The real cost of fast fashion

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In your closet, there’s a good chance that at least one item of clothing you own came from a fast fashion brand. 

Fast fashion is a term used to describe clothing that is produced in high volumes to consume more often and made at a cheap rate following current fashion. 

Affordable and trendy clothes appeal to many, including post-secondary students who are often on a tight budget and are under social pressure not only to look good, but fit in. 

According to ThredUP’s Gen Z Fast Fashion Report, one in three college students said they feel addicted to fast fashion, while 72 per cent reported that they have shopped for this type of clothing in the past year. However, nearly 65 per cent said they want to shop more sustainably. 

The fast fashion industry earned $91 billion last year, and is expected to make $99 billion by the end of 2022, according to the Fast Fashion Global Market Report 2022. The report predicts that the industry will grow almost nine per cent each year. 

With the rapid increase in clothing production, it can be detrimental to the environment due to its practices of high water consumption, high carbon emissions, and unwanted or torn clothes ending up in landfills. 

From a business perspective, fast fashion clothing is marketed strategically by companies who respond quickly to fashion trends, sell them at an affordable price and, in some cases, display them as a luxury brand. 

Jimmy Choi, fashion marketing and business instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, says many problems come with this type of business model. 

“There [are] a lot of problems regarding creativity or intellectual property,” Choi says. “But on the same side, the problem is the environmental impact being associated with the speed of consumption, speed of production, and quantity versus the low quality they provide.” 

“As it says in their name, fast fashion has so much [focus] on speed and quantity that it actually harms the environment in mass. The process of creating fast fashion clothing involves first companies researching fashion design and trends online through blogs, websites, and ‘collections,’” he says. 

Then the design is copied at a low cost through cheap materials and labour like sweatshops with poor working conditions in developing countries. Soon after, clothes are shipped and transported worldwide, and the cycle repeats. 

“With their mass production, they can push out those designs at such a fast pace instead of taking time to design, create, and think about the design aspects,” he says.

Although it’s not ideal to shop for fast fashion clothing, Choi says he understands it can be a tight spot for students or people on a budget. 

“In some aspects, [it’s] understandable because I’ve been in that situation too when I was young. It’s not only associated with age, but your income level.” 

The Apparel Industry and the Lasting Impact of Fast Fashion study found that most fast fashion shoppers are between the ages of 18 and 24, which are often students with low incomes. 

When the pandemic began in 2020, many fast fashion companies like Shein saw an increase in popularity through social media for their affordable and trendy clothes. With the spike in sales, the company is now valued at $100 billion which “has become more valuable than H&M and Zara combined.” 

Over the last two years of the pandemic, Choi says he’s seen an increase in online clothes shopping due to more people staying home. 

“What a lot of research and business articles pointed out was the increase of returning [items], which is part of consumption,” he says. “If you buy $100 worth of goods, you get free, fast shipping.” 

“But if it doesn’t fit, you need to ship it back [and] that increases the carbon footprint. So that’s one of the downsides of purchasing a lot of clothing online.” 

In 2020, returns accounted for an average of 10 per cent of retail sales in the United States compared to 16 per cent last year, according to Forbes. 

While there has been an increase in online clothes shopping and returns throughout the pandemic, Choi says it’s important for consumers to be educated and know there are ways people can shop more eco-friendly. 

“The simple question is, ‘at what cost are we doing this?’” he says. “You [can get a] t-shirt for $3 to $5, [but] if you think about the actual living wage, working conditions or even the environmental impact, someone else is paying for that.” 

He says education on eco-friendly clothing can be done through the “power of the internet” and social media. 

Good On You, a fashion brand rating website and mobile app, is one of the many online resources people can use to see where they can shop for their clothes. It offers brand ratings, articles about fashion brands impact on people, animals and the planet, and an ethical brand directory to research before buying a particular brand. 

Other resources people can use are B Corp, Fashion Takes Action and Fashion Revolution, he says. 

Although it can be challenging to buy affordable and eco-friendly clothing, post-secondary institutions like KPU and the University of British Columbia are trying to change that.  

Stephanie Phillips, KPU textile design instructor, is starting her research on biodegradable functional materials this semester as chair on the Next-Generation Design over the next five years. She will focus on enhanced natural materials that remain recyclable and can be used in the apparel industry. 

Phillips will look into various materials from nature, such as cotton, linen and silks, and modify them, possibly using biopolymers and coatings, and ensure that every part of the clothing can be disposed of in some way. She will work with students at the Wilson School of Design and external companies. 

Although Phillips is still in the planning stages of her research, she says she is excited to work on it and have the support. 

