research on fast fashion

What is fast fashion?

Fashion is fun. If you’ve ever seen a makeover montage in an ’80s movie, you’re well familiar. Trying on, buying, and keeping clothes to reflect our various moods fulfills complex human needs for comfort and individual expression—as well as for consumption.

Get to know and directly engage with senior McKinsey experts on fast fashion

Anita Balchandani is a senior partner in McKinsey’s London office, Achim Berg is a senior partner in the Frankfurt office, Gemma D’Auria is a senior partner in the Milan office, Clarisse Magnin-Mallez is a senior partner in the Paris office, and Patrick Simon is a senior partner in the Berlin office.

Fashion is also serious business. In 2023, the global industry was estimated to be worth $1.7 trillion . And more than 300 million people all over the world work on clothes, somewhere along the value chain. From 2000 to 2014, clothing production doubled  and the number of garments purchased per capita increased by about 60 percent. This is due, in part, to the rise of fast fashion.

Fast fashion retailers move, well, faster than their traditional counterparts. This means that they compress production cycles and turn out up-to-the-minute designs, enabling shoppers to not only expand their wardrobes but also refresh them quickly—and cheaply. And shoppers, it turns out, love a new look: according to the recent The State of Fashion 2024 report, published by Business of Fashion and McKinsey, 40 percent of US consumers and 26 percent of UK consumers have shopped at fast fashion giants Shein or Temu in the past 12 months. If you include other fast fashion retailers, the number would likely be much larger.

For all the growth it generates, the fast fashion industry is also responsible for considerable waste. Fast fashion consumers are quick to throw clothes away: some estimates suggest that consumers treat the lowest-priced garments as nearly disposable, discarding them after only seven wears . For every five garments produced, the equivalent of three end up in a landfill  or are incinerated each year. And total greenhouse gas emissions from textiles production clock in at 1.2 billion tons a year—that’s more emissions than those emitted by all international flights and maritime ships combined. Reports also indicate  that some clothing factory workers are underpaid and exposed to unsafe workplace conditions.

The true costs of fast fashion are coming into focus, especially for millennials and Gen Z . Young people are becoming more mindful  of sustainability with respect to how they consume. They’re also keenly aware that the fashion industry is a major contributor to global warming. And they’re walking the talk too: half of Gen Z shoppers in China , according to a recent survey about sustainable consumption, said they aimed to buy less fast fashion.

How can the fast fashion industry give itself a sustainability makeover? Read on to find out.

Learn more about McKinsey’s Retail  and Sustainability  Practices.

What is ultrafast fashion?

If fast fashion retailers speed up traditional product cycles, ultrafast fashion moves even faster. Back in the 1990s, the Spanish retailer Zara was one of the first fast fashion retailers to break the mold, offering hundreds of new items per week. As of 2023, the Chinese ultrafast fashion retailer Shein  consistently churns out up to 10,000 new designs a day. And Shein’s products are, on average, significantly less expensive  relative to the company’s more established fast fashion counterparts: Shein’s average SKU price is $14, compared with $26 at fast fashion retailer H&M and $34 at Zara.

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Shein grew dramatically during the pandemic. Due in part to a surge in online sales and digital adoption rates, the company more than doubled its market share in the United States during that time; it’s now the second-most-popular  shopping website among America’s Gen Z (after Amazon). In a 2022 funding round, Shein’s value was set at $100 billion (in 2023, it reportedly dropped to $66 billion, likely in anticipation of increased regulation).

How are fast fashion companies evolving the business model?

Ultralow prices are critical to the success of the fast fashion business model, as are condensed turnaround times. Upstart fast fashion retailers such as Shein and Temu are updating the model in the following ways :

• Agile, scalable manufacturer-to-consumer supply chains . Some next-generation fast fashion companies have developed large networks of suppliers who often manufacture exclusively for these companies.
• Data-driven product design and testing . Shein, for instance, uses demand-driven trend modeling to design and select its products. This includes a range of data inputs from current trends to viral products to customer perception.
• Loyal and growing customer bases . These are fed by affiliate marketing influencer  programs and organic social community building, which lower customer acquisition costs.
• High app adoption rates and engagement tactics . Companies have gamified their app experiences, allowing customers to earn loyalty points by setting up accounts, leaving reviews, watching live streams, and more.

How are fast fashion organizations addressing sustainability concerns in their C-suites?

One way fashion companies, fast and otherwise, are preparing for the sustainability challenges ahead is by restructuring their C-suites. According to McKinsey’s State of Fashion 2024 report, the C-suite teams at almost all of Europe’s 25 biggest fashion companies include at least one executive with environmental, social, and governance experience. These executives oversee a series of sustainability strategies, from shrinking their companies’ carbon footprints to reducing waste to improving labor relations.

The brands that execute sustainability strategies most successfully incorporate sustainability components into existing roles rather than create entirely new ones. For example, the UK-based fast fashion retailer Primark put Michelle McEttrick, the company’s first chief customer officer, in charge of leading sustainability strategy. And success as a sustainability executive can open doors to the top job, as in the case of Helena Helmersson, who was appointed CEO of H&M in 2020 after serving as the company’s head of sustainability.

How can the textile industry make business models more sustainable?

Many fast fashion players are considering how to make their business models more circular, in response to climate pressures and a quickly evolving regulatory landscape. In a circular model of value creation, resources are deployed over and over . Conversely, a traditional linear model begins with extraction and concludes with end-of-life disposal, with the expectation that consumers will discard goods and buy more.

Here are a few ways in which fashion companies can work toward complying with changing regulations.

• Improved traceability . Achieving full supply chain visibility across all tiers of manufacturing will be a critical enabler for regulatory compliance. Advances in blockchain and other technologies may help companies to enable more transparent and efficient monitoring. Brands such as Brooks Sports and Renfro Brands have deployed TrusTrace’s digital traceability platform to achieve traceability at scale.
• Sourcing and production . Upstream supply chain activities account for the majority of carbon emissions in the apparel industry, so in the future there may be a sharper focus on decarbonizing the production of materials and garments. Brands may increasingly shift to new suppliers or join strategic alliances. The luxury retail brand Hermès, for example, has partnered with start-up MycoWorks to secure access to its engineered mycelium (a network of fungal threads that can be used to produce a product similar to leather ).
• Design . A new emphasis on longevity and durability may demand fresh attention to design details such as stitching and seams. Materials that cannot be separated in recycling may be avoided in the future, meaning designers might have to think more creatively about their design choices.
• End-of-life waste . New business models are coming to the fore to minimize production and waste. Resale continues to grow through brand partnerships with secondhand marketplaces, such as the RealReal and Vestiaire Collective . There is also an opportunity to accelerate closed-loop recycling, a process whereby a product can be used and then turned into a new product many times over. Stockholm-based Renewcell is ramping up the world’s first at-scale fiber-to-fiber recycling factory and is already working with global brands including H&M and Levi’s.

As global business reckons with increasing climate pressures and a changing regulatory environment, the fashion companies that cut new patterns for sustainability are the ones most likely to excel in the future.

Articles referenced:

• “ The State of Fashion 2024: Finding pockets of growth as uncertainty reigns ,” November 29, 2023, Anita Balchandani , David Barrelet, Achim Berg, Gemma D’Auria , Felix Rölkens , and Ewa Starzynska
• “ Great merchandising never goes out of fashion ,” March 15, 2023, David Barrelet, Matthew Chapman, Erik Eklöw, Julia Huang, Felix Rölkens , and Hannah Yankelevich
• “ The State of Fashion 2023: Holding onto growth as global clouds gather ,” November 29, 2022, Imran Amed, Sarah André, Anita Balchandani , Achim Berg, and Felix Rölkens
• “ In search of fashion’s sustainability seekers ,” June 28, 2022, Elisa Albella, Anita Balchandani , Nic Cornbleet, and Libbi Lee
• “ State of Fashion 2022: An uneven recovery and new frontiers ,” May 2, 2022, Imran Amed, Achim Berg, Anita Balchandani , Pamela Brown, Hannah Crump, Amanda Dargan, Saskia Hedrich , Jakob Ekeløf Jensen, Leila Le Merle, Felix Rölkens , Michael Straub, and Robb Young
• “ Is luxury resale the future of fashion? ,” December 14, 2020, Miriam Lobis
• “ Refashioning clothing’s environmental impact ,” July 25, 2019, Clarisse Magnin-Mallez  and Saskia Hedrich
• “ Developing products for a circular economy ,” November 14, 2016, Eric Hannon , Marianne Kuhlmann, and Benjamin Thaidigsmann
• “ Style that’s sustainable: A new fast-fashion formula ,” October 20, 2016, Nathalie Remy, Eveline Speelman, and Steven Swartz

Want to know more about fast fashion ?

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The State of Fashion 2024: Finding pockets of growth as uncertainty reigns

Great merchandising never goes out of fashion

In search of fashion’s sustainability seekers

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• Published: 27 December 2018

The global environmental injustice of fast fashion

• Rachel Bick 1   na1 ,
• Erika Halsey 1   na1 &
• Christine C. Ekenga   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6209-4888 1  

Environmental Health volume  17 , Article number:  92 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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Fast fashion, inexpensive and widely available of-the-moment garments, has changed the way people buy and dispose of clothing. By selling large quantities of clothing at cheap prices, fast fashion has emerged as a dominant business model, causing garment consumption to skyrocket. While this transition is sometimes heralded as the “democratization” of fashion in which the latest styles are available to all classes of consumers, the human and environmental health risks associated with inexpensive clothing are hidden throughout the lifecycle of each garment. From the growth of water-intensive cotton, to the release of untreated dyes into local water sources, to worker’s low wages and poor working conditions; the environmental and social costs involved in textile manufacturing are widespread.

