Semester 1

Economics

Research Paper on:

Fast Fashion and its Effects on the Economy

Submitted to:

Prof. Ganesh Munnorcode

NMIMS Kirit P Mehta School of Law

Submitted by:

Anoushkaa N V

BA LLB (Hons)

Division- C

Roll no- C043

 Abstract

In this research paper, the negative effects of fast fashion on the economy have been discussed.
With time and economic wealth people have moved to use and throw clothing materials. One
of the main issues is that these clothes are produced on large scale, the materials take more to
decompose but at the same time is not very sustainable. Some of the characteristics that attract
more audience into fast fashion brands are the inexpensive and wide variety of disposable
clothing range but those who work in or live near textile manufacturing facilities bear a
disproportionate burden of environmental health hazards. There have been global issues of
labour exploitation by these big fast fashion brands and dumping of waste clothes in under-
developed and developing countries. Not only is fast fashion economically unsustainable but
also environmentally.
 Introduction

What is Fast Fashion?

In the 1800s, fashion was slow, materials were resourced and had to be woven to make clothes.
With the industrial revolution came sewing machines, production of clothes became easier. By
1960s and 70s young people started creating new trends. During the 2000s, low-cost fashion
reached its zenith. Online shopping took off and fast fashion retailers took over the market.
Fast fashion is the new trend of replicated catwalk costumes and up to date, trendy clothes.
These are cheap, dispensable and has the newest styles. These firms now dominate the textile
market from the global to the street shopping level. This kind of clothing has also captured a
large market in the online platform.

Relevance of the Topic

These brands outsource cheap labour from under-developed/poor countries, where labour is
shockingly cheap. Fast fashion impacts garment workers who have been found to work in
dangerous environments, for low wages, and without basic human rights. Further down the
supply chain, there are the farmers who may work with toxic chemicals that can have
devastating impacts on their physical as well as mental health. There is mass and
overproduction of these disposable clothes, which leads to massive inventory that the producer
is unable to sell and these goes into seasonal sales and discounts. The speed at which the clothes
are produced puts immense pressure on people and environment. The impact of fast fashion on
our environment is huge. The pressure to reduce costs and speed up productions has to cut
some environmental corners. Fast fashion’s negative impact includes its use of cheap, toxic
textile dyes. Fast fashion industry is the second largest polluter of clean follow globally after
agriculture. the cheap textiles used in fast fashion, like polyester is derived from fossil fuels
which leads to global warming and can shed microfibres that add to the increasing levels of
plastics in our oceans and water bodies. The speed at which garments are produced also means
that more and more clothes are disposed of by consumers, creating a huge amount of textile
waste and a throw-away culture. The use of natural fabrics can also be a problem at the scale
of the fast fashion demands. Conventional cotton requires enormous quantities of water and
pesticides in developing countries. This results in risks of drought and creates huge amounts
on stress on water basins, as well as competition for resources between companies and local
communities. More than 500 billion dollar is lost every year due to clothing underutilization
and lack of recycling.
 Fast Fashion and the Economy

Clothing production has approximately doubled in the last 15 years. This industry attracts a
huge middle-class audience and has increased per capita sales in the developed economies. The
demand for this is expected to increase manifold by 2050. Fast fashion has a huge economic
impact. It's responsible for the growth of the apparel industry. By selling an enormous quantity
of clothes, which is inexpensive, fast fashion has now become a dominant business model
globally. This trend has created an impulsive shopping culture and consumers demanding for
low-cost apparels. Fast fashion brands can bring out new collections to high-street stores in a
very short time. This is a major factor in their success. The clothes are manufactured very quick
and hence moves parallel to the new fashion trends. Due to the over-production, a lot of clothes
goes as waste into landfills and it takes a lot in monetary terms to recycle these and a lot of
times these are left as dump in the landfills. Such lack of recycling and reuse could lead to huge
monetary loss. Only a very small or negligible percentage of these clothes are recycled. This
industry employs around 300 million people around the world, many of them in the poorest
countries. Most of the time, fast fashion production takes place in overseas countries, where
labour is shockingly cheap. Most of the times, these labours work in unhygienic and unsafe
environments and are not paid in time or paid at all. Fast fashion brands and retailers are
pushing for lower production costs to increase their profit margins and meet customer demand.
Meanwhile, manufacturers keep wages low and working conditions unsafe.

