Earth Day 2024: Stop the Cult of Fast Fashion

Ad for HBO's Brandy Hellville: Fast Fashion documentary
Ad for documentary about a fast fashion company

Monday, April 22, 2024 is Earth Day! What does fast fashion have to do with Earth Day?  Let’s find out!

               As a 72-year-old grandmother of children aged eight and under, I had never heard of Brandy Melville clothing.  But even The New York Times reviewed the recent documentary titled Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion that unveils the company’s horrendous practices.

The 90-minute program documents Brandy Melville’s exploitation and even enslavement of textile workers overseas; manipulation of vulnerable teenaged girls; sloppy business practices; the CEO’s, (Stephan Marsan’s) celebration of racist, sexist, and violent imagery; and a level of waste that is choking ocean shores with discarded “fast-fashion” clothes.

An article about the documentary in The Voice of Fashion’s Sustainability section refers to Brandy Melville as a “horror story.” Editor Sohini Dey describes the “Brandy Girls” who work and model for the company: “According to interviewees, the brand crafts the Brandy Girl model at the cost of every insecurity a fashion consumer may have. Its harmful body standards are apparent in lack of sizing; many former employees admit to eating disorders.”

The fast fashion trend of cheap, throw-away clothes is toxic, and not only to young girls. Dey refers to its disastrous environmental impact as “the doomed afterlife of products.”

What Is Sustainable Fashion?

This year EarthDay.org celebrates Mother Earth with a fascinating webinar, WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE FASHION? I urge you to listen to the entire program. It explains things we really need to know about the fast fashion. EarthDay.org presents these facts:

Huge pile of textile waste
Textile waste is a major polluter in Southeast Asian countries like Bangladesh.

Fashion and Greenhouse Gases

In his recent Volts podcast episode, host David Roberts offers a broad overview about Fashion’s climate impact and how to reduce it. Roberts interviews Maxine Bédat, a former fashion startup CEO and founder of the nonprofit New Standards Institute. They talk about the sources of the fashion industry’s emissions, what can be done to reduce them, the need for regulation, and the right way to think about fast fashion. And she defines fast fashion, “It’s instant fashion…wear this once, it’s so cheap; you don’t need to wear it ever again.”

Bedat says the fashion industry is the third largest manufacturing industry globally. The New Standards Institute says, “Apparel and footwear are responsible for an enormous and under acknowledged part of global greenhouse gas emissions, between 4-8.6%. (By comparison, the entire United States accounts for 11%).”

This includes the many agricultural and industrial processes involved in making fabrics, clothing, and footwear, and the significant amount of transportation involved between all the steps in those processes.  Polyester, a synthetic fabric, is made from oil, and in recent years, it has overtaken all fabrics made from naturally grown and more biodegradable materials such as cotton or flax.

In addition to all the greenhouse gases emitted in the production of new clothing, Bedat agrees with the Brandy Hellville documentary that a fast fashion industry that promotes a culture of throw-away garments is creating other environmental and climate harm.  She focuses on another fast fashion company, Shein, which uses air freight to deliver its latest styles weekly, a transportation method whose greenhouse gas impact is 40% greater than shipping by sea. “What they are doing is they are air freighting…drop shipping their products directly from Chinese factories directly to consumers. They get to bypass hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes every year that companies like Gap pay.” 

How Regulation Can Help

              Bedat wants states like New York and California to pass The Fashion Act. She also wants the news media to let the public know about the environmental impacts of fast fashion.  “There should be a lot more coverage of places like the Atacama desert in Chile, which is just massive areas covered in clothing. And also the Or Foundation is doing really great work covering the Contamanto, the waste stream coming out of that second-hand market in Accra, Ghana. It’s being sent to countries that don’t have the resources for a lot of reasons. And there is a lot of, like, illegal burning.”

“Whether we like it or not, it does come down to us making a noise about it,” Bedat adds. “And that is both on an individual purchasing level and as a citizen, to voice to your regulators and legislators that this is something that matters to you and that they need to invest their political capital in passing.”

Back of a young woman in natural clothing standing before trees with sun shining through

“The final word? ‘Buy less.’ It might be a cliché, but could any fashion message be more crucial?”

  • Sohini Day, Managing Editor, Voice of Fashion

            

  EarthDay.org advice: WHAT YOU CAN DO

EarthDay.org says: “Consumers have the power to change the trajectory of fast fashion. Here are a few important things you can do: 

  • Educate yourself about sustainable clothing.  
  • Buy less and shop for quality over quantity.   
  • Choose natural materials – organic cotton, linen, or hemp.
  • Buy 100% recycled fabrics – 100% recycled polyester, viscose (rayon), etc. 
  • Research brands to identify those that are ethical and practice transparency and sustainability. 
  • Post a picture of yourself wearing a sustainable garment, explaining its attributes and why you like it. Tag us on social media!
  • Choose brands that are manufactured in their own community and connected to the place, people behind them, local economy, and environment. 
  • Buy secondhand clothing. 
  • Swap clothes with a clothes swap group or start a swap yourself. 
  • Learn how to repair your clothes yourself. The longer clothes are kept, the lower their emissions footprint.”

A few more suggestions from this Green Grandma: rather than throwing your old clothes into a recycle or garbage bin, consider how they can be restyled or resized, worn in a new way, or used as rags. Check into the clothing needs of refugees who are settling into your local community; most often, they arrived with only the clothes on their backs. Remember the 1930s motto from the Great Depression: Use it up. Wear It Out. Make it do. Or do without.”

Another Way to Celebrate Earth Day!

Earth Day is also the release date for the eBook version of my new memoir, Rear-View Reflections on Radical Change: A Green Grandma’s Memoir and Call for Climate Action! I hope you’ll consider reading and reviewing it on Amazon, Goodreads, or elsewhere!

Linda Mary Wagner

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About Me

Picture of Linda Mary Wagner
Linda Mary Wagner

I spent more than a dozen years as an independent journalist and later worked as a communications specialist for The Brooklyn Historical Society, Consumers Union, and Associated Press. At this stage of my life, my primary concern is to meet the challenge that climate change presents to my children, grandchildren, and the future of life on planet Earth.

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Now available!

My new memoir, Rear-View Reflections on Radical Change, is now available as an e-book and paperback!

Rear View Reflections on Radical Change