In this paper, we posit that negative externalities at each step of the fast fashion supply chain have created a global environmental justice dilemma. While fast fashion offers consumers an opportunity to buy more clothes for less, those who work in or live near textile manufacturing facilities bear a disproportionate burden of environmental health hazards. Furthermore, increased consumption patterns have also created millions of tons of textile waste in landfills and unregulated settings. This is particularly applicable to low and middle-income countries (LMICs) as much of this waste ends up in second-hand clothing markets. These LMICs often lack the supports and resources necessary to develop and enforce environmental and occupational safeguards to protect human health. We discuss the role of industry, policymakers, consumers, and scientists in promoting sustainable production and ethical consumption in an equitable manner.

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Fast fashion is a term used to describe the readily available, inexpensively made fashion of today. The word “fast” describes how quickly retailers can move designs from the catwalk to stores, keeping pace with constant demand for more and different styles. With the rise of globalization and growth of a global economy, supply chains have become international, shifting the growth of fibers, the manufacturing of textiles, and the construction of garments to areas with cheaper labor. Increased consumption drives the production of inexpensive clothing, and prices are kept down by outsourcing production to low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Globally, 80 billion pieces of new clothing are purchased each year, translating to $1.2 trillion annually for the global fashion industry. The majority of these products are assembled in China and Bangladesh while the United States consumes more clothing and textiles than any other nation in the world [ 1 ]. Approximately 85 % of the clothing Americans consume, nearly 3.8 billion pounds annually, is sent to landfills as solid waste, amounting to nearly 80 pounds per American per year [ 2 , 3 ].

The global health costs associated with the production of cheap clothing are substantial. While industrial disasters such as the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire have led to improved occupational protections and work standards in the United States, the same cannot be said for LMICs. The hazardous working conditions that attracted regulatory attention in the United States and European Union have not been eliminated, but merely shifted overseas. The social costs associated with the global textile and garment industry are significant as well. Defined as “all direct and indirect losses sustained by third persons or the general public as a result of unrestrained economic activities,” the social costs involved in the production of fast fashion include damages to the environment, human health, and human rights at each step along the production chain [ 4 ].

Fast fashion as a global environmental justice issue

Environmental justice is defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, as the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies” [ 5 ]. In the United States, this concept has primarily been used in the scientific literature and in practice to describe the disproportionate placement of superfund sites (hazardous waste sites) in or near communities of color. However, environmental justice, as it has been defined, is not limited to the United States and need not be constrained by geopolitical boundaries. The textile and garment industries, for example, shift the environmental and occupational burdens associated with mass production and disposal from high income countries to the under-resourced (e.g. low income, low-wage workers, women) communities in LMICs. Extending the environmental justice framework to encompass the disproportionate impact experienced by those who produce and dispose of our clothing is essential to understanding the magnitude of global injustice perpetuated through the consumption of cheap clothing. In the context of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 which calls for sustainable consumption and production as part of national and sectoral plans, sustainable business practices, consumer behavior, and the reduction and elimination of fast fashion should all be a target of global environmental justice advocates.

Environmental hazards during production

The first step in the global textile supply chain is textile production, the process by which both natural and synthetic fibers are made. Approximately 90 % of clothing sold in the United States is made with cotton or polyester, both associated with significant health impacts from the manufacturing and production processes [ 6 ]. Polyester, a synthetic textile, is derived from oil, while cotton requires large amounts of water and pesticides to grow. Textile dyeing results in additional hazards as untreated wastewater from dyes are often discharged into local water systems, releasing heavy metals and other toxicants that can adversely impact the health of animals in addition to nearby residents [ 6 ].

Occupational hazards during production

Garment assembly, the next step in the global textile supply chain, employs 40 million workers around the world [ 7 ]. LMICs produce 90% of the world’s clothing. Occupational and safety standards in these LMICs are often not enforced due to poor political infrastructure and organizational management [ 8 ]. The result is a myriad of occupational hazards, including respiratory hazards due to poor ventilation such as cotton dust and synthetic air particulates, and musculoskeletal hazards from repetitive motion tasks. The health hazards that prompted the creation of textile labor unions in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 1900’s have now shifted to work settings in LMICs. In LMICs, reported health outcomes include debilitating and life-threatening conditions such as lung disease and cancer, damage to endocrine function, adverse reproductive and fetal outcomes, accidental injuries, overuse injuries and death [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Periodic reports of international disasters, such as the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse which killed 1134 Bangladeshi workers, are stark reminders of the health hazards faced by garment workers. These disasters, however, have not demonstrably changed safety standards for workers in LMICs [ 12 ].

Textile waste

While getting finished garments to consumers in the high-income countries is seen as the end of the line for the fashion industry, environmental injustices continue long after the garment is sold. The fast fashion model encourages consumers to view clothing as disposable. In fact, the average American throws away approximately 80 pounds of clothing and textiles annually, occupying nearly 5% of landfill space [ 3 ]. Clothing not sent directly to the landfill often ends up in the second-hand clothing trade. Approximately 500,000 tons of used clothing are exported abroad from the United States each year, the majority ending up in LMICs [ 8 ]. In 2015, the United States exported more than $700 million worth of used clothing [ 13 ]. Second-hand clothing not sold in the United States market is compressed into 1000-pound bales and exported overseas to be “graded” (sorted, categorized and re-baled) by low-wage workers in LMICs and sold in second-hand markets. Clothing not sold in markets becomes solid waste, clogging rivers, greenways, and parks, and creating the potential for additional environmental health hazards in LMICs lacking robust municipal waste systems.

Solutions, innovation, and social justice

Ensuring environmental justice at each stage in the global supply chain remains a challenge. Global environmental justice will be dependent upon innovations in textile development, corporate sustainability, trade policy, and consumer habits.

Sustainable fibers

The sustainability of a fiber refers to the practices and policies that reduce environmental pollution and minimize the exploitation of people or natural resources in meeting lifestyle needs. Across the board, natural cellulosic and protein fibers are thought to be better for the environment and for human health, but in some cases manufactured fibers are thought to be more sustainable. Fabrics such as Lyocell, made from the cellulose of bamboo, are made in a closed loop production cycle in which 99% of the chemicals used to develop fabric fibers are recycled. The use of sustainable fibers will be key in minimizing the environmental impact of textile production.

Corporate sustainability

Oversight and certification organizations such as Fair Trade America and the National Council of Textiles Organization offer evaluation and auditing tools for fair trade and production standards. While some companies do elect to get certified in one or more of these independent accrediting programs, others are engaged in the process of “greenwashing.” Capitalizing on the emotional appeal of eco-friendly and fair trade goods, companies market their products as “green” without adhering to any criteria [ 14 ]. To combat these practices, industry-wide adoption of internationally recognized certification criteria should be adopted to encourage eco-friendly practices that promote health and safety across the supply chain.

Trade policy

While fair trade companies can attempt to compete with fast fashion retailers, markets for fair trade and eco-friendly textile manufacturing remain small, and ethically and environmentally sound supply chains are difficult and expensive to audit. High income countries can promote occupational safety and environmental health through trade policy and regulations. Although occupational and environmental regulations are often only enforceable within a country’s borders, there are several ways in which policymakers can mitigate the global environmental health hazards associated with fast fashion. The United States, for example, could increase import taxes for garments and textiles or place caps on annual weight or quantities imported from LMICs. At the other end of the clothing lifecycle, some LMICs have begun to regulate the import of used clothing. The United Nations Council for African Renewal, for example, recently released a report citing that “Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda are raising taxes on secondhand clothes imports and at the same time offering incentives to local manufacturers” [ 15 ].

The role of the consumer

Trade policies and regulations will be the most effective solutions in bringing about large-scale change to the fast fashion industry. However, consumers in high income countries have a role to play in supporting companies and practices that minimize their negative impact on humans and the environment. While certifications attempt to raise industry standards, consumers must be aware of greenwashing and be critical in assessing which companies actually ensure a high level of standards versus those that make broad, sweeping claims about their social and sustainable practices [ 14 ]. The fast fashion model thrives on the idea of more for less, but the age-old adage “less in more” must be adopted by consumers if environmental justice issues in the fashion industry are to be addressed. The United Nation’s SDG 12, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns,” seeks to redress the injustices caused by unfettered materialism. Consumers in high income countries can do their part to promote global environmental justice by buying high-quality clothing that lasts longer, shopping at second-hand stores, repairing clothing they already own, and purchasing from retailers with transparent supply chains.

Conclusions

In the two decades since the fast fashion business model became the norm for big name fashion brands, increased demand for large amounts of inexpensive clothing has resulted in environmental and social degradation along each step of the supply chain. The environmental and human health consequences of fast fashion have largely been missing from the scientific literature, research, and discussions surrounding environmental justice. The breadth and depth of social and environmental abuses in fast fashion warrants its classification as an issue of global environmental justice.

Environmental health scientists play a key role in supporting evidence-based public health. Similar to historical cases of environmental injustice in the United States, the unequal distribution of environmental exposures disproportionally impact communities in LMICs. There is an emerging need for research that examines the adverse health outcomes associated with fast fashion at each stage of the supply chain and post-consumer process, particularly in LMICs. Advancing work in this area will inform the translation of research findings to public health policies and practices that lead to sustainable production and ethical consumption.

Abbreviations

Low and middle-income countries

Sustainable Development Goal

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Rachel Bick and Erika Halsey contributed equally to this work.

