Fast Fashion

The Long Lasting Effects of Fast Fashion

Introduction 

The textile and clothing industry is the second largest sector on Africa, and South Africa (SA) is estimated to employ 80, 000 people. The rise of fast fashion is not only a threat to the security afforded to those employed by the textile industry in SA, but it also has a terrible environmental effect due to the practices in fast fashion. 

The Origins of Fast Fashion

In the early 2000s, a seemingly harmless trend in clothing manufacturing began, where brands would reproduce cheap replicas of designer fashion items and sell them at a price which enabled more people to afford them. The success of this business model has seen fast fashion take the world by storm, and to keep up with the growing demands, fast fashion brands resort to practices that are bad for both the environment and people.

The Ugly Side of Cute Clothes

To save on production costs while keeping their clothing affordable, fast fashion brands find the cheapest textile manufacturers in countries where labour laws aren’t enforced, resulting in a child or forced labour. 

These countries are often developing nations, and vital environmental laws usually applied in developed nations are ignored. This includes the contamination of rivers with harmful chemicals. In a study conducted to test pollution levels in Southern African Rivers, a river in Lesotho was found to be polluted by clothing dye used in denim. In a similar case, the Msimbazi River in Tanzania, which is close to a textile factory, was located to have the same pH level as bleach.

Environmentally-friendly Alternatives to Fast Fashion

Fast fashion is cheap for a good reason, the items do not last, and the waste ends up on landfill sites instead of upcycled or thrift. Thrifting is when a person buys secondhand clothing from a thrift store or reseller, and upcycling is when you mend or upgrade clothing items you already own. Buying from a local manufacturer is also an excellent alternative to fast fashion, and it’s a way to develop the local economy and encourage entrepreneurship and self-employment. 

Conclusion

These sustainable fashion practices can be adopted to reduce the effect of fast fashion because it has no place in an environmentally friendly world. The adverse effects of fast fashion such as overfilling landfill mines with textile waste or contaminating water sources with dyes, outweigh any positives it presents. 

 

Noluthando Khumalo

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