Unsustainable Fashion Week - Asher

Asher Forman
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
25 March 2020
Unsustainable Fashion Week
Carbon emissions are a serious problem that affects the Earth and everyone on it. When one thinks of carbon emissions, they think of people burning fossil fuels, but something that many people overlook is the fashion industry. Although, how is it that the fashion industry contributes to carbon emissions? Well, this is because of all the clothing that is made. As of the year 2000 and onward, this industry manufactures around 150 billion articles of clothing annually. With all of this clothing being made, the factories are constantly running. This makes it so these factories are regularly releasing large quantities of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Over the years, this industry has gotten worse and worse in sustainability. As of recent studies, the clothing industry contributes to about 10% of all total carbon emissions. This is partly because of everyone feeling the need to make new clothes. In the fashion industry, people make clothes for different seasons, but as of recent years, things called micro seasons were created. This means making clothes before a season even starts. As these micro seasons are made, new clothes are manufactured, which means more carbon emissions. With so many new clothes being made, people begin to discard their old ones that might not fit or just one's they might not wear anymore. Doing this is also damaging to the environment as these clothes generally end up in the landfill or an incinerator, which both release carbon emissions. If all of this production and waste is kept up, then the Earth will be forever changed in a detrimental way. 
     With this problem mind, what are these large companies that are contributing to making so many clothes doing to help to become a more sustainable industry? Well, a couple of these companies such as Burberry and H&M have become aware of these environmental effects and are beginning to do something about it. Burberry has started to recycle clothes so they aren’t trashed and then put in a landfill. They have also begun to try and manufacture clothes that people have ordered instead of mass-producing a bunch of clothes they are not sure if they are going to sell. Similarly to Burberry, H&M has also begun recycling clothes. They even made it so people would be motivated to so by offering customers a discount if they recycle their clothes at one of their stores. While this is a start with beginning to combat this worldwide problem, there is still more that needs to be done.
    Overall, this article was very insightful as I don’t think anyone really knew how detrimental the fashion industry was on the Earth. Not doing anything about this problem could end up backfiring on everyone. This is why it needs to stop sooner than later, and can be done so from individuals like you and I. Some things to do can be as simple as donating clothes, recycling them, or even just not buying as many. However, this can be quite difficult as almost every human is attached to materialistic things like clothes, which makes one constantly want to buy more of them. The only thing that can be done in that case is to make people aware of this problem. This will hopefully show people the effects of how buying so many clothes will increase factories, which releases carbon emissions that are unhealthy for the world. While one might not think so, doing the smallest things to help this problem can contribute more than one thinks to fixing the unsustainable fashion industry. 
Work Cited
Noor, Dharna. “New York Fashion Week Isn't Sustainable, But Neither Is The Fashion Industry.” Earther, Earther, 14 Feb. 2020, earther.gizmodo.com/new-york-fashion-week-isnt-sustainable-but-neither-is-1841700190.
Masunaga, Samantha. “Does Fast Fashion Have to Die for the Environment to Live?” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 3 Nov. 2019, www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-11-03/fast-fashion-sustainable.

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