ENVI

Fast and Fashion-Furious: Numerous fashion companies opt to use inexpensive and environmentally hazardous materials as the demand for affordable clothing has been rapidly increasing. What measures can the EU implement to protect the environment from the dangers associated with the fast fashion industry?

Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

by Tess Nealon (IE)

Introduction 

Statistics have shown that the exponentially expanding fast fashion market has been detrimental to the environment. In 2020 textile consumption caused the third-highest pressures on water and land use, and the fifth-highest use of raw materials. It takes 2,700 litres of fresh water to make a cotton T-shirt, which is enough drinking water for a single person for 2 and a half years. Water pollution is not the only factor in fast fashion pollution, as laundering synthetic clothing accounts for 35% of the microplastics released into the environment. The fast fashion industry also accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions. The European Environment Agency (EEA) reported that in 2020 textile purchases generated roughly 270 kg of carbon dioxide emissions per person. As a result, this generated 121 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Europeans used almost 26 kilograms of textiles and discarded 11 kilograms of them every year. Furthermore, 87% of used clothes were incinerated or sent to a landfill.  These pieces of statistics are alarming. They show how fast fashion is rapidly contributing to the decline of our environment’s health. Fast fashion is extremely dangerous in all aspects, from water wastage to greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of waste it generates, rapidly filling up landfills, serving as a direct reminder of its unsustainability. Drastic action is needed,  or else the environmental crisis will turn our planet unhabitable.

Figure 1: The fast fashion business model. Key takeouts from fast fashion’s impact on the environment.

Glossary

  • Fast fashion is a coined term that refers to inexpensive clothing, produced at a rapid rate by mass market retailers to cater to the latest trends, e.g. H&M, ZARA, Shein, Primark, C&A.
  • Mass market is the market for goods that are produced at a large scale to cater to a significant number of consumers with a wide variety of backgrounds. Clothes are products in high demand, needed by a very large pool of consumers, and as such they fall under the mass market category.
  • Landfills refer to the disposal of solid waste via deposition into or onto land. Landfill sites are facilities engineered and manufactured solely for such waste disposal.
  • Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic debris (between 1 μm and 5 mm in size) present in the environment due to the natural breakdown of plastic products and industrial waste. They contain numerous toxins such as polystyrene (PS) or adsorb and accumulate heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, both of which have adverse negative effects on human health and the environment.
  • Greenwashing is the practice when an organisation spends time and money marketing itself as environmentally friendly when that is not the case. Clothing companies such as ZARA have been involved in popular greenwashing scandals over recent years.

Relevant Stakeholders

The European Commission is the executive branch of the EU which is responsible for creating proposals for new EU legislation, implementing said legislation and coordinating policies across Member States. The EU highlighted its interest in fighting the overproduction and overconsumption of clothing, showing active efforts to tackle the issue, such as its Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles. 

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is an agency of the EU that implements EU legislation regarding the safe use of chemicals in the EU to ensure public and environmental health. According to ECHA, 15% of fashion products were found to have hazardous levels of phthalates, lead and cadmium, and as a result, are non-compliant with EU regulations, reaching an astounding 18 % of inspected general products sold to consumers that breached EU legislation. 

In addition to actively supporting innovation in collaboration with EU institutions and policymakers, the European Apparel and Textile Industry (EURATEX) also advocates for several measures aimed at tackling the growing issue of attracting and maintaining skilled labour for the EU textile and apparel sector.

Big clothing companies and retailers such as Inditex, H&M, Primark and Shein are also key stakeholders, as they supply the clothes that are being mass-produced, which subsequently leads to more waste. 

Finally, EU citizens are also at stake concerning this issue as the primary consumers of fast fashion which is directly advertised to the general public. Apart from the environmental nature of the topic, questions regarding consumer rights can also be raised regarding the fast fashion business model. Consumers have a right to be wholly informed about the environmental impact and the content of the products, as well as information about the production chain of the retail stores where they choose to purchase their clothes. 

Key Conflicts

Clothing available from high street retailers, which are large mass marketers, such as H&M, Zara and Primark, is hugely affordable to the majority of the general population. Clothes from these stores are seen as the best way to stay up to date with the latest trends, especially from the perspective of social media, as many of these retailers stock products

that are currently trending. Furthermore, there is a high turnover of products1 in these stores, and these stores are thus very appealing to customers. Many citizens may want to buy more sustainable clothing, however, often more high-brand and sustainable clothes, or even vintage clothing can be very expensive, and often, from a consumer perspective, fast fashion is seen as better value. 

Achieving profit is the large fashion companies’ prime interest and guiding principle, and sustainability usually is not the priority because unsustainable mass production is often the most cost-effective. Unsustainable aspects of fast fashion include the dangerous environments of the factories where clothes are made, unlivable low wages for the factory workers, and hazardous materials in the clothes which are detrimental to the environment and human health. If fast fashion became more sustainable, because of the higher costs of production it would likely lead to a higher market price, making consumers relatively less inclined to purchase a more expensive product: reducing overall profit. Thus, large fashion corporations opt not to make the switch to sustainable production. 

Apart from that, recycling textiles is a wider issue due to the multiple obstacles associated with the process. The available technology still requires a lot of human resources to first sort the clothing and prepare it for individual recycling. Furthermore, many clothing items that reach the recycling facility contain mixed materials or have no label, meaning it is more difficult to prepare them for the recycling process, as the materials cannot be separated, or their content is unknown. Overall, limited technology and methods of textile recycling are available, and due to the complexity of the process, it is often extremely costly.

Measures in Place

The EU aims to stop overproduction and overconsumption of clothing. The Waste Framework Directive is already in place and was just reviewed in 2023 to be more adapted to the background of fast fashion.

As well as this, in March 2023, the EU proposed common criteria against greenwashing. This means that clothing companies will no longer be able to falsely advertise themselves as environmentally friendly. As per the Circular Economy Action Plan, the European Commission is proposing new rules to make all goods in the EU market more environmentally friendly and to ensure less waste, along with many other actions. The Commission intends to implement all 35 actions listed in the Plan, as it is essential to the European Green Deal. 

Moreover, in February 2022 the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Directive on corporate sustainability due diligence. This directive is set to ensure that corporations consider their environmental responsibility. Benefits to this directive include better human rights protections for workers, sustainable investment, environmental protection and a harmonised framework in the EU.

The EU ecolabel is a label in use since 1992 which shows goods that are proven to be environmentally friendly. It follows criteria based on the European Commission’s standards. This was implemented to boost transparency in terms of how sustainable certain products and goods are and thus allow consumers to be informed about the products they consider purchasing, guiding them towards more sustainable options. 

The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles enforces the commitments made by various European plans, such as the European Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan. This strategy aims to alter how textiles are consumed by citizens in the EU. The main aim is to ensure textiles have a long life span, can be repaired and reused instead of discarded, and that textiles no longer contain chemicals that are hazardous to both the environment and human health. 

Key Questions 

  • What are the long-term effects of landfills and microplastics on the environment and human health?
  • What would you propose to the mass market producers in order to make their work ethic and products more environmentally friendly?
  • From the consumers’ perspective, what else can be done to help the environment?
  • What approach could the EU assume to further prevent mass production and mass waste from fast fashion? 

  1.  Product or inventory turnover refers to how frequently a company sells its physical products. The product turnover rate is particularly important in industries like the fashion industry, whose trends are quick to change.
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