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Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Thanks to fast fashion, people can now afford garments that look as though they were bought straight off the runway at a fraction of the cost. But fast fashion—clothing sold at large chain stores—can come at a price, sometimes subjugating overseas factory workers to unsafe working conditions for just dollars a day. Fast fashion can also have a negative environmental impact, too, as garments get tossed in landfills, chemicals end up in wastewater and dangerous emissions are released into the air. And while hundreds of new garments are delivered to brick-and-mortar storefronts weekly, online retailers can churn out close to a thousand new clothing items a week. Clothing has never been so cheap and readily available, and our desire to be on trend has never been so great—but it isn’t sustainable.
“Fast fashion is a big reason I run my shop,” says Negar Hosseini, owner of Vegas-based Neon Cactus Vintage. “We’re minimal waste in every regard. We don’t even have business cards, because I don’t want to create any waste if I don’t have to. Other than getting something that’s better for the environment, buying vintage and buying secondhand is adding a story to something with an already rich history. You’re getting an item that’s already unique, and you’re adding your story to it.”
Environmental impact
The fashion industry, as we know it, isn’t sustainable. The New York Times reported that more than 60% of fabric fibers used in fast fashion are synthetic and derived from fossil fuels, and that 85% of textile waste in the U.S. winds up in landfills or gets incinerated. Synthetic microfibers—undetectable by the human eye—also end up in our oceans and seas.
Creating waste
Fast fashion places an emphasis on quickly produced, cheaply made garments, which are then offered at affordable prices. According to The Wall Street Journal, Americans purchase 68 clothing items a year, roughly five times more than they did during the 1980s. And the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that American garment manufacturing has dropped 85% over the past 25 years. That spike in outsourcing labor has allowed fast fashion companies like H&M and Zara to produce and ship hundreds of new styles to their stores on a weekly basis. But the average consumer wears each garment only seven times, according to the WSJ, and that piece of clothing ultimately ends up in the garbage.
Cheap labor
Fast fashion is often synonymous with outsourcing, cheap labor costs and unsafe working conditions. In April 2013, an eight-story building in Bangladesh known as Rana Plaza—home to a shopping center and multiple garment factories—collapsed. It was the deadliest garment industry disaster in history, killing 1,100 people and injuring more than 2,000.
Due to cheap labor costs, clothing manufacturing is commonly outsourced to Bangladesh, which trails only China as the world’s largest producer of apparel. According to The New York Times, more than 4.4 million people—most of them women—work in Bangladesh’s 3,000 factories. There, “The minimum wage is currently 32 cents an hour, or $68 a month,” the Times reported.
What’s worse is that Rana Plaza wasn’t an isolated incident. More than 500 people died in factory electrical fires between 2006 and 2012, according to the Times. And while two agreements were signed into action following the Rana Plaza collapse, improving safety conditions for millions of Bangladeshi garment workers, both agreements have since expired. A compensation fund for injured workers was set up, but few have reportedly received money from it.
Sustainable alternatives
• Your local thrift store. Scoping out Savers, Goodwill and the like is a great way to avoid fast fashion, and secondhand clothing can often be found in near-new condition. Stores such as these are especially useful for finding basics like turtlenecks, tank tops, sweaters and tees.
• Vintage retailers. Neon Cactus Vintage and Buffalo Exchange are two strong local options in Downtown Las Vegas. These hand-curated shops are perfect for the fashion-forward shopper—Neon Cactus focuses on vintage, while Buffalo Exchange carries both current and older brands.
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.
