We tend to overlook how what we wear contributes to the exploitation of people around the world & the planet itself, but we need to be paying as much attention to the fashion industry just as much as we are realizing the toxic truths behind the food industry.
The truth of the matter is that the fashion industry is incredibly wasteful. Half of what is known as ‘fast fashion’ is disposed of in under a year. The way these products are made are often in sweatshops, keeping folks stuck in poverty working in terrible conditions. The materials being used to create these products are also being sourced in ways that are toxic to the planet. Materials like cotton are grown with industrial agricultural practices that destroy the soil and seep out toxic chemicals onto the water levels, for example.
Yet we keep producing more and more products to satisfy a market full of people that want to serve fresh looks and want to do so for cheap. Over a hundred billion garments are created annually, most of which ends up in landfills. We should be recycling these products. Many times they can be repurposed to create a whole new garment, and often they are perfectly usable clothes that should have ended up in a clothing exchange shop.
We should be aiming to always buy used clothes as much as possible. We do not need to be wastefully creating more and more garments when there are so many already available that end up thrown in the trash or forgotten in closets.
Besides from materials being sourced through industrial/toxic ways, there is also the fact that it takes 2700 liters of water to make a single cotton shirt. It takes us about two and a half years to drink that much water as a single person! But that’s not all since fabric dyeing requires 5 trillion liters of water every year altogether. That’s a lot of water!
Think about these facts next time you want to treat yourself to a new look. There are amazing options out there in used clothing stores. Stop using your money to vote for more fast fashion products, or even upscale brands that continue to contribute to the problem at a higher profit margin. Think about where these new products are coming from, who is making them, where the materials are being sourced, and if it’s really worth going through all that exploitation over and over again...
Shoutout to ECOALF, a company that creates fashion products out of plastic waste salvaged from the ocean, for putting out educational efforts that contribute to this kind of information while pushing back on trends like Black Friday. Spend your money in companies like them!