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The environmental price of fast fashion

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 23 April 2020

This article has been updated

The fashion industry is facing increasing global scrutiny of its environmentally polluting supply chain operations. Despite the widely publicized environmental impacts, however, the industry continues to grow, in part due to the rise of fast fashion, which relies on cheap manufacturing, frequent consumption and short-lived garment use. In this Review, we identify the environmental impacts at critical points in the textile and fashion value chain, from production to consumption, focusing on water use, chemical pollution, CO 2 emissions and textile waste. Impacts from the fashion industry include over 92 million tonnes of waste produced per year and 79 trillion litres of water consumed. On the basis of these environmental impacts, we outline the need for fundamental changes in the fashion business model, including a deceleration of manufacturing and the introduction of sustainable practices throughout the supply chain, as well a shift in consumer behaviour — namely, decreasing clothing purchases and increasing garment lifetimes. These changes stress the need for an urgent transition back to ‘slow’ fashion, minimizing and mitigating the detrimental environmental impacts, so as to improve the long-term sustainability of the fashion supply chain.

The textile and fashion industry has a long and complex supply chain, starting from agriculture and petrochemical production (for fibre production) to manufacturing, logistics and retail.

Each production step has an environmental impact due to water, material, chemical and energy use.

Many chemicals used in textile manufacturing are harmful for the environment, factory workers and consumers.

Most environmental impacts occur in the textile-manufacturing and garment-manufacturing countries, but textile waste is found globally.

Fast fashion has increased the material throughput in the system. Fashion brands are now producing almost twice the amount of clothing today compared with before the year 2000.

Current fashion-consumption practices result in large amounts of textile waste, most of which is incinerated, landfilled or exported to developing countries.

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A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-0054-x

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This research was supported by the Academy of Finland’s Strategic Research Council’s grant no. 327299 Sustainable textile systems: Co-creating resource-wise business for Finland in global textile networks/FINIX consortium.

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Student Editorial Contest Winner

How Fast Fashion Became Faster — and Worse for the Earth

We are honoring the Top 11 winners of our Student Editorial Contest by publishing their essays. This one is by Evelyn Wang, age 17.

By The Learning Network

This essay, by Evelyn Wang , age 17, from Naperville North High School in Naperville, Ill., is one of the Top 11 winners of The Learning Network’s Ninth Annual Student Editorial Contest , for which we received 16,664 entries.

We are publishing the work of all the winners and runners-up over the next week, and you can find them here as they post.

The spring dance is in two weeks, and my friend needs help choosing a dress. She beckons me to her phone where an endless mosaic of elegant dresses, not one over $20, dances before my eyes. After much deliberation, she settles on a glamorous sapphire gown with pleated details lining the bodice. Another two weeks later, the dress carpets the bottom of a landfill, worn only once.

Welcome to the world of fast fashion.

Fast fashion is a relatively recent phenomenon. During the 1990s, retailers began to introduce trendy, cheaply-priced, poorly-made clothes on a weekly basis, intending to match the breakneck pace at which fashion trends move. Style became cheap, convenient and consumable.

Fast fashion, however, is ultimately a privilege. It is a privilege to buy clothes solely for their style, and it is a privilege to ignore the environmental consequences of doing so. In reality, the aggressive cycle of consumption perpetuated by fast fashion means that the clothes we wear are now more likely than ever to end up as part of the 92 million tons of textile waste produced annually.

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The aftermath of fast fashion: how discarded clothes impact public health and the environment ., textile waste and environmental racism is a public health issue. and art may play a powerful role in advancing our advocacy..

The Aftermath of Fast Fashion

How discarded clothes impact public health and the environment, dielle lundberg, julia devoy, phd, mts, mba.

Every year, people in the United States throw out more than 34 billion pounds of used textiles. Divided across the population, that’s more than 100 pounds of textile waste per person each year. 

However, textile waste generation does not occur equally. People with higher incomes generate on average 76% more clothing waste than people with lower incomes.

Once textiles are discarded, 66% of them are sent to landfills in the U.S. where they decompose — some quickly and others over hundreds of years. While landfills in the U.S. are designed in theory to capture and contain landfill gasses and polluted waters that emerge during the decomposition process, numerous health concerns have been reported by people living near landfill sites. Landfills are also not located equitably. Landfills are 2.8 times more likely to be located in areas with a higher percentage of BIPOC residents.

Ultimately, only 15% of used textiles are theoretically ‘recycled,’ and of those, up to half are simply shipped abroad to other countries, largely in the Global South where they land in landfills there. These countries often have less advanced municipal waste systems, meaning that the environmental damage and health impacts of decomposing textiles will be much greater there than they would be in the United States.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by BU School of Public Health (@busph)

As Matilda Lartey , an environmental activist and artisan in Ghana, explained in a recent panel discussion , textile waste from the United States has multiple impacts on countries like Ghana: 

• Much of the clothing sent from abroad is of too low quality to use, meaning it goes directly into landfills or open-air dumps. From there, the gas and chemical leachates that emerge during the decomposition process pollute the air, soil, and groundwater and negatively impact the environment and health of humans and other species. 
• Unwanted used clothing often clogs the gutters, preventing water from flowing properly. This exacerbates flooding and leads to water-borne disease. This is particularly problematic as climate change has increased the incidence of flooding in many parts of the Global South.
• Due to limited space, people will burn unwanted clothing, resulting in significant air pollution impacting respiratory and cardiovascular health.

Many people in the Global North (primarily the US and Europe) assume when they donate clothes to organizations like Salvation Army, Goodwill, or Planet Aid that they will be reused locally, but this is typically not the case. The amount of used clothing that thrift stores in the United States receive greatly exceeds the amount that they are able to sell here. Thus their solution is to ship the excess clothing abroad.

But this system of shipping unwanted used clothing to other countries relies on a major assumption — that these countries ‘want’ it. Increasingly, that is simply not to be the case. Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi have all either banned or attempted to ban used clothing imports.

While the issue of shipping clothing abroad often spurs a polarized debate between those concerned about its environmental and health impacts and those convinced that it benefits the countries who receive it, the real issue, at the end of the day, isn’t the fact that clothing is being shipped abroad but rather that the amount of clothing being shipped is far too great and the quality of the textiles sent is too low.

That’s where Aftermath comes in!

Aftermath, an environmental and public health sculpture is a large-scale art advocacy installation that explores the serious impacts of textile waste. As part of its upcoming national tour, the sculpture is on display at the Boston University School of Public Health from September 19 to October 7, 2022, in the lobby of the Talbot Building.

Created by developmental psychologist and social activist Julia DeVoy (associate dean of undergraduates at Boston College. LSEHD) and her long-time collaborator Dielle Lundberg (research fellow at BUSPH, public health data analyst, and multimedia artist), alongside premier artist Mark Cooper (professor at Boston College), the Aftermath sculpture brings together textiles, a landfill simulating reactor, and technology to ask: “What do we do with the mountain of used clothing that is being generated every single year in the United States?”

While the Aftermath sculpture is designed to invite more questions than answers, for those left yearning for solutions, the sculpture provides several entry points for learning. Embedded within the sculpture is activist ‘protest’ signs in the shape of everyday T-shirts that contain QR codes that link to Textile Waste Facts — a free and public 30-minute crash course on textile waste and environmental justice developed in tandem with the Aftermath sculpture. The multimedia learning modules include firsthand accounts from environmental activists and people affected by fashion pollution in the Global South, interactive data visualizations, and an opportunity to create your own personal action plan for contributing to individual and policy-level changes.

Ultimately, Aftermath challenges its audience to reframe fashion textile pollution as an issue of global public health and environmental justice that can only be solved through sustained, transdisciplinary and collective efforts to achieve real political and applied action changes.

While it does serve as a warning, it points to many generative possibilities too — most importantly the power of interdisciplinary, collaborative, and global dialogue to intervene in a climate crisis and create shared value for real people, planet, and purpose. 

The Activist Lab at the School of Public Health is partnering with Dielle Lundberg to bring “Aftermath” to the Boston University Medical Campus. The sculpture will be on display in the lobby of the Talbot Building from September 19 through October 7. The Activist Lab is also hosting a panel discussion on October 6 that explores the public health consequences of textile waste and environmental racism and the role that art can play in advancing public health .

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The Aftermath of Fast Fashion: How Discarded Clothes Impact Public Health and the Environment

Dielle Lundberg is a research assistant in the Department of Global Health at Boston University School of Public Health, and a 2019 graduate of BUSPH's MPH program. Profile

Julia DeVoy, PhD, MTS, MBA Julia Devoy’s research and teaching are concentrated on the‎ relationship of social class ‎variables to the human lifespan, with a focus ‎on social mobility ‎among low-income ‎global citizens that examines ‎personal aspects, as well as ‎ecological contexts‎ such as ‎family, faith, ‎workplace, ‎community and ‎educational ‎settings, which facilitate or constrain development. She is currently investigating ways in which economically disempowered individuals‎ develop dual ‎class-based ‎psychological identities in order to transition to elevated economic levels ‎while maintaining healthy ‎emotional‎ well-being and relational support.‎ In the field, she advises on the design of social impact initiatives as interventions for helping address systemic social inequities. Profile

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Fast Fashion and Its Environmental Impact

Clothing retailers like Zara, Forever 21, and H&M make cheap and fashionable clothing to satisfy the needs of young consumers. Yet, fast fashion has a significant environmental impact. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) , the industry is the second-biggest consumer of water and is responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. Unfortunately, fast fashion problems are often overlooked by consumers.

What Is Fast Fashion?

The term ‘ fast fashion ’ has become more prominent in conversations surrounding fashion, sustainability, and environmental consciousness. The term refers to ‘cheaply produced and priced garments that copy the latest catwalk styles and get pumped quickly through stores in order to maximise on current trends’.

The fast fashion model is so-called because it involves the rapid design, production, distribution, and marketing of clothing, which means that retailers are able to pull large quantities of greater product variety and allow consumers to get more fashion and product differentiation at a low price.