Fast Fashion and the Garment workers

Fashion, a $2.5 trillion sector, is the second most polluting industry on Earth, right behind oil.
It is one among the most resource intensive industries in the world. Low and Middle-income
countries produce around 90 percent of the world’s clothing. Due to poor political conditions
and meagre international representation, the workers are exploited at harsh working conditions,
stripped of human rights and salary payments. All these leads to greater occupational hazards.
Physical and mental health of workers are at stake at these working environments. The
conditions are so bad that it could lead to life threatening diseases like lung cancer, damage to
muscles, adverse reproductive and fatal outcomes leading to death.
 Analysis of Conditions of Garment Workers

Clothing production has helped spur growth in developing economies, but a closer look reveals
a number of social challenges. Periodic reports of international disasters, is an eye opener about
the grave injustice done by the super-rich global brands to the worker populations from poor
countries. Rapid consumption of apparel and the need to deliver on short fashion cycles stresses
production resources, often resulting in supply chains that put profits ahead of human welfare.
Around 75 million people are employed by these brands globally. 80 percent of these workforce
include young women between the ages of 18 and 24. There has been reports of forced and
child labour in the fashion industry in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia,
Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam and other countries.

The Uighur people are an ethnic minority group who are Turkic-speaking. They are culturally
affiliated with Central and East Asia. Chinese authorities claim that around 12 million Uighurs
are living in the Xinjiang region in the alleged re-education camps. Around a million Uighur
people have been detained here over the past few years and it has been alleged that they have
been used as enslaved labour by big fast fashion companies like ZARA, Adidas, Tommy
Hilfiger, NIKE etc.

Bangladesh apparel factories account for around 84 percent of the country’s export sector has
been the worst hit in the crisis of the global Covid-19 pandemic after international retailers
cancelled orders because of the pandemic. The workers took to the streets demanding for wages.
Bangladesh has been affected by this fast fashion industry earlier also, in 2013 Rana Plaza
factory collapsed and killed 1134 Bangladeshi workers. These are stark reminders of the health
hazards and the unsafe conditions faced by garment workers.
 Conclusion

Fast fashion is popular because it democratises high fashion, by knocking off designer brands
at scale and providing goods of similar nature at cheaper prices. It provides consumers with a
feeling of luxury without paying the full price. Every day millions of people buy clothes
without considering the impact it will have on this planet and the environment. From the growth
of water-intensive cotton, disposing of untreated dyes in water bodies, to worker’s low wage,
fast fashion comes at an environmental and social cost. It takes around 80 years for clothes to
break down in the landfills. The garment workers from poor or middle-income countries are
exploited due to lack of organisational and infrastructural audit. These workers shouldn’t be
treated this way, on humanitarian grounds as well as on economics terms. They are one of the
most important variable capital needed for the industry. Lack of labour could lead to fall in
production. The rise of capitalist consumerism today as a dominant global force cutting across
socioeconomic barriers has been paving the way for the augment of fast fashion and mass
consumption of un-considerate clothing by the younger generation today without realising the
negative consequences it has on the environment, economy and society. The narrative of hyper-
consumption, shifting fashion trends and economic materialism exerted by the fast fashion
retail giants and corporations to the younger generation today are shaping the way we are
unconsciously consuming fashion, quenching their selfish thirst for more profits and less
accountability towards the environment, people producing it and the society as a whole.
 Solutions to Counterpart Fast Fashion

Buy Less

Buy clothes that you truly need. It has become common now to guilty shop (buying more than
you need). Make efforts to reuse or re-style really old clothes. Take proper care of the clothes,
extending its life. Wash clothes less often, this will help save water as well as the clothes will
last longer. Small holes and malfunctions could be fixed; hence one can reduce the number of
clothes being dumped into landfills.

