Funding for To The Contrary provided by: This week on To The Contrary: This is not a problem that consumers created, but I do think the consumer has power that perhaps many are unaware of.

What is accessible to you might be a, quote unquote, fast fashion item but it doesn't have to be fast fashion in use if you take really good care of it.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to To The Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from varied perspectives.

Fast fashion has revolutionized the clothing industry by making trendy, lo cost garments widely available.

But it's also sparked growing controversy.

Critics argue the industry's emphasis on speed and volume contributes to environmental harm and exploitative labor practices.

As consumer awareness rises, the debate over fast fashion's true cost is gaining momentum on both social and political fronts.

With us to discuss this is Allyson Chiu, climate solutions reporter for The Washington Post, and Paula Carbone, a professo at the University of California.

Welcome, ladies.

So, Professor Carbone why don't you start and explain in a little more depth to people in the audience, what fast fashion is?

Fast fashion is usually defined as being able to create a lot of new fashions in a very, very short amount of time that are poorly made, meant to be used once or twice and then discarded.

And there has been a little bit of a push to standardize the definition and talk about, well, this many new items in a day or a week.

But right now that's the general working definition, I believe.

Allyson, your thoughts?

What does it mean?

How is it different from prior generations of fashion?

Yeah, I think, Professor Carbone really touched on the the main point there, which is when it comes to fast fashion, the first thing that comes to mind is always volume and the amount of styles that are coming out.

And so I think one thin that experts have always told me is that, you know, we're seeing really high turnover, a lot of, you know, more trendy pieces, and all of that really, you know, just contributes to sort of this incredible volume of clothing that we see these days.

And what has happened to clothing that doesn't sell if everything's being made in great volumes and some of them are going to turn out to be clunkers as far as the market is concerned, what do the companies do with these clothes?

I imagine that they're discarded and generally in the trash.

Some might be collected to recycle, but it's been found that a lot of the fashions that are collected for recycling actually are never recycled.

So this just adds to the problem.

If you're making hundreds or thousands of garments at a time, and one line just doesn't sell very well, what—does it end up in garbage cans?

Does it end up in the ocean?

Does it end up— Where does it end up?

Where do people put— put these things that are of no use?

When there's so much volum that is not just, you know, left in stores bu people are buying these things.

So, you know, we often see, we have some— some consumer research dat showing that people are buying new clothes far more frequently than they probably need.

And so when that happens, you know, you get the annual spring cleaning purge.

And oftentimes people will bring that to, you know, donation places.

And, you know, we know that some of those clothes do end up back in circulation, whether that's, you know, through like stores run by donation facilities.

But a lot of times people are donating clothing that is either stained or ripped or just really poor quality, that is not eligible for resale.

And as Professor Carbone just mentioned, you know, those items are then— the fate of those have become a little bit more murky, basically, so it can go in several directions.

You can sometimes find clothing ends up in the rag trade, which is, you know, sort of a devalue version of what it used to be, or it potentially gets shipped overseas to other countries.

And then at the end of all of it, maybe a decent chunk of it ends up in the trash.

In 2018, the EPA found that landfills received 11.3 million tons of textiles, which is more than 7% of its total municipal solid waste.

So that's a lot.

And oftentimes there's not an exact sort of accountin of what makes up those textiles.

But from what we know, again, about the volume of clothing that is being produced and purchased, that clothing does make u a significant portion of that.

Now, is it only being produced in the United States or— I had, I guess, a fantasy of that a lot of this was being produced in Asia and places where you could get stuff out much more quickly than in the US.

I think that quite a bit of it is produced outside of the U.S as well as in the US.

Shein is certainly one of the big actors; Uniqlo and Zara, these are three of the really big actors, along with countless others who do this.

And Shein produces countless new fashions daily.

So it's just a huge machine that has many, many different parts to keep this cycle going.

But both of you, isn't saving— Aren't the producers of this clothing going to realize after a while, hey, some of these ideas aren' selling so well with the public.

Maybe we should wait and try out a line for a week and see how it sells before you make a huge batch.

Is anything like that likely to happen?

As you sort of alluded to, the ways that these companies behave are largely attached to what consumers are interested in.

So this is really a space where consumers can really make a difference in term of what they signal to brands.

And so, you know, that can come from how much you buy of something.

And the more people buy, right, the more that signals to brands that there is a demand for more clothing.

And so I, you know when it comes to specific lines, I can't say that I have a lot of insight into, you know, what is going on behind the scenes with brands and their decisio making around what to produce.

But, you know, we do know from market research that what consumers are purchasing really does influence how these brands reac and in turn, what they produce.

Now, what about regulations, Professor Carbone?

What—do local authorities have more control over better garments, not fast fashion and more control to get the owners to dispose in a way that doesn't harm the environment, the clothes that they just make way too many copies of?

