The Toll of the Fashion Industry

Nora Mayral Boyle
IHSS
26 March 2020
Unsustainability in the Fashion Industry
The fashion industry is unsustainable, producing a monstrous amount of garments every single year- 150 billion every single year, or about 20 garments for every single living person. Even more, people are getting rid of and replacing clothing at an increasingly higher rate. Since 2000 the lifespan of the average garment’s lifespan has gone down by about  30-35%, meaning that garments are also being thrown away at higher rates. Since garments are worn less, more is thrown away. Every second, a truckload worth of clothes are burned, or dumper in a landfill. Considering manufacturing and disposal, this industry is worth about 10% of global carbon emissions. New York’s fashion week is shown to be responsible for about 37% of these emissions. 
Fashion week was created to allow buyers to see upcoming collections. This week happens twice a year and would showcase a fall/winter collection and a spring/summer collection. However, now, companies have started creating ‘micro-seasons’: mid-fall, mid-winter, pre-fall, mid-summer, etc. With companies creating and producing entirely new collections for these micro seasons, much more clothing is being produced. Production has doubled since 2000.
I actually didn’t know about how much of strain that fashion had on our environment. I knew that it had a large impact, but I didn’t know the extent of this impact. Personally, I try to make an effort to purchase as little clothing as possible. In addition, right before the school year, amidst some boredom, I decided to Marie Kondo my closet. I cut my wardrobe in about half and then dropped off my ‘rejects’  at Goodwill. The consumer mindset that many of us have when looking at fashion literally fuels the industry. Recently, I’ve found myself slipping back into this mindset. However, even if you downsize for yourself, by giving away clothing whenever you buy some, that still doesn’t help much. It still allows the industry to thrive. As the article said, it’s smarter and eco-friendly to buy second hand, as it doesn’t contribute to these over-producing companies, and is much generally much cheaper. If we are able to fix our consumer mindsets, then demand will decrease, and with it production and toxic emissions. 
The fashion industry tried to promote sustainability by challenging designers to used recycled material in their designs, but this isn’t very sustainability. The biggest problems aren’t with the materials used, it’s in the quantity and extent to which these are produced. Although it was a good step, in order to be more sustainable, the fashion industry has to start producing less.

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