Fast Fashion, Fast Pollute the Environment

Clothes are means to protect our bodies and express our identities. However, recently, countless clothes are being produced, sold, and discarded so fast that it negatively impacts society. This “fast fashion” industry has grown alongside social media, and it currently contributes to issues such as climate change, water pollution, and labor exploitation. It is time to confront the truth about fast fashion.

On April 15th, “Channel PNU” met with Oh Jung-Mi (Research Professor, Research Center for Climate Sciences) to discuss the realities related to fast fashion. She wrote the book, “The Cost of Fashion: It’s Time to Pay,” and is currently conducting research on the connection between the fashion industry and climate change.

Q. What are the reasons for the recent boom in the fast fashion industry?

A. Since the 2000s, with the emergence of fast fashion brands like ZARA, the fashion industry changed from producing and selling products based on seasons to introducing new items biweekly or even weekly. As a result, clothes have become from goods that should be repaired and stored into “disposable products” that are worn a few times and then discarded.

The fast fashion market has further evolved into “ultra-fast fashion.” A prominent example of this is the Chinese online clothing shopping mall, Shein. According to one statistic, Shein introduced approximately 310,000 new products to its online store in over just 3.5 months. Most of these items were priced under 10,000 won. This ultra-fast fashion business model contributes to a structure where consumers can purchase and discard clothing even more easily than with fast fashion.

Q. How does fast fashion specifically affect the environment?

A. To break it down, the materials of the clothing are the cause of environmental pollution. Producing synthetic textiles is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions because it requires a significant amount of energy. When making clothes made of cotton, the natural fibers require irrigation that depletes groundwater resources, and the pesticides and herbicides used to grow cotton contaminate the soil. Additionally, polyester, commonly used in everyday clothing, contributes to marine microplastics pollution. Tiny microplastics that are made when washing clothes goes into waterways and oceans. These microplastics do not decompose naturally and pose a threat to marine, soil, and atmospheric ecosystems.

Q. Fast fashion causes a lot of environmental pollution from consumption. Then, what about during the disposal process?

A. When textile waste is no longer useful, it is either landfilled or incinerated, both of which cause serious environmental problems. The decomposition time of different textiles in landfills varies: 1 week to 5 months for cotton, 10 months to 1 year for denim, 30 to 40 years for nylon, 20 to 200 years for polyester, and unknown for spandex. The greenhouse gasses emitted during this process account for 2% to 8% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Particularly since the 2000s, with the spread of media, the fast fashion market grew. As a result, discarded clothing and textile waste have become an increasingly severe environmental issue.

Q. Where does the clothing waste go when we dispose of it in clothing bins?

A. When we put our unwanted clothes in clothing bins, entrusting companies sort them. They incinerate or landfill the items with no market value, and send over 90% of the valuable items to developing countries. Of the clothes considered valuable, only up to 10% are transferred to second-hand stores in the domestic market. According to the “UN Comtrade Database,” South Korea was the fifth-largest exporter of used clothing to developing countries, exporting a total of 347.7 million dollars in 2021.

Q. It appears that the scale of clothing waste that is incinerated or landfilled without being exported is likely to be greater. What is the extent of this?

A. The specific statistics of clothing waste that is incinerated or landfilled is difficult to identify. Clothing waste includes not only clothes sent to collection bins but also clothing separated for recycling, which ends up being incinerated or landfilled during the sorting process. Furthermore, although Article 25 of the Waste Control Act mandates licensed waste management companies to collect discarded clothing and there still exist numerous unreported waste collection companies operating outside regulatory oversight. In fact, a survey conducted by KBS in “No Earth for Clothes, 2021,” revealed that when KBS asked the top 7 fashion companies in South Korea whether they incinerate excess inventory, four companies answered “yes,” one company stated “disclosure not available,” one company “refused to respond,” and one company answered “no.”

Q. Doesn’t fast fashion cause other issues besides environmental problems?

A. It also brings about social issues. To rapidly produce and distribute inexpensive clothes in two weeks, excessive labor is required. To lower production costs, fast fashion companies often operate under low-wage and high-labor conditions. The labor rights issues within the fast fashion industry have come to the forefront, prompting efforts to improve worker welfare. However, many fast fashion brands still seek out developing countries with weak labor laws to manufacture products quickly and cheaply.

Q. How can we stop the flow of this fast fashion industry?

A. Various institutional improvement efforts are needed. For example, the European Commission (EC) has proposed the introduction of “Digital Product Passport (DPP)” to transition fast fashion into ethical consumption. DPP digitally captures data throughout the entire lifecycle of a product, displaying information such as the origin of raw materials, carbon emissions generated during production, recycling information. This information can be utilized to make better sustainable choices at both the manufacturing and consumer levels.

Another alternative is to apply Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to textile waste. EPR is a system that imposes a certain level of recycling obligation on producers for their products or packaging waste. Currently, EPR is implemented for items such as tires, fluorescent lights, and batteries. By expanding the scope of the EPR system to include textile waste, it is predicted that the recycling rate of textile waste can be increased, and the collection and separation can be systematically managed. If they don’t implement it, the system has producers subject to recycling fees, thereby imposing sanctions on fast fashion companies.

Reporter Yoon Seo-Young

Translated by Ha Chae-Won