The term was first used at the beginning of the 1990s, when when Zara landed in New York. “Fast fashion” was coined by the New York Times to describe Zara’s mission to take only 15 days for a garment to go from the design stage to being sold in stores. The biggest players in the fast fashion world include Zara, UNIQLO, Forever 21 and H&M.

The Dark Side of Fast Fashion

According to an analysis by Business Insider , fashion production comprises 10% of total global carbon emissions, as much as the European Union. It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year. Even washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibres into the ocean each year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.

The Quantis International 2018 report found that the three main drivers of the industry’s global pollution impacts are dyeing and finishing (36%), yarn preparation (28%) and fibre production (15%). The report also established that fibre production has the largest impact on freshwater withdrawal (water diverted or withdrawn from a surface water or groundwater source) and ecosystem quality due to cotton cultivation, while the dyeing and finishing, yarn preparation and fibre production stages have the highest impacts on resource depletion, due to the energy-intensive processes based on fossil fuel energy.

According to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change , emissions from textile manufacturing alone are projected to skyrocket by 60% by 2030.

The time it takes for a product to go through the supply chain, from design to purchase, is called a ‘ lead time ’. In 2012, Zara was able to design, produce and deliver a new garment in two weeks; Forever 21 in six weeks and H&M in eight weeks. This results in the fashion industry producing obscene amounts of waste.

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You Might Also Like: The 9 Essential Fast Fashion Statistics

The environmental impact of fast fashion comprises the depletion of non-renewable sources, emission of greenhouse gases and the use of massive amounts of water and energy. The fashion industry is the second largest consumer industry of water, requiring about 700 gallons to produce one cotton shirt and 2 000 gallons of water to produce a pair of jeans. Business Insider also cautions that textile dyeing is the world’s second-largest polluter of water, since the water leftover from the dyeing process is often dumped into ditches, streams or rivers.

2. Microplastics

Furthermore, brands use synthetic fibres like polyester, nylon and acrylic which take hundreds of years to biodegrade. A 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that 35% of all microplastics – tiny pieces of non-biodegradable plastic – in the ocean come from the laundering of synthetic textiles like polyester.

According to the documentary released in 2015, The True Cost , the world consumes around 80 billion new pieces of clothing every year, 400% more than the consumption twenty years ago. The average American now generates 82 pounds of textile waste each year. The production of leather requires large amounts of feed, land, water and fossil fuels to raise livestock, while the tanning process is among the most toxic in all of the fashion supply chain because the chemicals used to tan leather- including mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives and various oils and dyes- is not biodegradable and contaminates water sources.

The production of making plastic fibres into textiles is an energy-intensive process that requires large amounts of petroleum and releases volatile particulate matter and acids like hydrogen chloride. Additionally, cotton, which is in a large amount of fast fashion products, is also not environmentally friendly to manufacture. Pesticides deemed necessary for the growth of cotton presents health risks to farmers.

To counter this waste caused by fast fashion, more sustainable fabrics that can be used in clothing include wild silk, organic cotton, linen, hemp and lyocell.

You might Also Like: How to Recognise Fast Fashion Brands and Which Ones to Avoid

The Social Impacts of Fast Fashion

Fast fashion does not only have a huge environmental impact. In fact, the industry also poses societal problems, especially in developing economies. According to non-profit Remake , 80% of apparel is made by young women between the ages of 18 and 24. A 2018 US Department of Labor report found evidence of forced and child labour in the fashion industry in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam and others. Rapid production means that sales and profits supersede human welfare.

In 2013, an eight-floor factory building that housed several garment factories collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing 1,134 workers and injuring more than 2,500 . In her project An Analysis of the Fast Fashion Industry , Annie Radner Linden suggests that ‘the garment industry has always been a low-capital and labour intensive industry’.

In her book No Logo , Naomi Klein argues that developing nations are viable for garment industries due to ‘cheap labour, vast tax breaks, and lenient laws and regulations’. According to The True Cost, one in six people work in some part of the global fashion industry, making it the most labour-dependent industry . These developing nations also rarely follow environmental regulations; China , for example, is a major producer of fast fashion but is notorious for land degradation and air and water pollution.

You might also like: The Danger of Sweatshops

Is Slow Fashion the Solution?

Slow fashion is the widespread reaction to fast fashion and its environmental impact, the argument for hitting the brakes on excessive production, overcomplicated supply chains, and mindless consumption. It advocates for manufacturing that respects people, the environment and animals.

The World Resources Institute suggests that companies need to design, test and invest in business models that reuse clothes and maximise their useful life. The UN has launched the Alliance for Sustainable Fashion to address the damages caused by fast fashion. It is seeking to ‘halt the environmentally and socially destructive practices of fashion’.

You might also like: What Is Slow Fashion and How Can You Join the Movement?

One way that shoppers are reducing their consumption of fast fashion is by buying from secondhand sellers like ThredUp Inc. and Poshmark , both based in California, USA; shoppers send their unwanted clothes to these websites and people buy those clothes at a lower price than the original. Another solution is renting clothes, like the US-based Rent the Runway and Gwynnie Bee , the UK based Girl Meets Dress , and the Dutch firm Mud Jeans that leases organic jeans which can be kept, swapped or returned.

Other retailers like Adidas are experimenting with personalised gear to cut down on returns, increase customer satisfaction and reduce inventory. Ralph Lauren has announced that it will use 100% sustainably-sourced key materials by 2025.

Governments need to be more actively involved in the fashion industry’s damaging effects. UK ministers rejected a report by members of parliament to address the environmental effects of fast fashion. On the other hand, French president, Emmanuel Macron has made a pact with 150 brands to make the fashion industry more sustainable .

The best advice on reducing the environmental impact of fast fashion comes from Patsy Perry, senior lecturer in fashion marketing at the University of Manchester, who says, “Less is always more.”

Featured image by EO Photographer Chin Leong Teo

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Fast fashion’s waste problem could be solved by recycled textiles but brands need to help boost production

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Earlier this year, fast fashion retailer Zara released its first womenswear collection made of recycled poly-cotton textile waste . The collection is available for sale in 11 countries, helping clothing made of blended textile waste reach the mass market.

The collection came about after Zara’s parent company Inditex invested in textile recycler Circ. This follows a €100 million (£87 million) deal between Inditex and Finnish textile recycler Infinited Fiber Company for 30% of its recycled output. Zara’s fast fashion rival H&M has also entered a five-year contract with Swedish textile recycler Renewcell to acquire 9,072 tonnes of recycled fibre – equivalent to 50 million T-shirts.

There is a growing appetite among some fashion retailers to turn old clothes into high-quality fibres, and then into new clothes. But even though well-known brands are developing lines using recycled textiles, this movement has not yet reached the scale needed to have a truly global impact.

Before this recent growth in interest in textile recycling, fast fashion’s efforts to tackle throwaway attitudes towards affordable clothing often simply added to the global textile waste mountain – especially in developing countries , say campaigners like Greenpeace.

For example, a skirt deposited at a London chain store under a take-back scheme was reportedly found in a landfill in Bamako, Mali. This is not an isolated incident, it’s a sector-wide problem that sees old clothes being collected but not disposed of properly. An estimated 15 million used clothing items are shipped to Ghana each week from around the world and many end up in the country’s landfills. This is often referred to as waste colonialism .

The fast fashion industry needs greater access to recycled textiles to address this problem. But this means having the means to track “thrown-away” garments to collect those suitable for recycling. The industry also needs facilities that are big enough to turn this waste into new materials for clothing at the scale needed to meet mass market demand.

This is particularly important as these firms prepare for an EU crackdown on the region’s own waste mountain. Following the EU strategy for Sustainable and Circular textiles 2022, the European Commission is drafting new legislation over the next five years to make the fashion industry pay for the cost of processing discarded clothing.

Under the new EU rules, companies will be expected to collect waste equivalent to a certain percentage of their production. While the exact amount has not yet been confirmed yet, European commissioner for the environment Virginijus Sinkevičius has said it will “definitely” be more than 5% of production . Companies may have to pay a fee (reportedly equivalent to €0.12 per T-shirt ) towards local authorities’ waste collection work.

But fast fashion brands must ensure that this doesn’t just dump the problem of textile waste into other countries’ landfills. Instead, developing lines out of recycled textiles could give these old clothes a new lease of life.

A Fashion Pact signed by more than 160 brands (a third of the sector by volume) commits companies to ensure that, by 2025, 25% of the raw materials such as textiles that they use have a low impact on the environment – recycled fibre is considered a low-impact material. Some brands have set more ambitious targets, including Adidas, which has committed to using 100% recycled plastics by 2024, and Zara-owner Inditex, which pledged to source 40% of its fibres from recycling processes by 2030.

These impending deadlines, plus the EU legislation, should motivate brands to use more recycled fibres. While the supply of such material is currently limited , an influx of recycling start-ups are finding ways to turn old clothes into new fibres that replicate the look and feel of virgin materials.

Start-ups like Spinnova, Renewcell and Infinited Fibre have developed chemical recycling technologies to create new fibres from cotton-rich clothing. And while cheap low-cost blended materials like poly-cotton are difficult to separate and recycle , firms like Worn Again, Envrnu, and Circ are tackling this problem, too.

Worn Again plans to build a new recycling demo plant in Switzerland, paving the way for 40 licensed plants by 2040 , which would be capable of processing 1.8 million tonnes of textile waste per year.

Taking textile recycling from hype to reality

Up to 26% of Europe’s textile waste could be recycled by 2030, according to some estimates, according to a 2022 McKinsey report . This would generate €3.5-€4.5 billion in economic output for the EU, create 15,000 new jobs, and save 3.6 million tonnes of CO². But only 1% of textiles are currently being recycled globally into new clothes – the recycling technology needed for this shift is still in its infancy.

