In February 2019, the Environmental Audit Committee found that we bought more clothes in the UK than any other European country. Fast fashion is becoming ingrained in our society, but its impacts are severe.
What is Fast Fashion?
Fast fashion is the mass production of clothing at low costs so that brands can immediately maximise profits by jumping on the latest trends whilst remaining price competitive.
An Unsustainable Practice
The Environmental Audit Committee estimated that around 300,000 tonnes of textile waste ends up in household black bins in the UK every year. This is a shocking insight into the culture of waste that has taken over, not just the UK, but most of the world.
The Committee also stated:
“Textile production contributes more to climate change than international aviation and shipping combined, consumes lake-sized volumes of fresh water and creates chemical and plastic pollution.”
The environmental impacts of fast fashion are huge, with high CO2 emissions, numerous pollutants, and extreme water usage. In fact, it takes around 2,700 litres of water to make just one cotton t-shirt, the equivalent of providing drinking water to an individual for 900 days.
Fast fashion is incredibly damaging to the planet, animals, and to the workers involved in its production. There is an issue of usage of child labour, prison labour, forced labour and bonded labour in the creation of these textiles, in order to mass produce at low costs.
Greenpeace Detox Campaign
Greenpeace’s Detox Campaign has helped create transformation in the clothing industry. The campaign was aimed at reducing the popular use of toxic chemicals in clothes manufacturing, which were being released into waterways in countries like China, Indonesia and Mexico.
80 brands signed the Greenpeace Detox Commitment, agreeing to “implement preventative and precautionary action on chemicals, by setting goals to eliminate hazardous chemicals in manufacturing.”
Their report, ‘Destination Zero- seven years of Detoxing the clothing industry,’ looks at the changes in the seven years following the campaign’s launch in 2012. They found that “great progress” had been made in phasing out hazardous chemicals, with brands within the clothing industry beginning to take responsibility for their production process.
Sustainable Clothing Action Plan 2020 Commitment (SCAP)
The SCAP commitment was voluntarily signed up to by over 90 organisations representing over 48% of UK retail clothing sales to help reduce the impacts of their products.
This commitment was launched by WRAP, a climate action non-governmental organisation which is working to tackle the causes of climate crisis. The commitment ran from 2012 to 2020, with aims of reducing the carbon, water and waste impact of the UK clothing and textile industry.
The plan had huge positive results, managing to achieve a 21.6% reduction in carbon and a 18.2% reduction in water, as well as meeting 60% of their waste target.
Textiles 2030
Driven by the success of their SCAP initiative, WRAP has created a new voluntary agreement for those in UK fashion and textile organisations: Textile 2030. 110 businesses and organisations, representing 62% of all clothing products placed on the UK market, have signed up to this agreement.
The aims of this initiative are to reduce the aggregate greenhouse gas footprint of new products by 50% and aggregate water footprint of new products sold by 30%.
Let’s hope they are successful in their aims to reduce the toll that fast fashion is taking on the environment to help our planet!
Government Policy is Lacking
Research undertaken by Seahorse Environmental and Dolly Thesis, commissioned by Hubbub, found that since 2007, the government has only produced 5 strategies and 19 policies tackling fast fashion, with only 1 policy proposed with any cost or budget.
It also found that only 32% of UK policies take direct action against fast fashion, with the majority merely raising awareness of the issue.
However, there has certainly been some progress made to address the issue via legislation. This can be seen through things like:
- The plastic packaging tax April 2022– a tax applied to plastic packaging manufactured in, or imported into the UK, which doesn’t contain at least 30% recycled plastic
- The Competitions and Markets Authority announcing in July 2022 an investigation of ASOS, Boohoo, and Asda’s George label, regarding potentially misleading claims of their products being environmentally friendly
- The Modern Slavery Act 2015– Section 54 of this act required UK companies with annual turnovers of £36 million or more to produce an annual modern slavery statement and disclose what steps they are taking to prevent this issue in their supply chains