Clothes are one of the fundamental needs for living, but in the modern day, they also serve as an individual’s identity representation. Instead of just being a style for one, clothes become a trend and a fashion, which people once overlooked, about the effects of overconsumption on clothes, also known as fast fashion. However, nowadays, individuals are more conscious about how fast fashion affects natural and labour exploitation. In this essay, I will provide the issues created by fast fashion industry, as well as, the solution to help people to aware about clothing consumption.
It is clearly seen that in many developing countries are under the situation where fast fashion industry exploits their natural resources and labour. For example, there was the case of H&M, which hired illegal ages to work for their garment manufacturers in certain countries like Bangladesh and Nepal. Also, the cotton farming in Xinjiang, China which proved to be the case of natural catrastrophic due to the over water demand for cotton plants. Both cases show how much fast fashion industry negatively effect people’s lives and nature.
On the other hand, to mitigate these issues, the clothing brands should initiate programmes for support workers and biodiversity. The company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) programmes should be implemented with focusing on workers’ standard of living, such as a reasonable pay and a high quality of working conditions. In terms of environmental dimensions, fash fashion brands should pay attention on the production of quality products instead of high volume, this will lead to less natural resources consumption and increase more awareness on nature.
In conclusion, it is important for the fast fashion industry to not take for granted from labour and environments. To ensure that these issues will not arise again, the companies should start working on their ESG practices, with concentrated in environmental and social dimensions to improve the quality of life of workers and nature.