I had to share these excerpts from some articles I've read recently on Fast Fashion and the impact it has on us and the environment.
Perhaps, as in the case of fast food, fast fashion is yet another degredation of our quality of life.
"Cheap fashion, " says Liz Jones, "like cheap, factory-farmed salmon and chicken, has stripped away any notion we had of something being luxurious or in any way special . It has devalued all our lives, making us ever more dissatisfied, always wanting more." More prosaically, everybody looks the same. Sure, we all have in mind the ideal of the inventive fashionista, effortlessly and creatively mixing high and low fashion into one dazzlingly chic whole. But the reality is that we are far more homogenous in our distinctively-printed designer knockoffs than we would be in simpler basics. The idea of high style comes to us pre-packaged, complete with eclectic jewelry and accessories, and I'm guessing this paradoxical illusion of the unique is at the expense of individual creativity.
The increase in the amount of clothes people consume also has consequences for the environment. More clothing is shipped and flown from the Far East to Europe than ever before and the life cycle of these garments is decreasing.
– One cotton T-shirt requires seven bathtubs of water to make. For every tonne of textile produced, the industry pollutes about 200 tonnes of fresh water — in a year, that’s the equivalent of more than five million Olympic-size pools.
– The average North American discards more than 30 kilograms of clothing annually.