Well, that would be ideal.

But, from my understanding, that hasn't really happened.

There has been some policy voted into law.

In California, there's the Garment Workers Act, which guarantees a living wage to garment workers.

And France, I believe, just passed legislation about limiting advertising, placing, sort of, extra price to fashions produced this way to give that extra money to help the environment that has been damaged.

And that price will go up by 2030, apparently.

And I think those are definitely steps in the right direction.

But, you know, right now we have so many harms.

If you just start a the beginning with the brands, designers are able to copy a fashion on Instagram that a celebrity might be wearing and that product can be ready in a day—a new design.

And so they're stealing the designs from the original designer.

And, you know, there's just harm kind of at every level of this chain.

So while those policies are going to help, I think what Allyson said about the consumer, and I don't want to put the weight on the consumer because this is not a problem that consumers created.

And I'm a consumer, we're all consumers.

But I do think the consumer has power that perhaps many are unaware of.

So how do you think consumers, professor, how do you think consumers should be using that power to signal to producers, hey, this line is just not attractive.

Throw it out, get rid of it, get another one.

That's a good question.

And I would say it goes even beyond not liking the fashion.

I think it really goes to becoming educated, which more and more consumers are becoming educated.

There's more media on this now.

It's more on all the social network.

But as I said, you know I don't want to blame consumers because they're being so manipulated by marketing, by influencers.

Just by being a teenager and not wanting to be on the out of the in crowd, so to speak.

Its just a very complicated psychological issue that people can, in fact, become addicted to shopping because it gives people a sense of euphoria.

And they want to repeat that.

And so, you know, as a professor, I think education is very important.

But also to join some of these movements to reuse and repair.

I know that some manufacturers who are sustainable, they give repair tags now with their clothing.

There's a movement to repair visibly so that you can kind of wear it as a badge of honor.

Oh, I had a hole here, but, so I'm going to make a design and cover it and Im sustainable So I think that, you know, may start to get more traction.

We are seeing that, especially among younger shoppers, that there is a really keen interest in being a more conscious consumer.

And that starts with both you know, how much you're buying and also how you're, as Professor Carbone mentioned, you know, how you're taking care of your clothes and really thinking, you know, end to end holistically about what am I doing at the moment that I might purchase something, whether it's new, whether it's secondhand.

And then what am I going to do with it over the course of its lifespan with me?

And then what happens at its end of life?

And one thing that I have heard time and time again from sustainable fashion experts is that just because you know, you're personally done with something doesn't mean that that is the end of the life for that garment, right?

Like it can go on to somebody else.

It can become something else.

And I think a lot of consumers are now thinking through that whole entire lifespan of a product versus perhaps in the past it might have been, you know, you're in the shop and you see something cute that you like and you're like, well, yeah, I'll buy that.

And maybe I'll wear it, maybe I won't.

And I think thats when you sort of end up with, you know, dozens of things that you're seeing in your closet, you know, afte six months and being like, well maybe I never wore it.

Maybe I only wore it once, an now I'm going to get rid of it.

And so I think, you know, when, when, when I've talked to people about this, one of the— the biggest pieces of advice is that, you know, when were thinking about sustainability, there is always sort of the messaging that, well, to be sustainable, you know, we have to consum less, which is absolutely true.

But when it comes to something like clothing you know, people are never going to really be able to stop buying clothing.

Right?

And so it just— because we know that, then it becomes sort of a more conscious approach to doing that.

And as I mentioned, right, it really starts with buying less and buying better.

And, you know, because the fashion landscap is so complicated when it comes to accessibility to brands that might be, you know, doing things that are considered more sustainable, whether that's for the environment or for workers, sometime that can come at a price premium and as we've seen, through our research, as much as people want to be sustainable, cost is still a really, really major factor in a lot of people's decision making.

It's not always about, the brand that you buy from to be sustainable.

Right?

So, you know, I have a t shirt from a fast fashion brand that I have had since my freshman year of college, and I've— I continue to wear it.

Its still, you know, i my regular rotation of clothing.

And so just because it's a fast fashion item doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, it is, you know, sort of a huge part of the problem, right?

It's like how you take care of it.

There, you know, there was a small hole that appeared in it like several years ago.

And I just sort of, you know, mended it.

Going from there and then thinking about, well, what is sort of accessible to you.

And, you know, not, I think, being so hard on yourself a a consumer that when sometimes what is accessible t you might be a, quote unquote, fast fashion ite but it doesn't have to be fast fashion in use if you take really good care of it and, you know, really extend the lifespan of that product as long as you can.

Well, what about new regulations?