Part of the challenge in scaling up textile recycling to this degree is the lack of information available about what happens to clothes that are thrown away. Sharing data on the volume, locations and compositions of waste generated in the supply chain and collected post-consumption would help evaluate the full potential of textile recycling. Companies like Reverse Resources already provide online databases of information on textile waste – in this case for a global network of 70 recyclers, 44 waste handlers and 1,287 manufacturers in 24 countries.

Increasing textile recycling will require a collaborative approach, as will the development of the technology needed to create high-quality recycled textiles. Brands, investors, suppliers, recyclers, technology providers and local governments must come together to find ways to grow the textile recycling industry. The recent New Cotton Project that involves 12 brands (including H&M group and Adidas), manufacturers, suppliers and research institutes is a first step towards increasing textile recycling.

More money is also needed from all of these groups. To reach the recycling rate of 18%-26% by 2030, it will take billions in infrastructure investment for collecting, sorting and processing textile waste.

Textile recycling is no longer for a few “sustainable” fashion firms – it is quickly becoming a reality that no fast fashion firm can ignore. Shoppers must demand that the brands they love show their commitment to textile recycling beyond marketing campaigns and low-volume fashion collections.

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What Is Fast Fashion—and Why Is It a Problem?

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Fast fashion describes cheap, stylish, mass-produced clothes that have a huge impact on the environment. These garments appeal to shoppers because they are affordable and trendy. However, they aren't built to last and quickly go out of style, and because they're also relatively cheap, these clothes are often quickly discarded, piling up in landfills.

In addition to environmental issues, fast fashion garments spark a lot of ethical concerns. They are often made by underpaid workers who are employed for long hours in unsafe conditions and are exposed to harmful chemicals used in textile production.

The History of Fast Fashion

In 1960, the average American adult bought fewer than 25 items of clothing each year. The average American household spent more than 10% of its income on clothing and shoes. And about 95% of clothes sold in the U.S. were made there, too.

But things began to change in the 1970s. Massive factories and textile mills opened in China and other countries throughout Asia and Latin America. With the promise of cheap labor and materials, they could mass-produce inexpensive garments quickly. By the 1980s, a few big American retail stores began outsourcing production.

“Any company making clothing in the United States couldn’t compete,” writes Elizabeth Cline in “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Fast Fashion.” “They either had to shut down or move on to importing.”

How Fast Fashion Became Popular

With clothing being so cheap, consumers can buy more. An entire industry surrounding seasonal trends has grown up, replacing a previous focus on quality and durability. Today, the average American purchases about 70 pieces of clothing each year, but spends less than 3.5% of its budget on clothes. Now only about 2% of clothes sold in the U.S. are made in the U.S.

With such hunger from consumers for new items, fashion companies have moved from releasing clothes seasonally (four times a year) to a model of frequent releases, sometimes refreshing their stock every week.

Common fast fashion brands include Shein, Zara, H&M, UNIQLO, Gap, Primark, Victoria's Secret, Urban Outfitters, Boohoo, Pretty Little Thing, Missguided, Mango, and TopShop, among many others.

The Problems With Fast Fashion

Although consumers might enjoy having inexpensive and stylish clothes, fast fashion has been criticized for its environmental and ethical impact.

Textile Waste

We’re more likely to throw away cheap, trendy clothes than more expensive, timeless pieces. This shouldn't be surprising because when we don't spend much money on something, we tend to value it less. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 17 million tons of textile waste were generated in 2018, of which only 2.5 million tons were recycled. Clothing has far lower recycling rates than other materials like paper, glass, or even plastic. This has to do with the short-fiber fabrics that are used; these are cheaper and thinner and cannot be rewoven into new fabrics.

Another problem is the blended fabrics that are now so common. Chetna Prajapati, a researcher from Loughborough University in the U.K., explained to the BBC: "For example, a 100% cotton t-shirt contains many other components such as labels and sewing threads which are usually made from another material like polyester. Similarly, a typical pair of jeans are made from cotton yarn which is generally blended with elastane, and other components such as zips and buttons and polyester sewing thread and dyed using a range of dyes."

It's next to impossible to separate all those components for proper recycling—and even if it were doable, the hours of skilled labor required would be significant and expensive.

The average American throws away about 70 pounds of clothing and other textiles each year, and the equivalent of one garbage truck of clothes is dumped in landfills or burned every second in the U.S. Additionally, an estimated $500 billion is lost annually because of clothing that’s hardly worn or not recycled.

CO2 Emissions

Besides the sheer bulk of waste in landfills, fast fashion has an impact on the environment through carbon emissions. The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions each year, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. That’s more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. Researchers project that if things don’t change, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget.

Carbon emissions occur during transportation from factories to retail outlets. Then they occur again by the consumer during purchase, either in person or online. They can occur a final time when the consumer discards the product and it is taken to a landfill and sometimes burned.

The type of material used matters, too. Approximately 63% of all textiles are derived from petrochemicals, which means that significant amounts of CO2 are being released in the extraction and production of those nonrenewable materials.

Water Pollution

In addition to carbon dioxide pollution, these clothing items can contribute to marine pollution. Clothes made out of synthetic fabrics can contain microplastics. This includes fabrics made from recycled water bottles, which are often touted as an eco-friendly solution. When these items are washed or if they are sitting in a landfill and are subject to rain, the tiny shreds of plastic are flushed into wastewater systems and eventually make their way out into the ocean.

Studies have shown that plastic fibers can end up in the stomachs of marine animals, including some that wind up as seafood. A study published in Environmental Science and Technology found that more than 1,900 fibers on average can be shed by a synthetic clothing garment during just a single trip through the washing machine.

Many of the dyes and chemicals used to color and set fabrics are highly toxic, both to workers and to the surrounding natural environment. Many factories in underdeveloped countries lack proper safety equipment, ventilation, and disposal mechanisms. Often they will flush wastewater out into nearby rivers, polluting agricultural and potable water supplies for people and animals.

Speaking of water, cotton production is extremely water-intensive. Conventional growing methods use large amounts of pesticides, too. When cotton is being used for quasi-disposal garments, the environmental cost of production increases significantly.

Unsafe Labor Conditions

In order to mass produce so many inexpensive garments so quickly, items often aren’t ethically made. Factories are often sweatshops where laborers work in unsafe conditions for low wages and long hours. In many cases, children are employed and basic human rights are violated, reports EcoWatch. Workers can be exposed to caustic chemicals and dyes and may work in dangerous situations where safety may not be a concern.

The tragic collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which killed 1,132 people and injured 2,500 in April 2013, alerted much of the developed world to the plight of distant garment workers. People were horrified to learn that despite safety concerns about the building's integrity being raised before the collapse, garment workers were forced back to work because of the high pressure for fast turnaround times coming from major fashion brands in the U.S. and Europe. The event forced shoppers to think about who was actually making their clothes .

Alternatives to Fast Fashion

Treehugger / Ellen Lindner

The aptly named alternative to fast fashion is slow fashion . Coined by eco textiles consultant and author Kate Fletcher, the phrase is about buying ethical, sustainable, quality garments. It requires a mental shift away from chasing trends toward embracing quality, practicality, classic beauty, and ethical production.

“Slow fashion is a glimpse of a different—and more sustainable—future for the textile and clothing sector and an opportunity for business to be done in a way that respects workers, environment, and consumers in equal measure,” Fletcher writes. “Such a future is but a garment away.”

When shopping, try to consider quality over quantity and timelessness over trendiness. Will the item last for a long time and will it stay in style so you’ll want to keep wearing it? Also, when shopping, try to see if the manufacturer uses sustainable and fair labor practices.

You might also want to consider skipping new clothes and buying secondhand items instead. This is arguably the greenest way to dress because you're making use of an item that's already been made, you're saving it from landfill, and you're reducing demand for new resources. You can find great items at thrift stores, many of which not only give clothes a new life but also donate to charity.

Repairing, Caring, and Donating

There are more steps you can take to make sure the clothes you have last longer or don’t end up in a landfill.

• Wash clothes only as necessary, using a gentle detergent, to extend their life. Deal with stains promptly and properly.
• Repair rips, broken zippers, and lost buttons instead of tossing damaged items. Find a local tailor or seamstress who can help you with these repairs if they're beyond your level of ability. YouTube can be a great resource, too. Some companies ( like Patagonia ) now offer repair services.
• Donate what you no longer wear.
• Have a clothing exchange with friends.

Fast Fashion

• Fast fashion is characterized by cheap, trendy, and mass-produced clothing that generates large amounts of waste and carbon emissions, with garments often ending up in landfills not long after purchase.
• The rise of fast fashion has led to significant ethical concerns because many fast-fashion retailers utilize underpaid workers in unsafe conditions.
• Alternatives to fast fashion, such as "slow fashion," emphasize ethical, sustainable practices, such as encouraging people to buy quality, long-lasting garments or secondhand clothing.

" Textiles: Material-Specific Data ."  US EPA.

Beall, Abigail. " Why clothes are so hard to recycle ." BBC.

" Circular Fashion - A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future ."  Ellen MacArthur Foundation .

Sandin, G. and Greg M. Peters. " Environmental impact of textile reuse and recycling — a review ." Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 184, pp. 353-365. 20 May 2018. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.02.266

Browne, Mark Anthony, et al. " Accumulation Of Microplastic On Shorelines Woldwide: Sources And Sinks ."  Environmental Science & Technology , vol. 45, no. 21, 2011, pp. 9175-9179, doi:10.1021/es201811s

Dwyer, Liz. " Will America’s Love for Cheap Clothing Doom the Sustainable Fashion Movement? " EcoWatch.

Fletcher, Kate. " Slow fashion ." Ecologist.

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What Is Fast Fashion?

Understanding fast fashion, fast fashion leaders, advantages and disadvantages.

