TRUTH BE TOLD

THE HIGH COST OF CHEAP FASHION

Around 215 trillion litres of water per year is consumed by the global fashion industry. Textiles, through our washing processes, deposit 500,000 tons of  microplastics into our oceans. Image credit: NEWS CANADA.

By DR VICKI BISMILLA

I watched a multi-part documentary on PBS titled Human Footprint which deals with several ecological, invasive, environmental and other human imprints on our planet.

But the episode that had me dumbfounded was called Dressed to Kill. It dealt with the unconscionable pollution created by the clothing industry all over the world. You can watch it for free on the PBS app or just on YouTube. All of it was disturbing but for me the most shocking part was that each year North America ships hundreds of thousands of tons of used clothing and shoes to Chile. These arrive in huge plastic-wrapped bales and are dumped into open air markets where they remain unwanted as fashion garbage.

Warehouses try to sort them into three piles:

New, discarded with tags still on. A tiny percentage of these are sold at open air markets but the bulk is shipped back to North America for resale.

Two and three are piles of used clothing and shoes in various degrees of usability. Of these, again, a small percentage is sold at flea markets but the largest bulk of it, millions of tons, are trucked over the dunes to be buried in the desert if time and trucking schedules permit or burned, causing ozone disasters or just tossed where dumping is unregulated. These clothes and shoes do not decompose, they are synthetic fibres just lying there to become future ecological problems for generations to come. All over the world affluent countries are shipping millions of tons of their unwanted used clothing and shoes to poor countries who then have to foot the bill both financially and environmentally.

We think that when we donate our bags of used clothing to charity shops we are helping poor people clothe their families in some distant third world country. Not so. The charity shops resell a very small percentage of the finest new or near new. The rest are shipped to unknown fates.

One hundred billion new garments are manufactured every year, producing millions of tons of textile waste. The manufacturing processes themselves cause unforgivable environmental damage to rivers where toxic dyes and other wastes are deposited killing fish and animals. Our attitude is the biggest problem. Humans buy, buy, buy and then throw, throw, throw. Our desire to wear fashion is a significant cost to our environment, diminishing hope for the survival of the planet. I am not guilt-free. I too like to buy a few new things each year and donate clothing and shoes in good condition. So I know I am part of the problem.

The United Nations Alliance for Sustainable Fashion (unfashion alliance.org) is trying to monitor the manufacturing of clothing, leather and footwear to keep them within sustainable development goals, an effort that seems colossal and daunting. They are looking at improving working conditions for the impoverished people being paid a pittance by the industry, environmental impacts of the fashion industry and attempting to decrease waste, pollution and greenhouse gas.

Around 215 trillion litres of water per year is consumed by this industry.

Textiles, through our washing processes, deposit 500,000 tons of  microplastics into our oceans. Microplastics are part of the synthetic fibres used in our clothing.

Rashmila Maiti in her article, The Environmental Impact of Fast Fashion Explained (earth.org,  January 2025) says that the fashion industry causes 10 per cent of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights!

This is alarming. Fast fashion involves rapid design, manufacture and distribution. Industry camera-people can take a picture of a dress on the world’s exclusive fashion catwalks and within minutes it’s sent to sweat shops to reproduce and ship out in a matter of days using synthetic fibres, a huge amount of petroleum, drawing on precious water supplies, polluting rivers and streams with dyes and dumping wastes into fragile ecosystems. If they used sustainable fabrics like silk, organic cotton, linen or hemp, their costs would skyrocket and the profits they are hauling in for themselves would disappear.

The World Resources Institute (wri.org)  is looking into the possibilities of reusing old clothes to manufacture new; or the “slow fashion” movement, in  which responsible people are increasingly buying from second-hand dealers like Poshmark or renting high fashion clothes for single-use events. But political will is a problem. Recently the UK Ministers rejected a report to address the fast fashion industry’s harmful effects on the environment. But, encouragingly, the French President has made a pact with 150 brands committed to making the fashion industry more sustainable. The best advice to heed in our everyday lives is “less is more”.

The Carbon Literacy Project (carbonliteracy.com) in the UK estimates that the UK sends 300,000 tons of clothes to landfills each year making it the fastest growing waste industry, with research showing that by 2050 the clothing industry could account for 26 per cent of all carbon emissions. 

The Geneva Environment Network (www.genevaenvironment network.org) writes that the fast fashion industry comes at an astonishing environmental and social cost with its impacts on pollution, water use, carbon emissions, human rights abuses and gender inequality. It urges a shift to sustainable fashion globally. The Network brings to attention the environmental footprint of the clothing industry, the human cost, the appalling conditions which the poorest of the poor workers are forced to endure, the hidden plastics and toxins in our clothes, and the dissembling of companies like Dow that claim they are recycling shoes but investigators traced and found those shoes in an Indonesian flea market. It exposes the stealth transportation of waste plastics (microfibre) in clothes to Kenya where it impacts wildlife.

So we can see from this extensive research, data and evidence that the culprit is the fast fashion industry. The manufacturers, the billionaire owners, the obstinate governments that turn a blind eye to the ecological damage on the planet caused by this industry – they are all to blame. But we too! By continuously and ravenously buying clothes that we do not need and shoes that we are piling into our cupboards, we are supporting this destructive industry. Can we stop the mindless buying? Can we practise responsible purchasing? Can we stop consuming plastics be it in everyday water bottles, toys, utensils and hidden microfibres in fast fashion? Can we curb our hyper consumption?

Maybe if we cut our buying we can curb the industry?  

• Dr Vicki Bismilla is a retired Superintendent of Schools and retired college Vice-President, Academic, and Chief Learning Officer. She has authored two books.