The love for cheap clothes worldwide is increasing, spending less money but getting more products. Is it good for us or are we enjoying the fact that we are hurting the environment and even ourselves? We might be paying more attention to the fact that SHEIN is cheap and they have nice things other than looking at more expensive clothes. Fast fashion has become very popular today, but only cheap clothes are looked into fast fashion. 

Fast fashion is increasing in popularity throughout the world. The clothes may be cheap and look nice on the website but when they arrive at your house are they worth what terrible things happened to make the products? The waste of these items is very harsh to our environment. Natalie Nye published a document on The Daily Iowan written on September 7, 2023, about the global fast fashion industry which will be cited within the next paragraph. The waste that these clothes have has a huge impact on what is happening to the environment. When people buy more of the clothes because of the cheapness the people think about when it will be here not what is the process of getting here and getting made. The more we buy from fast fashion companies, the more it hurts the environment. The dyes that are being used for the clothes get washed out into local water. The local waters, The drinking water for many families now has harsh chemicals for our bodies from the clothes being made. The more clothes being made the more fresh water we need to make them. The clothes need cotton and one of the things in clothes that needs the most water is the cotton.  If you are wearing pants most pants use about 850 liters of water and if you are wearing a sweatshirt you use up about 3,350 liters of water. Why do we do this to ourselves? We are putting other people at risk just to make ourselves look better. I think that we need to look and buy from bigger stores rather than just cheap stores.

Another thing with fast fashion is that the health conditions for many people around the area are very low.  The source continued by Natalie Nye. One of the things is that in the area that is another place to work. They don’t know the outcome of the job. In most fast fashion stores they pay very little. These people are having very harsh working conditions and still getting paid nowhere near what they deserve to get paid. Most workers get accidental injuries very frequently. Some have risks of cancers like lung cancer with all the chemicals in the air. The more people buy the clothes the longer the people have to work with no breaks. They found that most places force their employees to work 17-hour shifts. If they messed up any clothes or made any mistakes that were taken out of their pay for the day which was only about $20. Shein is also widely known for stealing designs from other small businesses. It was reported that they stole over 30 different brand's designs. One of the other problems is people buying it so much. Published by Washington University in St. Louis written by Neil Schoenherr on January 9, 2019, helped show us about the consumptions made of Fast fashion which will be shown in the current paragraph.  The consumption made by countries around the world is very high. One of the most consumed country is the United States. 85% of the country's clothes that they receive are fast fashion. One problem with this is that maybe there was something they didn’t like about the clothes and so they just threw it away or they got sick of it and needed new clothes.  3.8 billion pounds of clothes get sent to landfills every year, which is about 80 pounds per American a year. That is why many people like the thought of 2nd hand clothing. 

Secondhand clothing is something that is spiking in sales. Secondhand clothing is when you buy something from a different store and then when you are done you give it to another store to sell. Like goodwill is a great second-hand store option. Many things are good and bad about second-hand clothing but maybe it might be better than Fast Fashion. dcfashion.org provided an article written by Mike R. on July 10, 2022, about the “pros and cons with second-hand clothing” provided below. There are many different opinions on secondhand clothing but you need to look at both sides. One of the benefits of second-hand clothing is the amount of waste being prevented in landfills. The amount that goes down from how much fast fashion wastes is a huge saving. When shopping, some people just want new clothes and might not need them or think about what they have in their closet. When this happens some people might throw it away but now it's a more popular thing to recycle and give to second-hand clothing. This reduces the amount that people have to pay for the clothes. Some of the clothes are just like new and they just get rid of them. One thing that is a huge thing that happens to us is that everyone wants the newest things. If there was a new piece of clothing or a new store everyone is going to go there but once they release more stuff they get rid of the old stuff. They might have worn this stuff once and if you don’t have the money or could care less if you have it you could easily wait for a month or two when some people don’t want it and they get rid of it. If they get rid of it then they have reduced the amount you have to pay for it by almost half the price they were originally sold for. In my opinion, wearing the stuff and then giving it to second-hand clothing is so much better so we can wear the item more. One problem with second-hand clothing is the cleanliness. Some people might just expect people to wash them before they send them to second-hand stores but surprisingly some people don’t. This can cause many different things. People before they drop the clothes off are supposed to clean the clothes. If people don’t clean the clothes and you assume they cleaned them and just put them on after buying the product it could get you sick. There are a few things you could get from these clothes: they are Pediculosis. Pediculosis is commonly found where the hairier parts of your body are and they can have lice or adult lice there are also larvae and eggs. The other commonly found thing is Scabies. Scabies are caused by mites that lived on the person and now are burrowing under your skin and will cause a rash. The lack of durability is also a problem. If you get an item and find out it has holes in it you might just throw it away but then you wasted your money and you still are throwing away a piece of clothes. I think that some of these things are not good for you and you should wash new items you get any time but if you wash them and they wash them there will be less chance of you getting it. 

The future of second-hand clothing is going to fly. Terry E. Cohen explained in an article published by Triple Pundit on June 29, 2023, about the future of secondhand clothing. The second-hand market is supposed to skyrocket and make up a 10th of the global fashion industry next year. One not-so-good thing is that all these stores are now noticing how much these stores are making and just like Amazon right now they have products that you can buy used and new. More stores will have the option to buy used clothes for cheaper like second-hand clothing. This is also helping to keep the variety of clothing store options available. I think that the stores that have this option have more of an advantage but are hurting second-hand clothing. If the other stores are asking for returns or if you don’t like them and re-selling them then that is the whole point of second-hand clothing and now stores are just being their own second-hand store.  No one just wants one type of clothing in the entire store. Some of the more hurtful products to our environment could be reused and could help not make so many. 

Most clothes we wear are not good for us or the earth. When most clothes aren't healthy what do we do? We can’t just not wear clothes after wearing clothes for our whole life. That's why if we send the clothes to a second-hand store then more people can and will wear out the item rather than just throwing it away when someone else could wear it. A lot of people now wear blue jeans. Samantha N and more wrote about how hurtful the jeans we wear are published by ACS Publications on September 2, 2020  Blue jeans are one of the worst things that can be made. The jeans that are being made use lots of dye. The jeans need to be dyed the blueish color that they are when they sell them. About half the world today wears blue jeans or any sort of denim. When the jeans are being made they use a lot of water and all the water they get made in and washed in slowly makes its way to lakes and rivers around the area. In Lake Ontario, the microfibers that are made with jeans take up about 87-90% of the particles in the rocks at the bottom of the lake. Something else that is not good for the environment is Polyester and Nylon which is in almost every piece of clothing that we wear. The Sustainable Fashion Forum wrote and published a document on October 11, 2023, showing us how dangerous Polyester and Nylon are. Polyester creates and releases methane gas that can cause many serious health conditions. Polyester may cause rashes, itching, and more. Polyester also uses lots of fossil fuels which is horrible for the earth. Nylon can be much worse than Polyester. Nylon creates a Nitrous Oxide that is 310 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. The more that you wash your clothes the more little microplastic fibers shed from the clothing and are washed into waterways. Nylon is also known for shrinking and reacting to heat very easily and can absorb water even just from the air. 

The fast fashion around the world, second-hand clothing, and horrible clothing products is something we may not be able to fully end but the more we don’t buy products that hurt other people and our earth is going to be much better. Clothing is not good for the environment but we all need to live with clothes and if we don’t use bad clothing websites and go to Goodwill and donate clothes it will help our earth get healthier than it was before. The amount of pollution worldwide right now is crazy and even just buying clothes from a fast fashion store can add a lot to our pollution.