Real Cost of Cheap and Fast Fashion

We have already previously talked about what is fast fashion. It is defined as the process of fast changing fashion week on week thereby causing people to buy new stuff more frequently, causing the life of each apparel to reduce considerably. Now, although to sustain this fast fashion, the cost of any apparel item has come down a lot, there is a lot more we are paying as the human race than we actually realise. Looking at this documentary makes me realise what is happening in the background of providing the latest and greatest every week.

This documentary reflects at the real cost we are paying for fast fashion. There are 2 major problems. One, to reduce the cost of apparels, the manufacturing processes cut corners around the guided processes which result in much more pollution in all forms and poor and long working conditions for the factory workers . These factories are also called sweat shops. The other big problem, is of the reduced life of an apparel which is resulting in a lot of waste as also shown by the documentary. This is a global problem and one of the major contributors of the "garbage problem" across the world. 

Now, there are companies like Savanna Rags headed by Mohammed Patel as shown in the documentary video who are trying to solve the problem by recycling the used apparels into new clothes but such companies are too few across the globe to solve the problem completely. There are bigger fashion brands who are also trying to solve this problem now but they need to come in large numbers to completely solve the problem.

As consumers, we can also try contributing to solving the problem by understanding the real cost we are paying for the apparent cheap and fast fashion we see around us. We can start moving away from fast fashion and buy only when we need, buy sustainably, meaning to buy less but with more quality for the apparels to last longer thereby reducing the landfill waste. Making others aware of the problem at hand is something we can do in our everyday life to tackle the problem.

                                                   It's not a good
              deal if you don't
              need it.

              Shop responsibly.

It is important to understand the resources being used in making a single garment like cotton shirts, to denim jeans. We will talk more about this cost in more detail in further blog posts and also talk about most of the brands and companies who are trying to solve this problem in their own way.

References:

Anon, n.d. [Online]
https://ecotalker.wordpress.com/2020/02/15/sweatshops/

Anon, n.d. [Online]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLfNUD0-8ts

Jannjune.com, n.d. [Online - Pinterest Pin]