User:Ndani06/sandbox

One of the most apparent reasons for the current unsustainable condition of the fashion system is related to the temporal aspects of fashion; the continuous stream of new goods onto the market, or what is popularly called "fast fashion." The term has come to signify cheap, accessible, and on-trend clothes sourced through global production chains and sold through chains such as H&M, Zara, Forever21, etc. The fashion industry has a huge value at three trillion dollars. It is two percent of the world's GDP. Out of the three trillion dollars, the majority is made of fast fashion.

However, the "fast" aspect of consumption is primarily a problem for the environment when done on a massive scale. As long as fast conspicuous consumption was reserved to the rich, the global impact was not reaching public attention or seen as a problem. That is, "fast" shopping sprees of haute couture is not seen as a problem, rather it is celebrated (for example in movies such as Pretty Woman), whereas when people with less means shop fast fashion it is seen as unethical and a problem. Today, the speed of fast fashion is common across the whole industry as exclusive fashion replicates the fast fashion chains with continuous releases of collections and product drops: the quality of a garment does not necessarily translate to a slower pace of consumption and waste.[citation needed]

Fast fashion has negative effects on the environment and is unethical in terms of production. In order to make clothing fast enough to keep up with the changing fashion trends, the clothes are produced in harmful ways. "Fast" clothing is made with synthetic fibers as opposed to natural fibers. The synthetic fibers are made using the Earth's fossil fuels. Almost sixty percent of our clothes are made this way. Since people spend so much money on these types of clothes and purchase them so frequently, landfills are filling up quickly. Over sixty percent of clothes made every year end up in landfills because people just don't like them and almost twenty percent of the world's waste is made of fashion products. Production of these types of clothing isn't the best as well. Most factories that produce "fast" clothing are located in low-class countries like China, Bangladesh and Vietnam. Hard labor was always around in the fashion industry dating back to when slave labor helped factories gather their materials. The working conditions of people making these clothes today suffer from horrid working conditions and extremely low wages. Usually many of these workers also get hurt during accidents on the job because of the unsafe working conditions. The most recent accident was the Bangladesh factory collapse. There was an explosion, and a factory collapse which killed almost everyone inside.