This research project intends to investigate the sustainability and ethics of the Fast Fashion industry and examine whether it should be banned. Additionally, the working conditions of employees within the industry will be explored, including their safety and treatment.

Motivation:

The researcher's personal interest in sustainability and environmental conservation, coupled with their previous exposure to the negative impacts of the Fast Fashion industry, inspired them to choose this topic. The project will focus on environmental impacts, worker treatment, and product quality of Fast Fashion factories.

Research:

Survey:

To determine whether opinions on the subject varied among age groups, the researcher conducted a survey and obtained sufficient data from all age groups except for those over 18 years old. The majority of respondents indicated that they never purchase products from Fast Fashion industries. However, 41.76% of respondents admitted to buying some clothing/accessories previously from these stores. Many respondents who did not support Fast Fashion indicated that they felt compelled to purchase items from these stores due to lack of options.

Fast Fashion:

Fast Fashion is the term used to describe inexpensive clothing and accessories that quickly imitate catwalk trends and celebrity culture, allowing consumers to purchase the latest trends as soon as they appear.

For:

The researcher discovered that Fast Fashion provides unique advantages to retailers, consumers, and the countries where the factories are located. Additionally, the project emphasizes the positive economic impact on HICs, and the billions of dollars generated from Fast Fashion’s sales.

Against:

Cheap prices for consumers, industry benefits to LICs, profits for manufacturers and retailers, and an empowered fashion industry were discussed in opposition to Fast Fashion.

Reliability:

The researcher conducted research with reliable sources, such as Google Scholar, to maintain accuracy. However, in instances where information is lacking, standard Google searches were used. This may have impacted the reliability of the data, but the researcher implemented multiple techniques to reduce it.

Discussion:

Workers:

The project sets out to highlight the working conditions and treatment of workers within the Fast Fashion industry, including their standard of living, safety, and working conditions.

Garment factory workers toil for an average of 14 to 16 hours a day without proper ventilation, thereby inhaling hazardous substances, including sand and fibre dust from the sandblasting process, which gives denim its pre-worn look. This occupational hazard, as the World Health Organisation warned, can result in incurable respiratory illnesses like silicosis, lung fibrosis, and emphysema. Workers in textile factories also face verbal and physical abuse while on the job.

However, disease is not the only threat faced by these workers. Accidents, fires, injuries, and diseases are frequent occurrences in textile production facilities, with the Rana Plaza building collapse, which claimed the lives of 1,134 workers in 2013, standing as an example. Cracks had begun to form in the building the day before, and an engineer deemed it unsafe; yet, the building owner, Sohel Rana, and other factory owners insisted that workers return to their jobs the next day.

Since textile production requires little skill, child labour is not uncommon, with young girls from impoverished households in South India sent to work under the Sumangli scheme in textile factories. Forced labour is also prevalent in Uzbekistan, with an estimated one million people, including children, forced to pick cotton every autumn to support the country's 146-million-US-dollar cotton exports. Nonetheless, Uzbekistan has experienced opposition to forced labour in recent years, effectively reducing child and forced labourers in the industry.

Chemicals are ubiquitous in all aspects of clothing production, such as dyeing, making fibres, and bleaching. According to a Greenpeace study, 63% of products produced by leading fashion brands contain hazardous chemicals that can pose health risks, as humans absorb these chemicals through their skin, causing harm.

Environmental regulations are lacking in most countries that produce garments, including China, India, and Bangladesh. Consequently, companies tend to cut corners to meet production and profit goals, which could mean disposing of untreated toxic wastewater containing harmful substances like lead, arsenic, mercury, and other dangerous materials into rivers. Many of the local populations in these countries depend on these rivers for day-to-day activities like cooking, washing clothes, and bathing, exposing them to toxic substances that cause long-term illnesses, deformities, and death. Fast fashion also consumes vast amounts of water, with up to 200 tons of freshwater required to dye only one ton of fabric and around 9,700 litres consumed for every kilogram of cotton produced.