles go into landfills each year. That’s enough to fill the Sydney harbor annually.

Washing clothes, meanwhile, releases 500,000 tons of microfibers into the ocean each year — the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.

Many of those fibers are polyester, a plastic found in an estimated 60% of garments. Producing polyester releases two to three times more carbon emissions than cotton, and polyester does not break down in the ocean.

A 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that 35% of all micro-plastics — very small pieces of plastic that never biodegrade — in the ocean came from the laundering of synthetic textiles like polyester.Overall, micro-plastics are estimated to compose up to 31% of plastic pollution in the ocean.

The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions.That’s more emissions than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.

The fashion industry is also the second-largest consumer of water worldwide.

It takes about 700 gallons of water to produce one cotton shirt. That’s enough water for one person to drink at least eight cups per day for three-and-a-half years.

It takes about 2,000 gallons of water to produce a pair of jeans. That’s more than enough for one person to drink eight cups per day for 10 years.

That’s because both the jeans and the shirt are made from a highly water-intensive plant: cotton.

Fashion causes water-pollution problems, too. Textile dyeing is the world’s second-largest polluter of water, since the water leftover from the dyeing process is often dumped into ditches, streams, or rivers.

The dyeing process uses enough water to fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools each year.

Some apparel companies and brands are starting to buck these trends by joining initiatives to cut back on textile pollution and grow cotton more sustainably. In March, the UN launched the Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, which will coordinate efforts across agencies to make the industry less harmful. Some brands are now making Sustainable clothings and it's spreading worldwide. 

Although we donate our clothes for charity and they send the leftover clothes to other countries like Africa and Kenya, but now slowly even there much of last year's fashion is filling this year's landfills. Fast fashion brands like H&M are now taking back old clothes and trying to recycle those as well as they also send those unsold clothes to different countries and the rest are burnt. And now those countries are not taking clothes as that is destroying their market and also affecting their economy. And due to less technology these brands are unable to recycle faster and only 1% is being recycled.  So, now these clothes are going to occupy those landfill space.

In the end, I would like to conclude by saying that don't stop buying clothes,but we are not slowing down and it's affecting the rest of the industry. A small change which we can do is just by wearing our clothes longer or buying one item secondhand. Ensuring environmental justice at each stage in the global supply chain remains a challenge. Global environmental justice will be dependent upon innovations in textile development like making of sustainable fibers, corporate sustainability, trade policy, and consumer habits. And what we can do is do our part by trying to give justice to our environment!

A must watch video :  The Ugly Truth Of Fashion!