Fast fashion and its negative effects on the environment

“Fast fashion” is a term used to describe clothing items that quickly follow trends; they are inspired by items in fashion shows and are produced very quickly to be shipped to stores. In recent years, "fast fashion" has become increasingly popular because of its affordable price, variety of designs, constantly updated and popular. Consumers, especially young people, increasingly favor new styles, thereby stimulating purchasing power, causing the fast fashion industry to grow and gain a solid foothold in the hearts of consumers, especially Especially in the 4.0 technology era when young people spend a lot of time shopping for cheap clothes on e-commerce platforms.

     The advent of fast fashion with affordable prices has attracted customers to spend large amounts of money to be able to use them... Within 14 years (2000 - 2014), the number of garments worn by consumers increased by 60% each year. The apparel industry has grown 8% annually (except during the outbreak of the pandemic year 2020) and fast fashion leads the apparel industry [2]. Of the 100 billion clothes produced each year, 20% of them go unsold. On average each year, about 85% of textiles will be dumped in landfills, equivalent to every second a truckload of clothes will be burned or thrown away. Over the past 20 years, the amount of clothing Americans throw away has doubled — from 7 million tons to 14 million tons. That means the average person throws away 80 pounds of clothing each year. Most of the clothes go to Africa, the rest are piled up in scrap yards.

     In the capital Accra, Ghana - a country in Africa (part of the Atacama Desert) there is a huge landfill, of which 60% is clothing and is known as the "world's clothing landfill". ”. Every week this place receives 15 million pieces of old clothes, including charity items from around the world, and 40% of them are of poor quality and are thrown into landfills. Every year, about 39 thousand tons of discarded clothes are gathered in this desert [3]. Chile has long been a hub for used and unsold clothing. These clothes are made in China or Bangladesh, then shipped to Europe, Asia or the US before arriving in Chile, where the items are resold throughout Latin America. It is estimated that each year about 59,000 tons of clothing arrive at the port of Iquique in the city of Alto Hospicio, Northern Chile [3]. Clothing traders from the capital Santiago often buy only a few of these, while most are smuggled to other Latin American countries.

     Besides, 90% of these garments are made from cotton or polyester fabric, cotton fabric is a staple of the water-consuming garment industry. And regarding fabric, it is impossible not to mention cotton production. Cotton production relies heavily on pesticides. While only 2.4% of the world's arable land is grown with cotton and 11% of the world's pesticides are used to grow cotton. Cotton is also the crop that requires the most water. It takes between 7,000 and 29,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton. This comes at a high cost to the environment and communities living near cotton production facilities [4].

     Not only that, the textile industry releases a large amount of wastewater into the environment, an average of about 70 million m3 of wastewater per year. The textile industry needs to use up to 20 thousand liters of water just to produce 1 kilogram (kg) of cotton fiber, equivalent to 1 T-shirt and 1 pair of jeans. According to a 2019 United Nations report, global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014. The industry is responsible for 20% of all global wastewater [3]. However, the current situation of environmental pollution in the textile industry, first of all wastewater pollution in many areas, is still not strictly controlled. Most remaining businesses still only apply rudimentary wastewater treatment measures; treated wastewater still contains the majority of toxic substances that pollute the environment, especially in craft village industrial parks. This has caused water sources in many localities to be seriously polluted and affected the surrounding atmosphere in those areas, affecting people's lives.

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