In this video, Patrick Bet-David analyzes the consequences of “Fast Fashion,” the cheap clothing made to mimic designer fashion trends by brands like SHEIN, Zara, Fashion Nova, Uniqlo, and H&M.
Every year, the average American consumer throws away nearly 82 pounds of clothing, which is about the equivalent of 2,150 pieces of clothing, creating 11.3 million tons of textile waste.
The documentary True Cost claims that 80 billion pieces of clothing are thrown away globally every year, 400 percent more than the consumption rate 20 years ago. The clothing industry is expected to see its global emissions increase by 50 percent by 2030.
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Of the 100 billion garments created each year, about 92 million tons wind up in landfills. While climate change predictions change all the time, pollution data like this is very real and its effects are visible. Additionally, online returns in the US created 16 million tons of CO2 emissions in 2020 alone.
Fast fashion creates more CO2 than aviation and shipping combined.
The fashion industry is responsible for 20 percent of global wastewater per year, and it requires 20,000 liters of water to produce a single kilogram of cotton.
About 10 percent of microplastics that end up in the world’s oceans each year come from fast fashion textiles like nylon and polyester. Each wash and dry cycle causes microfilaments to shed and travel through the sewage system into bodies of water.
Related: Scientists Discover Microplastics in Every Human Placenta
Synthetic fibers in garments like PET, the material used in polyester clothing, can take hundreds of years to decompose, releasing harmful chemicals and greenhouse gases in the process. In America, 85 percent of all clothes are put in landfills or burned, unleashing hundreds of years of plastic pollution.
Some $500 billion is lost every year because people fail to recycle clothing, and the number of times a piece of clothing is re-worn has declined by 36 percent over the last fifteen years.
And to make matters worse, fast fashion brands are creating twice as much clothing as they were 20 years ago.
Watch the rest of Patrick’s video to hear some possible solutions to the “fast fashion” plague.
Shane Devine is a writer covering politics, economics, and culture for Valuetainment. Follow Shane on X (Twitter).
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