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Regulate fashion. For example you might make destruction or stockpiling of unsold clothes a crime. Also ban exporting clothes that were manufactured abroad.
I've taken to buying almost all my clothes second hand recently, both for this reason and I find the selection and styles far better than what fast fashion provides. Thrift stores like Goodwill provide some gems, but the best shopping comes from we-buy-your-clothes type places like Buffalo Exchange and Crossroads, and the prices are better too!
The reason new exists is not just the styles, but the higher likelihood you are going to find the correct (or near to it) size.
Regulate fashion. For example you might make destruction or stockpiling of unsold clothes a crime. Also ban exporting clothes that were manufactured abroad.
It doesn't need to be regulated. Like many for problems, the negative externalities need to be accounted in taxation/tariffs.
There already are specific regulations regarding fashion industry.
That's conspicuous consumption gone mad, it seems to me too many people have far too much disposable income. What is it about people that they cannot be content with their clothes in that they have to change them long before they're worn out? This is fashion gone mad. I never throw out clothes, and I can keep the same items for many years - I've still got jeans, BD dungarees, etc. that I bought over 20 years ago. Whe…
“In 2019, American families spent on average about 2% of their income on clothing.” It’s vastly more affordable than “In the 1950s, the average American family spent about 10% of its income on clothing, and that money bought them just a few sturdy garments a year.”
Thrift shops went from a way to save real money at the cost of time to a fashion statement.
I refuse to fault fast fashion for these issues when the amount of trash free t-shirts given away for free at any conference could probably build a mountain on its own.
I refuse to fault fast fashion for these issues when the amount of trash free t-shirts given away for free at any conference could probably build a mountain on its own.
Those are the opposite of fast fashion, being both completely unfashionable and oddly long-lived. I have event t-shirts that are almost old enough to vote. And then of course, they have a long afterlife, first as painting shirts and finally as cleaning rags.
> “You wonder, do people in America have so much money that they can just wear things once and then throw them away?”
I uh… I too would like to know. What scares me is that the use of whatever demographic is causing that average has to be way higher than the actual average, but this feels like it has to be bimodal.
And there are lots of these numbers in the news. The "average American" produces an obscene amount of food waste too, far beyond what I feel I actually produce, as best as I can estimate it.
The weird part of this isn’t that fast fashion generates a lot of trash. Almost every part of the American lifestyle generates tons of waste. The strange part is that the US strong arms African countries into buying the “donated” garments from textile recyclers. I’ll be throwing my used garments directly into the landfill in the future.
There's a reason recycling is the third R, and it should primarily take the form of other people reusing your stuff anyway - not throwing items in a specifically coloured bin and calling it a day.