Video: Joan Law reports on the fastfashion trend in Hong Kong

You buy it, wear it, dump it. That’s the life of fashion.

Fashion, by its definition, is a business pursuing and promoting latest styles of clothing and a synonym for fads and trends. It’s never meant to be something long lasting, according to Wikipedia. But with the introduction of fast fashion, the life cycle of garments is further shortened due to its striking gimmick - chic and cheap.

Fast fashion chains like H&M, Zara and Uniqlo are gradually becoming bargain hunters’ favorites. They sell low-price fashionable clothing and change their collections every two to three weeks. This genre of business resembles fast food and therefore called “McFashion”. McFashion is like fast food, quick and cheap, but also harmful.

According to a research titled “Well dressed? The present and future sustainability of clothing and textiles in the United Kingdom” by University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing in 2006, there is a clear environmental disadvantage to the increased flow of goods associated with fast fashion.

In 2000, the world’s consumers spent around US $1 trillion worldwide buying clothes and around one quarter of sales were in Asia.

With the dropping of clothing prices due to McFashion, people are buying more and more garments but at the same time, making them more “disposable”. While fashion trends change in a blink, their followers know they have to buy it now or they would miss it and this encourages them to shop more often, purchase more clothes and thus produce more garbage.

According to the UK’s Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development, 900,000 tones of clothing and shoes are thrown away each year. But only 200,000 tones of them could be recycled and the remainder would just go to landfill.

While fast fashion allures consumers to buy or throw away garments to keep up with the rapidly changing trends, it accelerates the damage to our environment and atmosphere as well.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, the amount of organic cotton being grown in the world is very small, which is about 130 times fewer than the conventional made cotton. So would it be enough to meet the demand of giant chains like Zara to use it? Probably not.

It’s true that organic cotton is environmentally friendly and can help reduce the toxicity by eliminating harmful releases, but its price is few times higher than that of the conventional manufactured cotton, according to Organic Consumers Association in the United States. If so, would there be still many people wiling to spend 20 or 30 dollars more to buy a look-alike but organic cotton made tee?

The major environmental impacts of the abundant cheap clothes arise from the use of energy and toxic chemicals. For example, during the production of garments, fossil fuels are burned to create electricity and an enormous amount of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and some other air pollutants will be emitted in the air and eventually lead to the rise of temperature and global warming.

Also, toxic chemicals such as pesticides are used in cotton agriculture whilst carcinogenic dyes may be used in manufacturing stages such as dyeing and printing. And once the waste water is inappropriately discharged into river, the water quality will be severely deteriorated and cause water pollution.

Besides, the solid waste volumes from clothing are already very high and if we simply choose to take all the throwaway garments to landfill, it will take more than 30 years for them to be reabsorbed completely by the earth, according to the Cambridge’s research.

So what should we do? Changing consumer’s shopping behaviors is the most vital and effective way to alleviate the environmental impact of the clothing industry.

First, we can extend the life cycle of the garments by recycling. We can donate our unwanted yet wearable clothes to local organizations like Oxfam, Salvation Army or other similar charity shops. They normally will sell them as second-hand products or will send the garments to the developing or third world countries directly. For instance, Oxfam receives 15,000 tones of second-hand clothes per year, generating seven million per year for the charity.

Second we can try to buy more long-lasting style of garments so that we don’t feel bored of them easily and can still wear them few seasons and even few years later.

Third and most importantly, shop wisely. Instead of blindly catching the trend and hurrying yourself to look cool, think twice before purchasing a new clothes. “Somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of what we buy, we had no intention of buying,” according to Paco Underhill’s Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping.

A skirt looks nice and cheap doesn’t mean you need it. Fad comes and goes and please be responsible for our environment. We can’t rely on landfill merely soon as most of the local sites are almost saturated. Imagine the place you live is somewhere stuffed with clothes and you’ve got no room to breathe, would you still like it?

Let’s use your saved money from the “disposable” clothing to support green fashion, which made of organic cotton, bamboo and so on. They will make you look “cooler” and “fresher” and stand out from the crowd especially when everyone is losing their individuality by wearing the same clothes from fast fashion stores. Nike and Armani already have a whole collection of eco-fashion.

Last but not least, don’t ever forget our obligations to protect our world. McFashion may be hard to resist, but it can’t be survive without our active participation.

Remember this: Buy it, wear it and love it.

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