The Problem With Fast Fashion: How the Fashion Clothes Industry is Damaging the Environment

Millennials and their younger cousins yearn for instant gratification – and fast fashion delivers that, in bucketloads. When a celebrity steps out in new garments on Social Media or Fashion Week announces a new season, the global audience wants the same clothing – and they don’t want to wait.

That’s fast fashion in a nutshell. It's how manufacturers replicate what we've seen moments after models walk down the catwalk or a celebrity posts a picture on Instagram. 

The fast fashion industry makes a lot of quick money – brands that embrace this fast type of fashion like Zara and H&M, as well as online outlets like American brand Fashion Nova which produce mass duplicates of these fashion outfits as soon as social media starts talking about them. 

What is Fast Fashion?

Fast fashion means grabbing new trends the moment they appear on Social Media and translating them for the public fast, at a price they can afford. 

Those who want to be on trend need to remain relevant. Yesterday we bought an item because we thought it was popular. Today we don't think it's fashionable anymore, so we discard it. And this attitude is creating major environmental and climate issues.

The Psychology of Fast Fashion

It should come as no surprise. The global fast fashion industry is changing how we look at fashion, and clothing production in general. We don't look at the clothing in our wardrobes as precious pieces that people have made beautifully. Sadly, we don't consider them classic pieces that can withstand the test of time. We look at these pieces in a whole new light. 

The antithesis of fast fashion is slow fashion – clothes created with care, often by hand, using quality natural fabrics like cotton and linen. 

Since fast fashion brands became so popular, clothes aren’t valuable anymore. Fast fashion is cheap, new, changeable, and easily discarded. It’s on trend this week, and out of fashion by the following Monday. Trends change so quickly that it’s hard to keep up.

Consider These Statistics

Recently, McKinsey researched the US ‘fast fashion industry formula’, as they call it. The news is scary: approximately every five days, someone will buy something new to wear. So in a year, that is approximately 73 fast clothes items. 

Compare that to 1960 when many news reports revealed that the average American bought less than 25 garments annually. They spent about 10% of their income on clothing. They’re currently buying three times that amount on fast fashion

How Fast Fashion is Harming the Environment

If we look at peoples’ needs for ‘instant gratification’, having something the moment it becomes a trend, we’ll find plenty of problems with the biggest fast fashion brands. Fast items are not sustainable fashion, for starters. As quickly as they become a trend, they lose their lustre. And then, we throw the fast item away – into landfills.

We can't easily recycle a fast fashion garment. To make this fast item affordable, manufacturers use cheaper fabrics that are usually synthetic and flawed. Factories don't make these fast clothes well – they don't make fast fashion with care, as people only want to wear it a few times. 

As a result, the items often fall apart. But the wearer doesn’t find this a problem, because they don't expect fast fashion to last. Fast is a fad, a trend, and when a trend is over, there’s plenty to take its place.

Why is Fast Fashion bad?

People talk about sustainability all the time, yet fast fashion isn’t sustainable at all. The impact fast fashion has on the environment is scary. The ideal is a circular economy where producing and consuming products extends a product’s life. That circular economy is basically what sustainability is all about.

Aside from fast fashion being discarded in landfills, there is plenty more wrong with unsustainable fashion.

The bad news is that one of the biggest problems with this type of garment is that those involved in its manufacture aren’t well looked after. Labour conditions for industry garment workers in fast fashion brands are horrific. And garment workers everywhere suffer, from India and the rest of Asia to Africa and Latin America.

Tackling Fast Fashion Head on

Organisations like the United Nations have created programmes to deal with the global fast fashion industry and other sustainability issues. There’s UNEP (The United Nations Environmental Programme), an authority on the environment with programmes that focus on environmental justice regarding the climate, nature, sustainable development, and much more.

Oxfam Education provides resources and support for educating young learners about the environment and the global impact people have on our planet. United States magazines like Good Housekeeping have initiatives like the Sustainable Innovation Awards, which recognise companies producing products more sustainably.

Here’s some good local news – in the UK, the BBC adopts numerous sustainability strategies, including programmes that constantly update viewers on how to be more sustainable. You can join every movement to be a part of sustainability.

And closer to home, check out how we pioneer sustainability at maake.

The True Cost of Cheap Clothing

When clothing is cheap, we can buy more of it. But this comes at a major cost to the environment, the climate, and the people living in this environment. With clothing being so cheap, consumer demand has increased. 

The more shopping guides there are for shoppers to buy, the more clothing is produced. And the more production there is, the more ends up in landfills.

Most fast fashion production occurs in poor countries where garment workers are happy to work for a pittance. Currently, these non-sustainable fashion companies employ around 300 million people globally. 

UK data indicates the global fashion industry will exceed £2.4 trillion by 2030. We need to ensure that this industry is more sustainable by that time. But that’s not easy. Currently,  production by fast fashion brands involves using cheap textile dyes and plenty of synthetic fabrics. Fast fashion brands are also responsible for consuming plenty of water and energy.