Thrift Shop

With the current system of fast fashion, clothing trends change every week, and new garments
are produced. Thrift shopping is buying second hand clothes donated by other people. Thrift
shopping is the best way to reduce your clothing footprint. It is a great way to find high quality,
unique garments at a fraction of the price of buying new.

Buy Sustainable

Research and buy from vegan or eco-fashion companies who are pursuing the production of
clothing with more environmentally friendly methods. Promote and shop from companies that
are attempting to be more sustainable and make use of materials that are recycled. Buy from
local small brands that focus on creating a culture of sustainability by producing less from the
onset. They use strategies like producing customised and limited clothing, so they are not
making more than what is sold to create less waste. They also design clothing to be of the
highest quality, ensuring durability and longevity, so clothes have a long lifetime. Also some
of these stores provides an option to know your artist or maker, in which the information about
the local manufacturer is provided.
Donate

Donate old clothes or the ones which a person isn’t going to wear anymore. This will help
thousands of clothing from getting dumped in the landfills. This could add more collection to
the thrift shops.
 References

• Rauturier, S. (2021). What Is Fast Fashion?. Retrieved 1 February 2021, from

https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/
• Ekenga, C. (2021). The global environmental injustice of fast fashion. Retrieved 29
January 2021, from https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-018-
0433-7#citeas
• ’Starving’ Bangladesh garment workers protest for pay during COVID-19 lockdown.
(2021). Retrieved 1 February 2021, from
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1658186/world
• Chan, E. (2021). The fast-fashion system is broken — so what happens next?. Retrieved
30 January 2021, from https://www.vogue.in/fashion/content/the-fast-fashion-system-
is-broken-so-what-happens-next
• Bhardwaj, G., & Ditty, S. (2021). Understanding Sustainable Fashion. Retrieved 30
January 2021,from https://www.chathamhouse.org/2018/10/understanding-
sustainable-
fashion?gclid=Cj0KCQiA3smABhCjARIsAKtrg6IRkQw15tVpTExIxlJRTumU7ehn
KiGma6_Lkwax7ChWCBFHjQL8RgaAkyJEALw_wcB
• The Problem with Fast Fashion | BWSS. (2021). Retrieved 31 January 2021, from
https://www.bwss.org/fastfashion/#:~:text=Impact%20of%20Fast%20Fashion&text=
The%20pressure%20to%20reduce%20costs,clean%20water%20globally%20after%2
0agriculture
• Fashion & Environment — SustainYourStyle. (2021). Retrieved 5 February 2021, from
https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/en/whats-wrong-with-the-fashion-industry
• Reichart, E., & Drew, D. (2021). By the Numbers: The Economic, Social and
Environmental Impacts of “Fast Fashion”. Retrieved 1 February 2021, from
https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/01/numbers-economic-social-and-environmental-
impacts-fast-fashion
• Mandal, K. (2021). The global consequence of fast fashion - Media India Group.
Retrieved 5 February 2021, from https://mediaindia.eu/culture/the-global-
consequence-of-fast-fashion/
• Assoune, A. (2021). How Does Fast Fashion Affect The Economy. Retrieved 31
January 2021, from https://www.panaprium.com/blogs/i/how-does-fast-fashion-affect-
 theeconomy#:~:text=Fast%20fashion%20has%20a%20huge,years)%20of%20the%20
apparel%20industry.
• Bestow, L. (2021). Where Fast Fashion Meets Slave Labor. Retrieved 4 February 2021,
from https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/where-fast-fashion-meets-slave-
labor-eca3d4172007