G6 - From Little Things, Big Things Grow: 3. Fast Fashion

Fast fashion makes shopping for clothes more affordable, but it comes at an environmental cost.
The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity's carbon emissions, is the second-largest consumer of the world's water supply, and pollutes the oceans with microplastics.

Why is fast fashion a bad thing? Some of the answers are here.

In parts of China and India, farmers are predicting the colour of the next fashion season by the colour of their rivers due to run-off from the textile industry.

There are other disturbing statistics on the impact the fashion industry is having on the environment. In Australia alone, more than 500,000 tonnes of textiles and leather end up in landfill each year.

Visitors who stepped into fashion retailer H&M's showroom in New York City on April 4, 2016, were confronted by a pile of cast-off clothing reaching to the ceiling. A T.S. Eliot quote stenciled on the wall ("In my end is my beginning") gave the showroom the air of an art gallery or museum. In the next room, reporters and fashion bloggers sipped wine while studying the half-dozen mannequins wearing bespoke creations pieced together from old jeans, patches of jackets and cut-up blouses.

"Every piece of clothing we buy has had an impact on our planet before we even bring it home".
First, there’s water consumption. 2 billion pairs of jeans are produced every year, and a typical pair takes 7,000 litres of water to produce. For a t-shirt, it takes 2,700 litres of water to make just one – that’s the amount of water an average person drinks over the course of 900 days!

Secondly, there’s the dyeing process of which 1.7 million tonnes of various chemicals are used; not to mention the hazardous chemicals like PFCs that leave a permanent impact on our environment.

This article has some challenging vocabulary but the Graphics really help to explain the impact of Fast Fashion.