Fast Fashion Is Fast, Fast Fashion, The Earth Is Very Uncomfortable.

Fast fashion is the easiest product to buy, and all kinds of fast fashion shops on the street can be seen everywhere.

However, the characteristics of fast fashion brand clothing, such as low quality, short production cycle, low price, keeping up with the trend, often lead to excessive consumption and waste, which brings worrying consequences to the environment.

Every September, the annual fashion week, which predicts the trend of the coming year, will be held in all the fashion capital of the world. Environmentals and activists called for a radical change in the world's most profitable industry.

The global climate change activity organization "fight against extinction" has announced a plan of action to disrupt London Fashion Week (-23 September 16th), hoping to urge the British Fashion Association to cancel its Fashion Week activities and set up a "general assembly of professionals and designers as a platform for announcing the climate and ecological crisis".

The increasingly stringent scrutiny of the textile industry also seems to affect consumers' shopping choices. Information from the "moral consumer" shows that the market value of the textile market last year was increased by nearly 20%.

Today's fashion giants are faced with the dilemma of falling profits. Will they accept the concept of sustainability?

　　 Green price tag

At present, the production, distribution and consumption of clothing are basically "bringing - production - discarding" mode. In the face of new styles of clothing, consumers are easily left behind. Some international brands even launch new models every week.

The Alan Macarthur foundation, a non-governmental organization for sustainable development, says that only about 300 thousand tons of textiles have been abandoned in Britain alone each year. This waste has brought more than 1 billion US dollars to the national economy.

The United Nations Framework Convention on climate change (UNFCCC) is a specialized agency responsible for international climate negotiations. Statistics from the agency show that the global clothing industry emits about 10% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions, with more emissions per year than the total aviation and maritime sectors.

By 2050, the proportion of greenhouse gas emissions from the clothing industry will rise to 25%.

The existing global value chains are resource intensive. They use high carbon transport infrastructure and consume a lot of fresh water and arable land resources.

The production of cellulose and protein fibers will occupy the arable land. In Indonesia, Canada and the Amazon rainforest area, forests will be cut down for the production of clothing materials.

Forest activity organization "crown" pointed out that in order to produce viscose fiber this fast fashion most commonly used material, in 2018, a total of 150 million trees were cut down, and this number has doubled in the past 5 years.

Various toxic chemicals are also used in the manufacture of textiles, and this has already begun in the harvest stage of fibers such as cotton. Farmers will use pesticides when planting cotton. This will lead to soil degradation and water pollution, which will bring huge health risks to farmers and community residents near the plantation.

In addition, a large number of dyes, additives and fixative are also needed in the process of textile processing, and the factory wastewater is often discharged directly into the fresh water area.

In China, textile and other key areas such as Guangdong and Zhejiang are facing the pressure of "fashion detoxification". River pollution has become commonplace, and some even jokingly called "do you want to know the fashion color of this season?" You can see it in the river.

At the same time, through the daily washing process, each year the clothing contributes about 3 billion tons of plastic particles to the ocean.

　　 Immoral fiber

Nowadays, the major fashion brands compete with each other to reduce the cost of supply chain. Besides affecting the environment, this usually means worse working environment and meager salary income.

Among them, the impact of women is particularly obvious. The total value of $1 trillion and 300 billion in the fashion industry employs 75 million people, 80% of whom are women.

Border and processing factories (maquiladoras) in China and the US are often exposed to irregularities such as gender violence and mandatory pregnancy tests. If the test proves that the employee is pregnant, the factory will "specialize" to arrange heavy labor for her to force her to leave voluntarily.

What is "border processing plant"?

The so-called "border processing plant" is a basic foreign factory which does not need to pay commodity tax and customs duties. It is responsible for assembling, manufacturing or processing products and exporting finished products to the target market. Due to inadequate regulation of the special economic zones, the wages of the workers in the border processing factories are often only able to maintain 40% of the healthy lifestyle income.

Global Slavery Index shows that from the perspective of modern slavery and human trafficking, the apparel industry has become the second largest risk industry in the world after the electronics industry. These problems are not just found in several common sweatshops, but also in Britain.

In order to meet the turnover requirement of "super fast fashion", the original 26 week production cycle was compressed to only 1 weeks. In order to deliver on time, many British manufacturers began to re build factories in China. But this business model must employ cheap or even illegal labor.

A survey conducted by the financial times shows that workers in a city like Leicester have a minimum wage of 3.5 pounds per hour (about 4.27 dollars per hour), less than half of the British minimum hourly wage standard (8.21 pounds, or about 10 dollars).

Phil Blumer, executive director of the centre for business and human resources, said: "the minimum wage must meet the basic needs of life, not just over the poverty line".

Brummer added that the clothing industry should take active actions to eliminate gender discrimination and sexual violence, while the minimum wage is the most emancipated clause for clothing women workers, which can help them achieve other basic rights.

　　 Farewell to fast fashion

Nowadays, more and more fashion brands are beginning to reject the mainstream mode of production and try to create a "slow fashion" era.

London based luxury fashion brand Luna Del Pinal (LDP) is one of the members who contributed to this slow fashion trend movement. LDP uses the traditional Guatemala belt method to produce zero waste clothing products with organic and sustainable fabrics such as regenerated cotton cloth provided by the new cowboy project.

Gabriella Luna, co-founder of LDP, said, "we believe that the dawn is ahead." She believes that environmentally friendly consumers are part of the solution to the waste of fashion. At present, however, most high-end consumers are willing to pay higher prices for clothes that are produced in a sustainable and ethical way.

Nevertheless, Luna said that these market opportunities are the driving force for LDP to keep the supply chain transparent. LDP works with Guatemala handcraft weaving association to let consumers know who made their purchases for them.

Luna said that consumers always prioritize convenience rather than industry sustainability, which is the main problem facing slow fashion brands.

In China, although the market for clothing recycling has reached 100 billion yuan (about 13 billion US dollars), the waste of textiles is still up to 20 million tons per year. Although the zero waste movement is gradually emerging, it is still difficult to change consumers' attitudes towards second-hand or reconstituted garments.

A user named Zhang Weidong posted in a column about slow fashion in China's forum, saying, "not to start a liberation movement on the consumption concept of clothes, it is impossible to fundamentally solve the rampant textiles."

According to Chinese traditional habits, new clothes symbolize good luck, so people choose new clothes for the Spring Festival. Chinese people believe that secondhand clothing is not hygienic, because people are still doubtful about the traceability of recycled materials, and the recent exposure of inferior clothing warehouse events illustrates this point.

Luna said that the emerging fashion brands are more likely to integrate the concept of sustainable development, while old brands like H&M are more difficult. Recently, H&M signed a commitment with more than 30 retailers around the world to realize carbon neutralization by 2050 and transform to a more green production mode.

The Alan Macarthur foundation, which actively advocates the circular economy mode, requests the large fashion brands and the entire garment industry to achieve a comprehensive transformation to the renewable business mode on the basis of the following four points:

Phase out harmful substances and stop releasing microfibrils.

Improve clothing utilization

Fundamentally improve recovery and reuse

Efficient use of resources and the use of renewable materials

In 2013, after the collapse of the building of a garment factory in Bangladesh, the global sustainable fashion movement called "fashion revolution" was formally established. Castro, the co founder of the organization, said there are already some changes in the industry.

"Sustainability is not out of date," she said. Outdated production and consumption is the current trend. "