The More Sustainable Clothing Alternative

It’s important to choose local, more sustainable fabrics for fashion products. Look at our magnificent fabric selection. The fabrics we use at maake are manufactured in the most sustainable manner possible.

What Fast Fashion is Doing to the UK Economy

An article in the New York Times entitled How Fast Fashion Became Faster — and Worse for the Earth describes the rise of these types of fashion retailers and brands: 

“During the 1990s, retailers began introducing trendy, cheap clothes that are poorly made every week that became cheap, convenient and consumable.”

The article discusses how fast fashion has become a ‘privilege’. 

“It is a privilege to buy clothes solely for their style," the article says about the fast fashion industry, "and it is a privilege to ignore the environmental and climate consequences of doing so. 

"In reality, the aggressive cycle of consumption perpetuated by fast fashion means that the clothes we wear are now more likely than ever to end up as part of the 92 million tons of textile waste produced annually.”

Sad Fast Fashion Facts

But that’s not the whole story. Online retailers that sprung up and became ever-popular during the Pandemic shipped their products to consumers. The article explains: “They only exacerbated the annual billion tons of greenhouse gasses released by shipping.”

The synthetic fibres and chemicals we use to produce these fashion brands are also toxic to the environment, which, the article tells us, is “responsible for 35 percent of the microplastics contaminating our oceans and can subsequently take centuries to decompose in landfills.”

The Global Environmental Impact on the Fashion Industry

Let's look at what the fast fashion industry and brands are doing to the environment and the climate, and why this is not environmentally friendly or ethical...

Fabric Waste

In 2024, fast fashion statistics showed UK clothing production involved 350,00 tonnes of textile waste sent to landfills every year. We are Europe’s fourth-largest producer of fabric waste, generating 206,456 tonnes annually. Each British person throws away 3.1kg of textiles in 12 months on average, and 1.7kg of that ends in landfill.

CO2 Emissions

Aside from ending up in landfills, this type of fashion also has a terrible environmental impact regarding carbon emissions. Besides the vast amount of waste ending up in landfills, the fast fashion industry’s impact on the environment is through carbon emissions because of fossil fuels.

By 2050, along with all the clothes in landfills, the fast fashion industry will account for 10% of CO2 emissions. In fact, by 2050 we’ll have used up a quarter of the carbon budget globally.

How does this happen? When factories transport fast fashion clothes to retailers, carbon emissions are released. After that, people who buy the items travel to purchase them in stores or they are delivered. That’s more carbon emissions.

Then, of course, there’s discarding those fast fashion items and transporting them to landfills – that also emits carbon. It’s a never-ending cycle.

Water Pollution

Aside from carbon emissions, there’s also water pollution action. We create much of fast fashion out of synthetic fibres containing microplastics. When we wash these items, or when they are in a landfill and it rains, the fabric releases microplastics. 

These tiny elements eventually land up in the sea, harming marine life. Pollution happens because those microplastics end up being eaten by marine life.

Harsh Working Conditions

Many factories mass-producing this unsustainable fashion don’t have a safe, healthy working environment. We’ve all heard stories about sweatshops where the health of workers is not considered, hazardous labour conditions, low wages, and ridiculously long working hours. This is violating workers’ basic human rights and impacting their health.

Give Fabric & Clothes a Second Life

Some tips to consider to help ensure fabric lasts longer, is more sustainable, and has low environmental impact:

• Extend the life of your clothes by washing them with gentle detergent.
• Instead of discarding a garment – fix it.
• Donate what you don’t wear. Many stores online and on the high street sell preloved clothes.
• Take advantage of maake’s free upcycling offer – order your upcycling bagof plain fabric remnants and make your products out of recycled fabric.

Why Slow Fashion is the Better Choice

It makes sense to avoid the fast fashion industry and choose slow fashion. What does ‘slow fashion’ mean? It involves buying clothes that are sustainable, ethical, and good quality. This clothing is friendly to the environment and ultimately good for your health!

This is how we used to look at a garment before fast fashion reared its head. This is the only way we can look toward a more sustainable future.

To do this:

• Choose quality over quantity.
• Select classic, timeless outfits that will withstand the test of time.
• Buy clothing that factories have made sustainably, and where they treat workers well.
• Consider buying quality second-hand clothes you give old clothes a new life.

Follow our low Waste Example

• maake has a zero waste (low waste) policy – we send excess fabric and cut-offs to local charities, schools, and educational establishments to reuse.
• All the printing machines we use have energy-saving cut-off switches that reduce energy consumption when idle. That’s how we keep our energy consumption low.
• When we print designs on fabric, we only use sustainable inks.
• To ensure low waste instead of fabric sitting on shelves, we only print what our customers order. 
• If customers return any printed material, we don’t resell or restock it. Instead, we donate the fabric – see information above.
• Our focus is on sourcing all our materials ethically. We buy them from UK-trusted mills where possible. This helps the local economy. It also reduces our carbon footprint and the climate.
• Our factory believes in local textile production – we produce your entire order in our NW London mill. If you prefer, you can pick up your order to reduce our carbon footprint.

Check out our informative guide on how to be more sustainable in your business.

Sustainable Printing & Design With maake

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