You know, saying that even fast fashion is covered by these regulations and maybe setting up special regulations for fast fashion, saying things like, because it's going to last not as long as a fine suit or an expensive something you bought from a fancy shop.

Please understand it will be gone in X months, from when you purchased it.

And buy carefully.

How about something like that?

Policy will be one lever in this space for sure.

I think the challeng that we're seeing with that is the policies are very piecemeal at this point.

And in some cases, you know, the efforts have been delayed.

You know, we're seeing I think McKinsey had a report recently on sort of the state of the fashion industry.

And they found that you know, two thirds of brands are behind on their 2030 decarbonization goals.

In sort of the absence of having really comprehensive policies or regulations, you know, unfortunately, it does oftentimes tend to fall on the consumer to, as Professor Carbone talked about, to educate themselves and to make changes on their end that can sort of help move things toward a more sustainable future.

What if regulators in various countries, various parts of the globe, were to pressure or even pass laws forcing designers and producers of fast fashion to make their clothes more, you know, long lasting?

Would that— do you think that woul get people to buy more carefully and not think to themselves, oh, well, I'll wear this twice and throw it out?

Or would it not influence purchasing patterns at all?

I just, I think it's really complicated.

And when there's so much profit involved— You know, the United States passed legislation that we weren't going to import textiles from China because they had so many different types of fibers in the that they couldn't be recycled.

Well, China started sending them to, I believe, Thailand and then to the US.

So it's just incredibly complicated how quickly people can circumvent policy.

And along with that, there's greenwashing that right now there's not a lot of accountability for, you know, if what people are saying is true is really true.

So that's another issue that even with strong policy, that could be something really difficult to regulate.

How would local authorities be able to enforce— let's say they find out that a brand new line of t shirts isnt—with normal wear and tear, it's going to last three months.

Could they require producers to put that on the label?

I don't think it would hurt.

I think that actually labeling was part of the French legislation.

Do you know about that, Allyson?

I'm not sure about that.

You're nodding.

Yeah.

My understandin of the French legislation and, you know, please like fact check me on this.

But as you mentioned, I think it did have a lot to do with advertising and claims— kind of similar to you know, the way that our FTC here has really cracked down on greenwashing more broadly, you know, beyond just clothing.

But I would have to read a little more closely on the French legislation.

I do remember tha I believe the EU had their own sustainabilit policy package, at some point.

But I believe that that was delayed.

So I don't know if it's worth it for us to talk about that right now.

But there was a intention of having brands, you know do some more sort of thorough, I believe, sustainability reporting.

Again, in service of transparency and to combat greenwashing.

But first of all, explain to the audience, if you don't mind, what exactly is greenwashing?

I have an idea.

I've never seen a definition of it but— that producers try to make it look more environmentally friendly than it actually is.

But if you could expand on that a bit, that would be helpful.

Greenwashing is basically a term used to describe efforts by companies to, you know, promote sustainability.

But oftentimes they are efforts that, at least on the surface, see like they might be sustainable.

But when you really dig into it, you realize that it is either, you know, not as rosy as it's being presented or in some more severe cases, you know, even more duplicitous than that and could be covering up, you know, very unsustainable practices, actually.

It's really important to dive into those claims, really see if brands are following through on the promises that they're making and to a lot of brands credit, you know, they have upped their transparency quite a bit.

So, major fashion houses are now putting out, you know, sustainability reports.

They're using third party certifications on their products.

They're working with third parties to assess their sustainability and putting all that data out there for the consumer.

What can producers do to warn purchasers, look, that this product is everything we said it is.

It is—we're not greenwashing you.

Were telling you the truth, here are some sites, and if you want more information, please follow those links and and read it for yourself.

What— What's keeping producer from doing something like that?

The sustainability experts that I've spoken to would say that it's because they don't have the dat and they don't have the actions to back up those claims, right.

And so they won't be as transparent, if they're not actuall following through on the claims that they're making.

And so that's why you really do want to look for companies that are putting everything ou there for the consumer to see, That can oftentimes be a pretty clear signal that they are, you know, actively trying to address sustainability.

And you can see it for yourself, basically.

And I think for—going back to the consumer, I think it can be overwhelming because most consumers want to do the right thing.

And yet there's conflicting information online.

And if consumers are looking for information, check more than one spot.

Look for confirming information in another spot.

It does take a little time, but it can really give you the peace of mind that you know you're working towards sustainability in whatever way you can.

And that's important.

You know, like you said, more has to happen.

The producers have to get involved.

But you have to start somewhere.

All right.

Well, thank you both for your enlightening contributions to this topic.

And thank you for covering it.

Thank you for being aware of it.

And thank you for spreading the word.

That's it for this edition of To The Contrary.

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Reach out to us @tothecontrary and visit our website, the address on the screen and whether you agree or think to the contrary, see you next time.

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