“What’s most exciting is the amount of support that we have both from inside KPU in regards to sustainability, as well as the business environment in terms of apparel in the Lower Mainland,” Phillips says. 

“So they are looking to grow in regards to how sustainability is implemented in their business. Being able to engage at that level is really exciting.” 

However, the process of creating sustainable clothing and the life cycle can be complex, Phillips says. 

“In the broader perspective, sustainability is action from every single step of a process, including the user, the consumer and all the way to [the] end of life,” she says. “So, sustainability really has to do with everything starting from raw material.” 

She says the material has to come from ethical sources, such as minimizing harmful crop practices like pesticides and recycling materials properly, producing fabric that is not using harmful chemicals, standard living wages and labour practices for workers, and a low carbon footprint on transportation and shipping. 

“Then it needs to be sold in stores that are ethically run, low energy. Then the consumer gets it, and most of the time that’s when the brand involvement pretty much ends,” she says, adding that most of the other half is how we take care of our clothes. 

“We need to be active participants in our clothing. How we wash it, the energy used in washing is important as well as the chemicals that go in our washing machines,” she says. “If you can wash on cold and hang to dry, you are doing a ton of things for the planet.” 

According to Water Docs, it takes 2,700 litres of water to make one cotton t-shirt and depending on the washing machine, it can be anywhere between 100 to 200 litres per load. Choosing more eco-friendly clothing alternatives and limiting water consumption when washing can make a huge difference in the environment. 

“And then after we’re done with them, how do they get recycled? When we send our clothing, even if we’re sending it to charity, only a small portion of that gets recycled,” she says. 

In 2019, 80 per cent of Canadian households donated clothing or gave it away, a decrease from 89 per cent in 2017. There was also an increase in putting clothes in the garbage, which rose from 13 per cent to 21 per cent. 

“A lot of our major sustainability isn’t going to come from the company, it’s going to come from us because it’s around our behaviour,” she says. “We need companies to be developing things that aren’t bad for the environment, that aren’t energy wasteful, that don’t poison anyone and pay people living wages.” 

“But how we end up buying, our behaviour, influences all of it and is probably the most important piece.” 

When Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) events and engagement manager for UBC Sustainability, Tim Herron kept hearing more about sustainable fashion around him, he became interested in learning more about how it works. 

Herron created Sustainable Fashion Week, where students, staff, and faculty at UBC can come together to learn about the fast fashion industry’s social and environmental impacts. 

They offer various events like talks from experts in the field and interactive activities like a clothing repair workshop and their thrifting challenge. Participants were matched with “master thrifters” and given $50 to upgrade their wardrobe. 

“Part of the message of Sustainable Fashion Week to borrow from Aja Barber is that the most sustainable piece of clothing is one that you already own,” Herron says. “It’s good for us to be thinking in terms of the longevity of clothing.” 

Herron says last year and this year, the event was online due to the pandemic and is hoping to bring it back in-person in April next year. During the virtual sessions, he says a previous student who created a non-profit advocating for sustainable fashion called Threading Change helped Herron gather guest speakers to organize the program fairly quickly. 

“We had some interesting speakers talking about the impacts in their countries,” Herron says. “Like many things to do with climate change, it’s affecting places that are contributing the least to the climate emergency, and often are far away from here.” 

“So the dumping of clothes, particularly in Africa, is pretty appalling when you actually see it up close and talk to people who are affected by it.” 

He says thrifting, repairing your clothes when needed and investing in good quality clothing that lasts longer are some ways students can reduce textile waste while on a budget. 

“Our thrifting challenge is a great demonstration of what you can do, you can get really amazing pieces of clothing,” Herron says. “A lot of it’s very repairable and we have such a disposable culture where it’s … throw it out, get another one.” 

“When clothing is very cheap, someone paid the price … and somewhere along the line, somebody picked up the difference for it.” 

As post-secondary institutions continue finding new ways to create eco-friendly clothing or alternatives, Phillips says that while it is still a learning process, educating students and investing in research is important to help move forward.

“The problem with sustainable fashion [and] apparel is it can’t be done all at once. The process of sustainability has to be integrated from the very beginning to the very end,” she says. “One of the things we do at the Wilson School of Design is we teach sustainability all the time, it’s not a course.”

“It’s always there so that when students go out into the industry, they are the ones who can have those conversations with sustainability officers, material managers, all of those things so that they’re ready for that shift in how materials are thought of as being linear to something more circular.”

“It’s also part of our job in academia to really push [research] forward,” she says. “The research piece is an important part of how we move sustainability forward as well.”