Reselling Helps The World! Halt Fast Fashion.
LEARN HOW THE RESALE INDUSTRY IS HELPING THE PLANET
There are so many reasons why reselling can make a positive impact on the planet. Yes! Reselling actually helps the planet! One of those ways is by NOT promoting fast fashion.
What Is Fast Fashion?
Well, the formal definition is: (noun) Inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends.
But let’s take a closer look. Fast fashion is inexpensive clothing, true. It’s inexpensive, POORLY made, clothing, using cheap materials. 100 BILLION pieces of clothing are produced this way every year. Overproduction and overconsumption are two of the worst side effects of the fast fashion industry. Over the past twenty years, clothing production and consumption have doubled, yet consumers keep their clothes only half as long. The net net of making so many clothes so fast and so cheap is that the clothing doesn’t last very long at all. Once a garment can no longer be worn, it heads straight to the garbage. Into a landfill. Three out of five fast fashion garments end up in a landfill within a year of purchase! In fact, BoF’s 2019 State of Fashion Report found that one in three young women consider a garment worn once or twice to be old, and one in seven consider it a fashion faux-pas to be photographed in the same outfit twice. In actuality, most fast fashion garments are discarded after only seven or eight wears.
The Results Of Refashion
The result: Immense waste pollution. The fashion industry is responsible for an estimated 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the textile industry is responsible for 24% of insecticide use and 11% of pesticide use. Perhaps the most alarming fast fashion statistic of all: the apparel industry’s climate impact is expected to increase 49% by 2030, meaning that fashion alone will emit 4.9 metric gigatons of CO2. That is equal to today’s TOTAL annual US greenhouse gas emissions globally.
How Does Synthetic Fabric Effect The Environment?
Did you know that when you wash poorly made synthetic fabrics, they shed countless tiny pieces of plastic? Any garment made from synthetic fabrics (aka petroleum-based) will shed millions over its lifetime. Multiply that number by the billions and billions of polyester garments hanging in closets all across the globe, and you’ll begin to understand how the fashion industry is responsible for over a third of all microplastics in the ocean. In a study of over 150 tap water samples from around the globe, 83% of them were found to contain plastic particles.
Over half of the fabrics used by fast-fashion retailers are derived from petrochemicals, the same stuff used to make everything from plant fertilizer to car parts and barbie dolls.
Each year, nearly 70 million barrels of crude oil are used to make the most common clothing fiber in the world: polyester. When tossed in a landfill, it takes polyester over 200 years to decompose. That means, that shirt you bought at Forever 21 the other day will outlive your great-great-great-great-great-great grandkids!
Speaking of kids, in order to produce clothing rapidly and inexpensively, the fashion industry has procured cheap labor in 3rd world countries around the globe. Exploiting the poor and in many cases, impoverished children has unfortunately become the norm not the exception in the fashion world. It’s important to check the business practices of the stores you frequent and their suppliers. NOT shopping in the stores that get materials by evil means will go a long way in making them STOP.
HOW THE RESALE INDUSTRY IS HELPING THE ENVIRONMENT
This is such a bummer blog! But we DO have some GREAT NEWS! The RESALE Industry prevents all of the above! When you are part of the Recycle, Reuse and Reduce MOVEMENT, you are not only saving money or making money buying and selling beautiful clothing that was well made ETHICALLY by quality designers with well made fabrics… you are are also quite literally saving the planet and sending FAST FASHION a BOLD new message. GO AWAY!
It’s time to STOP the Stigma around RESALE! Buy beautiful things, SELL beautiful things, SAVE them from the garbage and stop buying fast fashion which ends up in landfills so fast it will make your head spin and the globe STOP spinning!
GET MAD, GET ACTIVE and GET ON the Resale TRAIN! Passion about the dire effects of fast fashion and the untold positives that RESALE offers is truly a movement. Share your passion and help us stop the insanity of FAST FASHION before it stops us FIRST. Our earth, our children, and our great great great great great great children DESERVE BETTER!
To learn more and to find out how you can become part of the movement to build up resale and knock down fast fashion while making money, go to our website.