Fast Fashion Kills

There are enough articles on the newest fashion trends, but not many reveal the truth behind what it may cost...

First and foremost, let's talk about Fast Fashion. Do you know what that is, and how it differs from other designer brands such as Calvin Klein, Louie Vuitton, Versace, e.t.c.? No, it's not only the price or value; it's how both brands affect the environment differently. On average, designer clothing brands come out with 4 lines a year, 1 per season. Fast Fashion, however, comes out with 52 per year, they're called "micro-season", one for each week. They got the name "Fast Fashion" because as soon as a celebrity has worn a certain type of clothes or a different type of outfit walks the runway, 25+ clothing brands release new clothes to mimic their styles every week.

Now let's go back to how I said both brands affect the environment differently. Here's a quick little fun fact. If you own a 100% cotton t-shirt can you guess how many liters of water it would be required to make that shirt? About 2,700 litters were put into one cotton t-shirt. Now think about millions of cotton t-shirts being produced to be sent to these stores every week. Thing is, this isn't all new information. This has been going on for as long as we can remember. Fast Fashion starts from back to 1990. But how has it become an issue right now?

I'm going to bring in some numbers to show you where the issue is. On average, nearly 80 new billion clothes are sold per year, according to truecostmovie.com that's about 400% more than how much it was 2 decades ago. Even us all as kids bought less than half as much as we do now. But let's be real, we all have a set of clothes in our closets that we bought months ago, wore it once, and haven't touched it since. Come on, all of us have at least a few clothes like that.

You might say, "Yeah well, I donate my clothes to thrift stores afterward instead of throwing it away." Well, ok, if we donate our clothes, it stays in the store for about 6-8 weeks, once no one buys it, do you know what happens? Those clothes either go place to place, or to the landfill. According to unworthy.com 81 pounds of textile is thrown away per person in North America... The American population is about 330 million people...Lastly what happens to clothes in the landfill, well, clothes release toxins into the air when decomposing, that's all I'm going to say.

It's not my place to tell you how many clothes to buy, but I will try to do everything I can to show you how much it affects our environment. The only thing we can all do to help this would be to limit the number of clothes we buy, and if you're going to donate, then please stay away from thrift stores, take them to donation centers as that can help just a little more. But the main thing is to limit the number of textiles we buy, our environment has been going through enough.