What Is Fast Fashion & Why Is It So Bad?

People often have discussions about the problems related to fast fashion. But let’s rewind things. If you’re wondering what fast fashion is exactly, and what’s wrong with it I’ve got a handy explainer for you.

In any discussions around ethical and sustainable fashion, you’ll inevitably come across the term ‘fast fashion’. If you’re wondering exactly what that means, and what’s so wrong with fast fashion then I’m here to help.

I’m going to break down exactly what fast fashion means, and the problems surrounding this industry to help you be more informed.

Table Of Contents

• What Is Fast Fashion Exactly?
• What Is Ultra Fast Fashion?
• What’s So Bad About Fast Fashion?
• How Has This Happened?
• Understanding The Role Of Consumers
• What Can We Do?
• More Resources

What Is Fast Fashion Exactly?

The term fast fashion is used to describe an entire section of the fashion industry that is dedicated to mass-producing cheap clothing – inspired by designer fashion or trends – at high speed.

With a very short turnaround between design, manufacture and getting the clothes into stores – the idea is that consumers can buy these clothes whilst they are still on trend, and wear them for a short period, before moving on to the next trend.

Brands that can be considered as fast fashion include:

• New Look
• H&M
• Zara
• ASOS
• Mango
• Primark
• &Other Stories
• Arket
• Monki
• Matalan
• Next
• River Island

What Is Ultra-Fast Fashion?

Ultra-fast fashion (UFF for short) is similar to fast fashion, in that it relies on short turnaround times to get from the design and manufacturing stage to the retailer in the shortest timescale possible. Yet ultra-fast fashion is marked by even faster production cycles and even lower prices.

Brands that can be considered as ultra-fast fashion include:

• Boohoo
• SHEIN
• Cider
• PrettyLittleThing

What’s So Bad About Fast Fashion?

With cheap prices and fast turnaround times that ensure you’re always served the latest trends, you may well be wondering what’s wrong with both fast fashion and ultra-fast fashion.

The main problem is that this convenience and low cost to us comes at a huge cost to both the people involved in making those clothes and to the planet. Here’s a broad, non-exhaustive overview of those issues:

Environmental Impacts

Producing clothing at the scale and volume that the fast fashion industry does, requires vast amounts of water, energy, and resources to produce fabrics and other key inputs.

So much so, that it’s been calculated that the greenhouse gas emissions from the fashion industry are larger than that of the aviation and shipping industries combined. Industries that aren’t known for their sustainability credentials. In fact, the fashion industry currently annually accounts for around 8% of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities – a huge contributor to the climate crisis.

The fashion industry is also water-intensive – consuming around 4% of our global freshwater supplies each year. This figure is set to double by 2030. Yet half the world’s population experience severe drinking water scarcity each year. It’s unjust that so many people experience water scarcity whilst the clothing industry is gobbling up more and more freshwater.

And the fast fashion industry isn’t just consuming water at growing rates. It is also responsible for polluting water supplies, owing to, amongst other things, the toxic chemicals from dyes and microplastics. These are tiny particles of plastic that are shed from synthetic clothing, and end up in our waterways, our food chain, and ultimately in our bodies.

The fashion industry is also wasteful. As fast fashion brands chase short-lived trends, millions of tons of unwanted clothes end up in landfill once they go out of fashion. Our discarded clothes have even been found in rivers in Nairobi, and deserts in Chile. This creates serious health and environmental problems for vulnerable communities.

Poverty Wages

It’s not just the environment that suffers. The people involved in making our clothes do too.

Many workers making clothes for fast fashion brands are paid poverty wages. For example, in 2023, it was reported that some Bangladeshi garment workers making clothes for UK fast fashion brands were facing starvation due to the low pay they were receiving. Many workers were having to resort to stealing and scavenging food to feed their families because their wages weren’t covering their basic needs.

Poverty wages aren’t just confined to the Global South. In 2020 it was reported that garment workers in Leicester were being paid £3.50 an hour to make clothes for Boohoo, despite our strict laws on minimum wages.

Unsafe Working Conditions

Garment workers also often work in potentially hazardous conditions. Long working hours, exposure to dangerous chemicals and a lack of ventilation and safety equipment are just some of the concerns that put garment workers in potential danger.