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Fast Fashion: How It Impacts Retail Manufacturing

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master's in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Gordon Scott has been an active investor and technical analyst or 20+ years. He is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT).

Investopedia / Laura Porter

Fast fashion describes low-priced but stylish clothing that moves quickly from design to retail stores to meet and capitalize on trends. Collections are often based on styles presented at Fashion Week runway shows or worn by celebrities. Fast fashion allows mainstream consumers to purchase a new look at an affordable price.

Fast fashion resulted from cheaper, speedier manufacturing and shipping methods, the consumer's appetite for up-to-the-minute styles, and increasing purchasing power, especially that of young people. Fast fashion challenges the established clothing labels' tradition of introducing new collections and lines on an orderly, seasonal basis.

Key Takeaways

• Fast fashion describes low-priced but stylish clothing that moves quickly to retail stores, with new collections being introduced continuously.
• Innovations in retailers' supply chain management make fast fashion possible.
• Zara and H&M are two giants in the fast fashion field.
• Fast fashion offers affordable prices and instant gratification for consumers.
• Fast fashion drives waste, unfair labor force treatment, and harmful environmental pollution.

Shopping for clothing was once considered an event for which consumers would save over time to buy new clothes periodically. The style-conscious could get a preview of the styles to come by reading fashion magazines and seeing fashion shows that displayed new collections and clothing lines several months before their appearance in stores.

In the late 1990s, as shopping increasingly became a form of entertainment, discretionary spending on clothing increased. Fast fashion emerged, offering cheap, trendy knock-off garments, mass-produced at low cost . Consumers could wear something similar to what they saw on the runway.

Fast fashion was boosted by innovations in supply chain management (SCM) among fashion retailers. The assumption is that consumers want high fashion at a low cost. Fast fashion follows the concept of category management, linking the manufacturer with the consumer in a mutually beneficial relationship.

The size of the fast fashion market is projected to reach $197 billion by 2028.

Major players in the fast fashion market include UNIQLO, GAP, Forever 21, Topshop, Esprit, Primark, Fashion Nova, and New Look. Two of the leaders are:

Zara: Spanish retail chain Zara, the flagship brand of textile giant Inditex, is synonymous with fast fashion. Due to its short supply chain, Zara's designers can have a finished piece appear on store racks in as little as four weeks. Or can modify existing items in as little as two weeks.

Over half of its factories are located near its corporate headquarters in A Coruña, Spain. It produces more than 11,000 pieces annually versus an industry average of 2,000 to 4,000 pieces.

H&M: Founded in 1947, Sweden-based H&M Group (short for Hennes & Mauritz ) is one of the oldest fast fashion companies. As of 2024, H&M Group operated in 76 countries and had over 4,200 stores.

H&M Group functions like a department store, selling clothing, cosmetics, and home furnishings. It does not own any factories but relies on independent suppliers for its products. H&M production offices oversee suppliers with state-of-the-art IT systems that track inventory and communicate with corporate HQ. The factories that it works with are based all over Europe, Asia, and North America.

The traditional clothing industry model operates seasonally, with Fall Fashion Week and Spring Fashion Week showcasing looks for the four traditional seasons. Fast fashion labels produce about 52 micro-seasons a year—or one new collection of clothes a week meant to be worn immediately.

• Profitable for manufacturers and retailers : The constant introduction of new products encourages customers to frequent stores more often, which means more purchases and growing revenue. The retailer does not replenish its stock—instead, it replaces items that sell out with new items.
• Quick to consumers : Fast fashion enables buyers to get the clothes they want when they want them.
• Makes clothes affordable : Smart, innovative, imaginative new clothes and fun or even impractical items have become more affordable and widely accessible to all consumers.

Disadvantages

• Decline in domestic manufacturing : Fast fashion has contributed to a decline in the U.S. garment industry, where labor laws and workplace regulations are stronger, and wages are better than in other countries.
• Encourages a “throw-away” consumer mentality : Fast fashion has been called disposable fashion. Many fast fashionistas in their teens and early twenties—the age group the industry targets—admit they only wear their purchases once or twice.
• Bad for the environment : Critics contend that fast fashion contributes to pollution, waste, and planned obsolescence due to its cheap materials and manufacturing methods. The garments can't be recycled because they're made predominantly of synthetics (over 60%).
• Unregulated labor practices : Manufacturers in developing countries with little regulation may not oversee subcontractors, enforce workforce rules, or be transparent about their supply chain.
• Intellectual property theft : Some designers allege that their designs have been illegally duplicated and mass-produced by fast fashion companies.

Profitable for manufacturers and retailers

Offers fast, efficient delivery

Makes clothes affordable

Decline in domestic manufacturing

Encourages "throwaway" consumer mentality

Negatively impacts the environment

Unregulated labor practices

Impact on the Environment

Consumers may find it difficult to avoid products manufactured by companies that practice fast fashion. However, they can investigate fast fashion brands to see if they use sustainable processes and support fair labor practices. They can determine for themselves the impact that fast fashion may have on the environment and people who work in the industry.

Shopping for clothes at secondhand stores helps to reduce the amount of garment waste and to extend usage.

According to statistics from the United Nations Environment Programme and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation:

• The fashion industry uses 93 billion cubic meters of water per year.
• It takes 3,781 liters of water to make one pair of jeans.
• Of all the wastewater in the world, 20% is from textile dyeing and is highly toxic—many countries where clothes are made have reduced or zero regulations for wastewater disposal.
• Microplastic fibers used in clothing make their way to the ocean, amounting to about 500,000 tons—close to 50 billion plastic bottles.
• Fashion manufacturing emits more than 10% of global carbon emissions.

What Is Slow Fashion?

Slow fashion—a concept first introduced in 2008 by fashion and sustainability consultant Kate Fletcher—uses environmentally friendly processes and materials through mindful manufacturing, focusing on quality rather than quantity. Mindful manufacturing, an idea championed by 3D printing company Stratasys, is the concept of developing more efficient production, sound chemical and solid waste disposal practices, reusable materials, and recycled packaging.

What Are Some Fast Fashion Examples?

Some examples of companies in fast fashion are Stradivarius, Victoria's Secret , Urban Outfitters, and Zara.

Who Benefits From Fast Fashion?

Consumers who enjoy the latest fashion with the advantage of low prices benefit, but the primary beneficiaries are investors, owners, and other stakeholders who profit from the practice.

Fast fashion increases consumer spending and profits. It satisfies the consumer's need to participate in a fashion trend. However, critics say the industry contributes to climate change, pesticide pollution, and waste. The debate around fast fashion and its alternatives will continue as long as consumers seek to buy the latest styles at low prices and rapid replenishment rates.

Research and Markets. " Fast Fashion Global Market Report 2021-30: COVID-19 Growth and Change to 2030 ."

SCM Globe. " Zara Clothing Company Supply Chain ."

H&M. " About Us ."

H&M. " Supply Chain ."

The Good Trade. " What Is Fast Fashion, Anyway? "

The New York Times. " What Do Gen Z Shoppers Want? A Cute, Cheap Outfit That Looks Great on Instagram ."

The New York Times. " How Fast Fashion Is Destroying the Planet ."

The World Bank. " How Much Do Our Wardrobes Cost to the Environment? "

Kate Fletcher. " Biography ."

Stratasys. " Stratasys Calls for More Mindful Manufacturing ."

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The global environmental injustice of fast fashion

Rachel bick.

Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130 USA

Erika Halsey

Christine c. ekenga, associated data.

Not applicable

Fast fashion, inexpensive and widely available of-the-moment garments, has changed the way people buy and dispose of clothing. By selling large quantities of clothing at cheap prices, fast fashion has emerged as a dominant business model, causing garment consumption to skyrocket. While this transition is sometimes heralded as the “democratization” of fashion in which the latest styles are available to all classes of consumers, the human and environmental health risks associated with inexpensive clothing are hidden throughout the lifecycle of each garment. From the growth of water-intensive cotton, to the release of untreated dyes into local water sources, to worker’s low wages and poor working conditions; the environmental and social costs involved in textile manufacturing are widespread.

In this paper, we posit that negative externalities at each step of the fast fashion supply chain have created a global environmental justice dilemma. While fast fashion offers consumers an opportunity to buy more clothes for less, those who work in or live near textile manufacturing facilities bear a disproportionate burden of environmental health hazards. Furthermore, increased consumption patterns have also created millions of tons of textile waste in landfills and unregulated settings. This is particularly applicable to low and middle-income countries (LMICs) as much of this waste ends up in second-hand clothing markets. These LMICs often lack the supports and resources necessary to develop and enforce environmental and occupational safeguards to protect human health. We discuss the role of industry, policymakers, consumers, and scientists in promoting sustainable production and ethical consumption in an equitable manner.

Fast fashion is a term used to describe the readily available, inexpensively made fashion of today. The word “fast” describes how quickly retailers can move designs from the catwalk to stores, keeping pace with constant demand for more and different styles. With the rise of globalization and growth of a global economy, supply chains have become international, shifting the growth of fibers, the manufacturing of textiles, and the construction of garments to areas with cheaper labor. Increased consumption drives the production of inexpensive clothing, and prices are kept down by outsourcing production to low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Globally, 80 billion pieces of new clothing are purchased each year, translating to $1.2 trillion annually for the global fashion industry. The majority of these products are assembled in China and Bangladesh while the United States consumes more clothing and textiles than any other nation in the world [ 1 ]. Approximately 85 % of the clothing Americans consume, nearly 3.8 billion pounds annually, is sent to landfills as solid waste, amounting to nearly 80 pounds per American per year [ 2 , 3 ].

