I was not aware that many of our clothes are made of plastic. This is shocking because I wear them every single day but know nothing about them. What did I think they are made of? I started asking myself after I read the class materials. I always thought that clothes are made from plants like cotton and compostable materials. They are so soft, so flexible, and so easy to be torn apart. They are nothing like water bottles, plastic bags, or other plastic products. I guess this is the reason why I never considered my clothes as plastic.
In addition, I did not know much about how clothes are produced in general, so it was quite enlightening to learn about fast fashion from reading the class materials and listening to our guest speaker Heather Kaye. From my understanding, giant companies like Zara and H&M use fast fashion to replicate and mass produce trending designs, so they can sell them at low cost and gain very high profits. This business model causes many issues including poor working conditions for workers (low wages, unhealthy working environment, long hours of work), an over production of clothings, an extraneous amount of waste, a high expense of nonrenewable resources (fossil fuel), etc. Pressured to solve these problems, these companies’s solution is greenwashing – marketing themselves as way greener and eco-friendlier than they actually are. Thus, instead of trying to fix the issue, they use the issue as a way to market their products. They introduce ear-catching words like “sustainable,” “ecological grown,” “recyclable,” etc., to make people think that their products are addressing the issue. However, when we scrutinizing their processes closely, we will see how unsustainable and not green their products are.
I think there are many ways that we individually could do to tackle the fast fashion and plastic in fashion problems. Personally, I rarely buy new clothes or try to catch up with the fashion. I wear my clothes for many times until they get worn out before buying new ones. Living in a developing country, my family and I are quite conservative regarding new clothes. In fact, every time I fill the CSS Profile, my family’s expense on new clothes is around $50 per year. Besides being conservative, the reason for my family’s low expense on clothes is the cheap prices of clothes due to the less of brands and low wages of garment factory workers. I know that this situation does not apply to a lot of people, but the bottom line is we should try not to buy clothes that we do not actually need. When we buy any clothes, we should try to use them as many times as possible before throwing them away because they are not as “disposable” as they are marketed to be.
Another new business model that seems efficient is renting clothes. Back home, people rent clothes because they are not able to afford to buy ones. For example, they need to rent luxurious suits to attend a party or an important meeting. I was enlightened by Heather when she talked about companies that have all kinds of clothes, dresses, and shoes for people to rent. This method eliminates the need for people to buy clothes that they only use one or two times before leaving them in their closets.
Like plastic bags and packaging, plastic in fashion is an issue that has a very deep root. There are systems put in place to convince people that you need new clothes every day. Like the American Chemistry Council, giant fashion companies like Zara and H&M dump millions of money to persuade people to support the consumption of their products. Instead of trying to fix the plastic problem, they use it as a propaganda and a marketing strategy. At the end, the problem still remains.
If we take a moment to pause and look back, we will see how clothes change from being a necessity (keeping us warm, protecting us) to a fashion. There’s nothing wrong this, but do we need that many clothes though?
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