As well as these dangers, other workplaces are unsafe for other reasons. Modern slavery – where people are coerced into forced labour – still happens. Some garment workers have reported that they’ve experienced sexual abuse and harassment at work. And many garment workers report that they have been prevented from unionising by their employers. This makes it harder for them to collectively bargain for workplace improvements.

Child Labour

Child labour is also a huge problem in the fast fashion industry, as brands seek to lower production costs to keep the costs of clothing low and their profit margins high.

It’s so rife, that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that 170 million minors are engaged in child labour. However, the ILO classes 15-year-olds as adults. This means the child labour figure is almost certain to be higher than reported, as, in most other cases, anyone under the age of 18 is classed as a child.

Lack Of Transparency

Fast fashion brands aren’t known for their transparency. Not disclosing information about the factories they use or details of their supply chain allows unethical practices to thrive.

Whilst campaigners have been calling for greater transparency, many major fashion brands choose not to disclose any information about their supply chains. Fashion Revolution’s 2023 Fashion Transparency Index showed that just under half of the world’s largest fashion brands chose to disclose little or no information about their supply chain.

How Has This Happened?

The impacts of the industry make for quite shocking reading. And you’re probably wondering how we are in the position that we are now.

It’s actually a relatively new problem. The fashion industry wasn’t always so destructive and damaging.

The number of garments being produced doubled in the last 20 years. And over the last 20 years, whilst the price of our goods and services has risen – often quite dramatically, clothing has not. In fact, clothing is the only consumable which has considerably deflated in price – defying the laws of economics. But why?

One of the main factors which contributed to this was the Multi-Fibre Agreement. This was an international trade agreement that imposed quotas on the volume of clothing we could import from the Global South. When this ended in 2005 it opened the door for suppliers and factory owners in developing countries to work on a larger scale with major corporations within the western retail world. 

Western corporations were able to treat the labour of garment workers as though it were a commodity. The factory owners offered labour at lower and lower prices in order to meet the desired garment prices. These prices were demanded by the high street fast fashion stores attempting to meet their profit margin targets. And as clothes got cheaper and cheaper, we bought more and more of them.

Understanding The Role Of Consumers

It’s easy to rest the blame on the shoulders of the fast fashion giants continually pumping out more and more new clothes. Yet Lianne Bell, author of How On Earth Can I Be Eco-Friendly argues that consumers have a big role in facilitating the growth of fast fashion. After all, if there was no demand, there would be no supply.

Lianne has concluded that, ultimately, “The heart of the problem lies in the fact that we’ve come to think of clothing as disposable and easily replaceable.”

Lianne goes on to say “When something is so readily available to us, it devalues the whole item. We don’t even have to think about it. We just buy it, aimlessly and needlessly. Half the time, we’ll buy clothing, then send it off to a charity shop without ever wearing it.”

Whilst we may believe that this is the norm, Lianne points to the town of Panipat in North India, which recycles over 100,000 tonnes of our cast-offs every year. Known as the world’s “cast off capital“, the women who shred our practically unworn garments have surmised that there is a water shortage in the Western world. The mindless nature of our clothing consumption is so alien to them, that they assume it’s too expensive for us to wash our clothes. 

What Can We Do?

So what can we do to stop this deluge of clothing? As the fast fashion industry operates on a supply and demand basis, the most impactful way we as individuals can take action is to reduce our demand and reliance on fast fashion.

Some steps that we can take to become more conscious consumers include:

• Avoiding shopping from fast fashion brands where possible
• Buying second-hand and vintage clothing
• Taking part in clothes swaps or trading with friends
• Upcycling or DIYing clothing
• Supporting sustainable fashion brands
• Calling for transformations in the fashion industry – for example, by supporting organisations such as Labour Behind The Label and Fashion Revolution, which campaign for better practices in the fashion industry.

The fashion industry should be more sustainable. And the fashion industry should treat its workers fairly – it’s time for it to step up.

More Resources

Want to dig deeper? I’ve got lots more resources for you:

• How to support ethical fashion when you’re flat broke.
• Five questions to ask yourself before buying any new clothes
• How to stop impulsively buying fast fashion
• See these ethical fashion infographics for more information on the problems of fast fashion.