One school of thought holds that fashion industry bears heavy responsibility for environmental degradation as it constantly release new products. Personally, I wholeheartedly agree with this notion, and I will elucidate my reasonings.
Granted, one might argue the endless stream of new collections can bring certain benefits for the environment. The key rationale behind this is that fashion brands often take advantage of recycled materials in order to make new clothes, which in turn fosters the use of wasted the materials, avoiding landfills, and incentivizes consumers to recycle more. However, I would argue that few fashion brands take notice of environmental issues as the manufacture of new clothes using recycled materials also requires huge amount of water, which is then discharged into the river, thereby accelerating the environmental degradation.
Moreover, I would contend that the aforementioned benefits pale in significance compared to the glaring drawbacks. Chief among these would be the enormous amount of textile waste ending up in landfills. This can be attributed to the fact that constant new products with affordable price and updating trends can incentivize consumers to adopt a materialistic lifestyles, fostering reckless shopping and rendering garments virtually disposable, hence enormous landfills, which takes decades to decompose. Furthermore, the manufacture and transportation of clothes in global scale can leave a huge carbon footprint. Most machines in the factories still rely heavily on fossil fuels to operate, the final products is then shipped across continents to retailers and shopping malls, which enormously contributes to the greenhouse gas emissions, thereby accelerating the global warming and aggravating the ongoing climate crisis. For example, it is reported that the CO2 equivalent which is discharged during clothes manufacturing in fast fashion industry is higher than the amount of gas being discharged by means of transportation every year.
In conclusion, whilst admitting the effort of fashion industry in order to lessen the environmental issues, I would argue that constant new products can impinge upon the environment due to enormous amount of textile waste and huge carbon footprint caused by fashion industry.