It’s time to pull back the glitzy curtain and take a sobering look at why fast fashion’s impact on our environment isn’t just a concern—it’s a crisis.
Textile waste in the fashion industry
Fast fashion’s breakneck production speed results in an unprecedented volume of clothing churned out each year. If the trend continues, the number of fast fashion waste is expected to soar up to 134 million tonnes a year by the end of the decade. That includes the 2.6 million tonnes of returned clothes that ended up in landfills in 2020 in the US alone. Mind you, these returns created 16 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in just one year.
Shockingly, a garbage truck’s worth of textiles is wasted every second. Unwanted garments, often made from synthetic materials that take hundreds of years to decompose, clog landfills, releasing harmful pollutants into the air,…