Fast fashion significantly harms the environment through multiple interconnected impacts:
- High Carbon Emissions: The fast fashion industry is responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions, exceeding the emissions from all international flights and maritime shipping combined. This is due to energy-intensive production processes, synthetic fiber manufacturing reliant on fossil fuels, and global transportation logistics
- Excessive Water Consumption and Pollution: Fast fashion consumes enormous amounts of water—around 93 billion cubic meters annually, enough for five million people. Cotton farming, a major material source, uses pesticides and large water volumes, contributing to soil degradation and water scarcity. Factories often discharge untreated toxic wastewater into rivers and oceans, severely polluting water sources, as seen in places like Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Massive Textile Waste: The industry produces vast quantities of waste due to overproduction and overconsumption. Globally, around 85-90% of textiles end up in landfills, where synthetic fibers can take up to 200 years to decompose. This waste accumulates in landfills and dumping sites worldwide, including visible environmental disasters like the clothing mountains in Chile’s Atacama Desert and waste dumps in Ghana
- Microfiber Pollution: Washing synthetic garments releases microfibers—about 500,000 tons annually—into oceans, equivalent to billions of plastic bottles, adding to plastic pollution and harming marine life
- Biodiversity Loss and Habitat Destruction: Raw material extraction for textiles leads to habitat destruction, soil degradation, and pollution, threatening biodiversity. For example, pesticide use in cotton farming harms beneficial insects and soil health
- Encouragement of Overconsumption: Fast fashion’s rapid production and marketing of trendy, cheap clothing fuel a culture of overconsumption and waste, exacerbating environmental damage
In summary, fast fashion’s rapid, large-scale production model drives resource depletion, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste accumulation, making it one of the most environmentally damaging industries globally
