The HEAVY price we pay for “fashion”
Do you know the backstory of that new tee?
There was a time when shopping was a rare and exciting activity. Now, it is a hobby. Fashion brands are always looking ahead, designing clothes to meet the demands of fast fashion. But we need to look further ahead because the environment is suffering because of every single piece of clothing we buy on a whim.
In the trade-off between fashion and the environment, the mass is choosing the former. That has to change. Often, even people concerned about the environment and human rights fail to realize how significant the share of fashion is in environmental degradation and exploitation of labor.
The high-end fashion brands that we adore are exploiting labor in order to keep up with ‘fast-fashion’. That is how they are able to amass huge profits while staying in the fashion game. Workers have reported ‘slave-like’ conditions at international fashion giants like Zara, H&M and Primark. Women, men, and children in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, and India are employed by these big fashion labels for producing clothes at the lowest cost possible. They sometimes work for over 16 hours a day and get a meagre wage of around 13 dollars per month, which is barely enough for sustenance.
Have you ever wondered about the environmental impact of that plain cotton tee hanging in your wardrobe? Probably not. For starters, it takes about 2700 liters of water to produce the cotton for a single t-shirt. That’s enough to fill 22 bathtubs, or to sustain a human for almost 900 days! Its carbon footprint is nearly 7 kilograms.
Given that an average human buys 20 pieces of clothing every year, the cost the environment (and community) pays for our fashion is enormous. It is imperative that we reuse what we have, and resist the urge to buy more.
There will always be some new outfit that we wish we could have. But there’s only one earth. Degrading it in the process of buying what we want but don’t need, promotes not only pollution but also unethical and unfavorable working conditions for workers. As consumers, and as citizens of this planet, we need to make wiser decisions.
In a nutshell, here’s how you can do your bit for the environment -
- Don’t trash your clothes, donate them. You’d be helping the community and the earth. (it’s a win-win)
- Choose sustainable brands which use natural fabrics like hemp instead of synthetics like polyester (which harm us by entering the water supply and food chain)
- Choose slow and sustainable fashion, or green fashion, instead of fast fashion. Slow fashion consists of clothing that lasts several years, as compared to fast fashion, in which cheap and new clothes are introduced each micro-season (which can be as many as 52 a year!).
- Please repeat outfits. It’s NOT uncool. (trashing the environment is)
We can save the environment, one t-shirt at a time!
Also read — Why materialism will be the end of humanity