The global health costs associated with the production of cheap clothing are substantial. While industrial disasters such as the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire have led to improved occupational protections and work standards in the United States, the same cannot be said for LMICs. The hazardous working conditions that attracted regulatory attention in the United States and European Union have not been eliminated, but merely shifted overseas. The social costs associated with the global textile and garment industry are significant as well. Defined as “all direct and indirect losses sustained by third persons or the general public as a result of unrestrained economic activities,” the social costs involved in the production of fast fashion include damages to the environment, human health, and human rights at each step along the production chain [ 4 ].

Fast fashion as a global environmental justice issue

Environmental justice is defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, as the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies” [ 5 ]. In the United States, this concept has primarily been used in the scientific literature and in practice to describe the disproportionate placement of superfund sites (hazardous waste sites) in or near communities of color. However, environmental justice, as it has been defined, is not limited to the United States and need not be constrained by geopolitical boundaries. The textile and garment industries, for example, shift the environmental and occupational burdens associated with mass production and disposal from high income countries to the under-resourced (e.g. low income, low-wage workers, women) communities in LMICs. Extending the environmental justice framework to encompass the disproportionate impact experienced by those who produce and dispose of our clothing is essential to understanding the magnitude of global injustice perpetuated through the consumption of cheap clothing. In the context of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 which calls for sustainable consumption and production as part of national and sectoral plans, sustainable business practices, consumer behavior, and the reduction and elimination of fast fashion should all be a target of global environmental justice advocates.

Environmental hazards during production

The first step in the global textile supply chain is textile production, the process by which both natural and synthetic fibers are made. Approximately 90 % of clothing sold in the United States is made with cotton or polyester, both associated with significant health impacts from the manufacturing and production processes [ 6 ]. Polyester, a synthetic textile, is derived from oil, while cotton requires large amounts of water and pesticides to grow. Textile dyeing results in additional hazards as untreated wastewater from dyes are often discharged into local water systems, releasing heavy metals and other toxicants that can adversely impact the health of animals in addition to nearby residents [ 6 ].

Occupational hazards during production

Garment assembly, the next step in the global textile supply chain, employs 40 million workers around the world [ 7 ]. LMICs produce 90% of the world’s clothing. Occupational and safety standards in these LMICs are often not enforced due to poor political infrastructure and organizational management [ 8 ]. The result is a myriad of occupational hazards, including respiratory hazards due to poor ventilation such as cotton dust and synthetic air particulates, and musculoskeletal hazards from repetitive motion tasks. The health hazards that prompted the creation of textile labor unions in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 1900’s have now shifted to work settings in LMICs. In LMICs, reported health outcomes include debilitating and life-threatening conditions such as lung disease and cancer, damage to endocrine function, adverse reproductive and fetal outcomes, accidental injuries, overuse injuries and death [ 9 – 11 ]. Periodic reports of international disasters, such as the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse which killed 1134 Bangladeshi workers, are stark reminders of the health hazards faced by garment workers. These disasters, however, have not demonstrably changed safety standards for workers in LMICs [ 12 ].

Textile waste

While getting finished garments to consumers in the high-income countries is seen as the end of the line for the fashion industry, environmental injustices continue long after the garment is sold. The fast fashion model encourages consumers to view clothing as disposable. In fact, the average American throws away approximately 80 pounds of clothing and textiles annually, occupying nearly 5% of landfill space [ 3 ]. Clothing not sent directly to the landfill often ends up in the second-hand clothing trade. Approximately 500,000 tons of used clothing are exported abroad from the United States each year, the majority ending up in LMICs [ 8 ]. In 2015, the United States exported more than $700 million worth of used clothing [ 13 ]. Second-hand clothing not sold in the United States market is compressed into 1000-pound bales and exported overseas to be “graded” (sorted, categorized and re-baled) by low-wage workers in LMICs and sold in second-hand markets. Clothing not sold in markets becomes solid waste, clogging rivers, greenways, and parks, and creating the potential for additional environmental health hazards in LMICs lacking robust municipal waste systems.

Solutions, innovation, and social justice

Ensuring environmental justice at each stage in the global supply chain remains a challenge. Global environmental justice will be dependent upon innovations in textile development, corporate sustainability, trade policy, and consumer habits.

Sustainable fibers

The sustainability of a fiber refers to the practices and policies that reduce environmental pollution and minimize the exploitation of people or natural resources in meeting lifestyle needs. Across the board, natural cellulosic and protein fibers are thought to be better for the environment and for human health, but in some cases manufactured fibers are thought to be more sustainable. Fabrics such as Lyocell, made from the cellulose of bamboo, are made in a closed loop production cycle in which 99% of the chemicals used to develop fabric fibers are recycled. The use of sustainable fibers will be key in minimizing the environmental impact of textile production.

Corporate sustainability

Oversight and certification organizations such as Fair Trade America and the National Council of Textiles Organization offer evaluation and auditing tools for fair trade and production standards. While some companies do elect to get certified in one or more of these independent accrediting programs, others are engaged in the process of “greenwashing.” Capitalizing on the emotional appeal of eco-friendly and fair trade goods, companies market their products as “green” without adhering to any criteria [ 14 ]. To combat these practices, industry-wide adoption of internationally recognized certification criteria should be adopted to encourage eco-friendly practices that promote health and safety across the supply chain.

Trade policy

While fair trade companies can attempt to compete with fast fashion retailers, markets for fair trade and eco-friendly textile manufacturing remain small, and ethically and environmentally sound supply chains are difficult and expensive to audit. High income countries can promote occupational safety and environmental health through trade policy and regulations. Although occupational and environmental regulations are often only enforceable within a country’s borders, there are several ways in which policymakers can mitigate the global environmental health hazards associated with fast fashion. The United States, for example, could increase import taxes for garments and textiles or place caps on annual weight or quantities imported from LMICs. At the other end of the clothing lifecycle, some LMICs have begun to regulate the import of used clothing. The United Nations Council for African Renewal, for example, recently released a report citing that “Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda are raising taxes on secondhand clothes imports and at the same time offering incentives to local manufacturers” [ 15 ].

The role of the consumer

Trade policies and regulations will be the most effective solutions in bringing about large-scale change to the fast fashion industry. However, consumers in high income countries have a role to play in supporting companies and practices that minimize their negative impact on humans and the environment. While certifications attempt to raise industry standards, consumers must be aware of greenwashing and be critical in assessing which companies actually ensure a high level of standards versus those that make broad, sweeping claims about their social and sustainable practices [ 14 ]. The fast fashion model thrives on the idea of more for less, but the age-old adage “less in more” must be adopted by consumers if environmental justice issues in the fashion industry are to be addressed. The United Nation’s SDG 12, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns,” seeks to redress the injustices caused by unfettered materialism. Consumers in high income countries can do their part to promote global environmental justice by buying high-quality clothing that lasts longer, shopping at second-hand stores, repairing clothing they already own, and purchasing from retailers with transparent supply chains.

Conclusions

In the two decades since the fast fashion business model became the norm for big name fashion brands, increased demand for large amounts of inexpensive clothing has resulted in environmental and social degradation along each step of the supply chain. The environmental and human health consequences of fast fashion have largely been missing from the scientific literature, research, and discussions surrounding environmental justice. The breadth and depth of social and environmental abuses in fast fashion warrants its classification as an issue of global environmental justice.

Environmental health scientists play a key role in supporting evidence-based public health. Similar to historical cases of environmental injustice in the United States, the unequal distribution of environmental exposures disproportionally impact communities in LMICs. There is an emerging need for research that examines the adverse health outcomes associated with fast fashion at each stage of the supply chain and post-consumer process, particularly in LMICs. Advancing work in this area will inform the translation of research findings to public health policies and practices that lead to sustainable production and ethical consumption.

Acknowledgements

Availability of data and materials, abbreviations.

Authors’ contributions

All authors were involved the conception of the work. RB and EH drafted the manuscript, and CE revised the manuscript critically and approved the final version for submission. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Authors’ information

Ethics approval and consent to participate, consent for publication, competing interests.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Rachel Bick, Email: ude.ltsuw@kcib .

Erika Halsey, Email: [email protected] .

Christine C. Ekenga, Email: ude.ltsuw@cagneke .

Money blog: 5 ways to increase your house value without spending a fortune

Welcome to the Money blog, your place for personal finance and consumer news and tips. Leave a comment on any of the stories we're covering below.

Friday 9 August 2024 06:52, UK

Essential reads

• Mortgage overview : Home buyers getting better rates than remortgagers - and buy-to-let purchases in decline
• Five ways to increase your house value - without spending a fortune
• The rise of 'doom spending' - what it is and how to stop
• Will 'the greatest chocolate bar ever' return? We asked Cadbury's...
• Is equity release ever a good idea?
• Where kids can eat for free or cheap
• Basically... Wills
• Best of the Money blog - an archive of features

Ask a question or make a comment

Are you struggling with rent? Has your landlord recently increased it?

Alternatively, have you ever lived in a rent-controlled home?

We want to hear from you. Contact [email protected] or contact us on Whatsapp here.

What are the easiest ways to increase the value of your home, without splashing out on an extension or a new kitchen?

Property solicitors at Jones Whyte reveal five tips on how to add value without hurting your wallet... 

"The key is to think like a buyer and make improvements that you would look for when buying a house for yourself," they say. 

"First impressions matter, and improving the exterior of your home is one of the most cost-effective ways to boost its value," the experts said.

This could include mowing the grass, trimming hedges and removing weeds. 

"A fresh coat of paint on the front door is also a cheap yet effective way of making your home look more appealing."

This can be done for as little as £50 if you do it yourself.

Outdoor lighting can also make a difference. 

"Depending on the look you’re going for, you can find exterior lights for as little as £15."

2/ Small, smart upgrades 

In the kitchen, consider giving the cupboards a coat of paint, or even replacing their handles. 

"Installing a new backsplash can also contribute to giving the kitchen a fresh new look."

