For decades, there has been a major problem on the planet, which seems to just never go away. The problem is pollution. When thinking of pollution, most people resort to the thoughts of bottles, cans, plastic bags, and just basic things we see on a daily basis either on the roads or in landfills. What most people are unaware of is the pollution caused by fashion. Yes, I said fashion.
Clothes and material things that we use and wear are the number two top pollutants of this planet. In the past few years, fashion has been booming, but it’s mostly fast fashion. People keep buying clothes and throwing them away extremely quickly. This is causing a build-up of waste in landfills and most clothes don’t disintegrate quickly. Even though we are throwing away a lot of clothes, that isn’t even the biggest problem. The problem is how we all ignore the process of how they are making the clothes and the amount of shipments which are being made for clothes every day around the world. According to alternet.org, 68% of textile factories put more than five million people in health dangers in every area the factories are in. Many factories have dumped their chemicals in rivers, giving people access to bad water containing mercury, led, arsenic and many other toxins. Just like the chemicals being used to dye our clothes, there are so many other steps to making clothes for the fashion world. Other examples include shipping and the amount of fuel being used every day, the thousands of gallons of water needed to create fabrics and clothes, and the constant in-and-out styles sold by retailers. In the United States, as consumers, we are unaware of how much damage this is doing to our world. We may be unaware of the negatives, but we always try to push the positives. In America, you can find clothes donation places anywhere, but are they really positive? We send a lot of our clothes out of the country for people who are in need. This is causing a problem though, because in the third world countries, retailers are losing business. Yes, we are helping them, but there is such an overabundance of shipped clothes, stores are going out of business, therefore creating more poverty in these countries. If it is not being donated, then it is being put into markets and being sold, according to whydev.org. So often, we think we are helping people in need, the clothes are actually being sold, and they are not free for the ones who truly need them.
The point I am trying to make here is to stay aware! Try and find more environmental ways to be involved with fashion and clothing. Give items that you don't want or no longer use to thrift stores, for other people to sell and use. Don’t throw away all the clothes you usually do- just re-purpose them! Trash to one person might be a treasure to someone else. Get involved with businesses who support going green or trying to have a somewhat better impact on the environment rather than stores which have no concern at all. We only have one earth, which is the one we are all living on right now, so try to treat it well.
