Environmental Health volume 17 , Article number: 92 Cite this article. Metrics details. 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. 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. Peer Review reports. Fast fashion is a term used to describe the readily available, inexpensively made fashion of today. 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.