In the bathroom, you can replace old lighting fixtures, re-caulk the tub, or add a new shower curtain and rug. 

"A clean, updated bathroom is always a huge selling point for any property and these small upgrades can have a big impact."

3/ Energy efficiency

Energy-efficient homes are increasingly attractive to buyers due to potential long-term savings. 

One study says 35% of prospective buyers are more likely to make an offer on a home with eco-minded installations.

You could replace iridescent light bulbs with LEDs, install a smart thermostat, and seal any gaps around windows or doors to improve insulation.

"If your budget is slightly higher, consider investing in extra insulation or a more efficient heating system."

4/ Storage solutions

"By making use of every corner of your home, you can create a modern and less cluttered feel that will appeal to buyers," the experts say.

Install shelves in small spaces, or take advantage of vertical space in smaller rooms by using taller bookshelves and storage units.

With a slightly higher budget, you can add built-in furniture and storage around the house, starting from a few hundred pounds.

5/ Home staging

"Home staging is an effective way of presenting a property to appeal to a wide audience of potential buyers, and there are many budget-friendly ways it can be done."

Try to create a spacious, open feel by moving furniture around. 

"Adding subtle accessories such as artwork or greenery will add warmth and style to your home and by keeping it simple and cohesive, you can increase appeal without overwhelming the space."

Every Friday we take an overview of the mortgage market, speaking to those in the industry before getting a round-up of the best rates courtesy of the independent experts at  Moneyfactscompare.co.uk .

The mortgage market has had a full week to digest last Thursday's interest rate cut - and its response has been good news for borrowers.

Money blog regular expert David Hollingworth, from L&C Mortgages, says the downward trend of previous weeks has continued but "the difference this week is that the new rates are dipping to lower levels than we have seen for months". 

He said expectations of a second cut this year have grown.

"That helps to reduce the cost of funds for mortgage lenders and the competitive nature of the mortgage market means that lenders have wasted no time in bringing some new barnstorming rates to the market."

We're now seeing headline rates below 4% from the likes of HSBC, Barclays and NatWest, with Barclays the current leader with a five-year fix at 3.84% to 60% LTV with a £899 fee.

What's next?

David said: "I'd expect to see more lenders looking to keep up, so we should see more changes to come.  

"The lowest rates have been targeted at homebuyers so those looking to remortgage may unfortunately find that rates are a touch higher but nonetheless it's a brighter outlook. 

"It may also help to build activity in the housing market where understandably some put buying decisions on hold when rates leapt."

Another development to keep an eye on is a potential recession in the US. Concern about this - following disappointing jobs data - was a key reason for the stock market sell off this week.

A recession would prompt the US Fed to cut interest rates much quicker than expected to try to stimulate the economy - and, as we have discussed in Money many times, central banks don't like to be too far apart on rates as it has knock-on impacts on the strength of a currency. Therefore, a US recession could actually be good news for anyone hoping for lower rates in the UK.

This week, Moneyfacts has honed in on deals on offer for landlords, or potential landlords.

"Away from interest rates, the overall profitability of investing in a buy-to-let property remains under scrutiny," said the comparison site's Rachel Springall.

"This week there have been reports on why the buy-to-let market remains a challenge for existing and new landlords. According to analysis of HMRC data, purchases of buy-to-let properties and second homes have fallen to their lowest levels since 2016."

Here's a look at the look at the best rates currently on offer...

Moneyfacts also looks at what it calls "best buys" - which considers not just the rate, but other costs and incentives. These are their top picks this week...

EasyJet is launching a new cabin crew recruitment drive aimed at the over-50s and people wanting to change their minds about retirement.

The campaign, called Returnships, follows research suggesting that three in four people over the age of 50 believed this was the perfect time for a new career.

Training taster sessions will be offered at EasyJet's London Gatwick cabin crew training centre.

Previous recruitment campaigns have led to a big increase in new staff over the age of 50 and 60.

New research by the airline among 2,000 over-50s showed that half have considered a new career.

Most respondents believed their age would stop them being accepted for a cabin crew job and half mistakenly believed the role would mean being away from home for long periods of time.

The campaign has been launched ahead of the airline's annual recruitment drive this month, with hundreds of cabin crew jobs available for 2025.

Barclays has become the latest bank to lift its cap on top bonuses in the UK.

The lender's senior bankers will now be able to earn payouts of up to 10 times their base salary, up from a two-to-one ratio previously imposed by the EU in 2014 when the UK was a member, according to an internal memo seen by news agency Reuters.

A spokesperson for the bank said: "The revised bonus cap will not alter the way Barclays sets its incentive pool, which is based on overall Group performance.

"It will allow us greater flexibility to differentiate individual bonuses within a small and defined group of colleagues."

Banks including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan have already taken similar action, in moves that were first revealed by Sky News.

You can read more on this below...

Cruise ships which could be eight times the size of the Titanic will be in service from 2050 amid booming demand for holidays afloat, according to a study.

The campaign group Transport & Environment (T&E) found the world's biggest cruise ships were now twice as big as they were in 2000.

If the current growth rate were to continue, the biggest vessels in 2050 would be almost eight times bigger than the Titanic and carry nearly 11,000 passengers, the study said.

The company also found the number of ships has increased more than twenty-fold from only 21 ships in 1970 to 515 vessels today. 

As a result of such rapid growth, T&E warned these floating cities "will emit more greenhouse gases and pollutants than ever before".

It has therefore made a number of policy recommendations it believes will help, including a €50 tax on a typical cruise journey ticket which would bring in €1.6bn globally (cruise ships are currently exempt from fuel duties as well as most corporate and consumer taxes).

In its study, the campaign group also found Southampton is the busiest cruise ship port in the UK and ranks seventh for the most sulfur oxide air pollution coming from cruise ships in Europe.

In May, T&E found that Southampton suffers the highest levels of ship-produced emissions of nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter of any port in the UK - more than half of this was produced by just 46 cruise ships calling at the port.

Jonathan Hood, UK sustainable shipping manager at T&E, said: "With today's cruise ships making the Titanic look like somebody's private yacht, the question is - how much bigger can these giants get? The cruise business is the fastest growing tourism sector and its emissions are spiralling out of control."

Currently, the world's largest cruise ship is Royal Caribbean Group's Icon of the Seas, which is 1,197ft- long and boasts 20 decks.

The ship can house a maximum of 7,600 passengers. 

April Mortgages has announced it is cutting interest rates on its range of fixed rate mortgages.

Rates across the mortgage lender's range of five, 10 and 15-year fixed rate mortgages have been cut by up to 0.10 basis points. 

As a result, rates start at 4.80% for the five-year fix, at 4.85% for the 10-year fix and at 4.95% for the 15-year fixed rate product.

"These really are worthy of strong consideration now," Simon Bridland, director at the mortgage broker Release Freedom, told Newspage. 

"The security of a longer term deal certainly isn't for everyone, especially those used to being offered the standard two to five year terms with the ability to regularly shop around. But perhaps they should take a look at April, given the flexibility they have on redemption penalties."

James Pagan, director of product and portfolio management at April Mortgages, said the lender was "determined to bring true peace of mind to the nation's mortgage borrowers and brokers", and these "rate reductions make the prospect of securing a longer-term fixed rate even more attractive".

He said: "We know that these products can make a real difference to borrowers, and are committed to reaching as many as possible by working closely with brokers."

April Mortgages is a UK subsidiary of the Dutch asset manager DMFCO.

Deliveroo has made its first ever profit of £1m over the first half of this year.

The food delivery app was launched in 2013 - meaning it has gone more than 10 years without making a profit. 

The company said it had seen encouraging signs in terms of consumer behaviour as food price rises continued to ease.

It posted a profit of £1.3m for the first half of the year, swinging from a loss of £82.9m this time last year.

The number of orders placed over the period increased by 2% to a total of 147 million.

Gross transaction value per order - which means the average cost of people's food baskets plus delivery fees - was £25, up from £24.20 the prior year.

This was primarily driven by higher item prices, which are set by restaurants and shops, even though the rate that prices are rising continues to slow.

In the UK and Ireland, total spending jumped by 7% at constant currency, partly driven by customers placing orders more frequently.

Deliveroo said it benefited from new restaurants on the platform, such as Pizza Pilgrims and Wingstop, as well as more grocery options and brands such as Ann Summers and B&Q selling products through the app.

Walkers and Heinz have launched three new crisp flavours.

The crisps - Sausage Sarnie and Heinz Ketchup, Roast Chicken and Heinz Mayo, and Cheese Toastie with Heinz Beans - are inspired by classic sandwiches.

The limited-edition snacks are available at supermarkets from today in both 45g grab bags for £1 each and multipacks of five 25g bags for £1.65.

Ocado has started selling products in refillable packaging as part of a trial.

The new initiative sees products such as pasta, rice and washing liquid placed in reusable containers when customers purchase products online.

The empty containers are then returned to drivers when another order is made and then washed and refilled for a new customer.

It will come at no extra cost to shoppers.

Simon Hinks, product director at Ocado retail, told Retail Gazette : "Our customers are already used to giving their bags back to our drivers for recycling – so this is a really sensible next step for us to help our customers reduce single-use plastic on products they buy frequently."

Octopus Energy will extend an energy bills support scheme for pensioners after the government removed winter fuel payments for millions of elderly people.

The energy supplier said it will continue its £30m assistance fund into this winter, and that pensioners who do not meet the new criteria for receiving state support will be eligible.

Labour said in July it is changing the rules around the government's winter fuel payments scheme so that it will no longer be universal for all pensioners in England and Wales.

Now, only pensioners on means-tested benefits will qualify for the help, which is estimated to take the payments away from about 10 million people.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said making the scheme more targeted was a "difficult decision". 

You can read about the changes to the winter fuel payments here...

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