10 things I Hate About You, Fast Fashion

This 10 point dinner party conversation cheat sheet of real questions to ask about fast fashion

It is your go to guide for being the absolutely most annoying eco person at the table. Start at Number 1 and you'll be off to a flying start. Literally.  

1. Transport emissions : Fast fashion is manufactured in countries with large manufacturing bases and low labour costs. And that isn’t Australia. So clothes are mostly flown in (to meet rapid fashion cycles) or arrive on container ships, which are two of the worst polluting transport options available.
2. Disposable clothes : Their cheap cost places fast fashion clothes as disposable in the mind of the buyer. That means throwing clothes in the bin, rather than donating them, is commonplace. And that means landfill and lots of it.
3. Landfill for Centuries : Fast fashion garments are made with inexpensive, petroleum-based fibres that don’t easily decompose (such as polyester, nylon, and acrylic), meaning they’ll take up landfill space for decades, if not centuries.
4. Distorted, Bullshit Value : Fast fashion really distorts our sense of value.  We are happy to pay $5 for a coffee but only $3, or even $1 for a t-shirt. What’s up with that? 
5. Nobody mends anymore : Cheap clothes aren’t deemed valuable enough to mend. If a button falls off, a seam separates or a hem falls, that can mean the end of the garment’s life, even if it’s still in favour with the wearer.
6. Foreign workers are exploited : Fast turn around times equate to overworked and underpaid workers. In addition, the integrity of the supply chain commoditizes human workers and their rights are often ignored in the hurry to stock shelves.
7. Places an incredible strain on natural resources : Fast fashion’s love of petroleum based fibres, which make up over 60% of all fast fashion items, is brutal on natural resources using roughly 145 million tons of coal and between 1.5 and 2 trillion gallons of water annually.
8. Fast fashion is choking the oceans : Cheap synthetic fibres mean microfibres and microfibres are microplastics.  And we all know what they are doing to our oceans, sea life and us.
9. Fast fashion means the end of the Op Shopping culture : Because fast fashion is not meant to last, it employs questionable construction methods. The quality is so low that it threatens the very future existence of secondhand clothing markets in the future because these uber-cheap items are just not fit for resale. 
10. Most of it looks like shit : Let’s be real. As GreenPeace so eloquently puts it, “we want to express our individuality by wearing brand new, stylish outfits, but run around in cheap, ill-fitting junk”. Yep. 

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