Literature Review
Fast fashion refers to the expensive clothing and accessories that mass-market retailers produce quickly to close a market gap and respond to their needs. Fashion conforms to the latest trends, and as soon as the trend disappears, the fashion evolves into another new trend (Garcia-Torres et al., 2017). Fast fashion is designed to attract customers quickly, thus making them sell fast, and designers move on to the following fashion. The design used to develop fast fashion and their marketing is the primary factor that makes them popular and sells faster than other fashions. The fashion acquires its name from the nature of its products, customers, and manufacturing methods. They are manufactured fast, and the customer decides to purchase them fast (Bockholdt et al., 2020). The accessories and clothes are usually used quickly; clothes are only worn once then thrown away. As soon as fast fashion gets into the shelves of popular selling spots, customers quickly buy them for fear of lagging fashion-wise. However, fast fashion is becoming a cause for alarm on the environment due to its inappropriate disposal, leading to global warming.
Global warming refers to the temperature increase in the atmosphere caused by greenhouse gases and the excessive emission of carbon dioxide and other gas pollutants from the earth’s surface. Continued global warming is predicted to cause extreme weather conditions and cause a change in the standard weather patterns due to the increased temperature (Xu et al., 2018). The more the temperature increases, the more heatwaves, droughts, and floods will also increase their frequency and severity. Severe cases of such weather conditions will also bring catastrophic effects to society and lead to the loss of property and life in floods and droughts (Bick et al., 2018). Fast fashion contributes to this change in weather conditions due to its improper disposal, leading to the release of emissions to the atmosphere, thus causing global warming.
Both the production and disposal of fast fashion contribute to many landfills and careless throwing of such clothes and accessories after being used. Their production depends on fabric dyes and chemicals missed in different formulas to develop the proper cloth or accessory. These dyes and chemicals are discarded into the water after they have been used up, thus contaminating water bodies and leading to the death of marine life (Xu et al., 2018). Other chemicals emit poisonous gases into the atmosphere leading to an increase in the temperature. Previous studies have established that fast fashion contributes 10% CO2 of the total carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Apart from its emissions, fast fashion production uses more water through its production stages, which sometimes goes to waste or is discarded back into oceans and rivers (Niinimäki et al., 2020). Their carbon emission percentage is more than that of several other pollutants combined, making the industry pose more threat to the atmosphere than recognized.
Theme One: Fast Fashion and Business
Fast fashion has positively affected businesses as it creates an illusion that their clothes are fashionable and can get them at more affordable prices. In the business world, the supply chain is responsible for ensuring that products are produced within the required period to reach the consumers at the expected time (Garcia-Torres et al., 2017). For the fast fashion industry, the supply chain department must work tirelessly to ensure that the changing trends do not affect their everyday operations. Due to the frequent manufacture of fast fashion, the customers visit their stores more times than they would if it was any other fashion. Their frequent visits to shops and stores lead these customers to other products apart from fast fashion, thus increasing sales for a particular store (Buzzo & Abreu, 2018). Using online platforms to sell fast fashion also encourages customers to buy other items that will accessorize well with their fast fashions.
Theme Two: Advantages and Disadvantages of Fast Fashion
Advantages. Fast fashion brings more customers to a business, thus making it boom and reap more profits within a short time. When the stock in a store is depleted, the retailer does not bring more similar fashion but introduces a new trend, thus making the business prosper since the supply for new trends never ends (Brewer, 2019). The fast depletion of fast fashion makes customers buy what is on the market since they know they will not find the same thing next. Due to fast fashion, customers can now get the clothing and accessories they want when they need them. The fact that they are affordable and stylish makes fast fashion more popular for those people who have a high sense of style and fashion (Bick et al., 2018). The availability of fast fashion makes it easy for many people to access them and look trendy. It has democratized fashion by allowing the wealthy and the poor to look the same despite costing differently.
Disadvantages. Fast fashion makes people develop a careless attitude with their clothes and belonging since they know they will get them quickly and at affordable prices. When a customer keeps buying cheap fast-fashion items for a long time, they will eventually spend more since they keep buying the items and throwing them away (Bockholdt et al., 2020). Critics have found out that the fast fashion business is affecting the planet due to its emission of gases to the atmosphere and misuse of water for the frequent production of fast fashion (Niinimäki et al., 2020). The use of cheap materials in fast fashion production is a rip-off for customers even if they end up with the best fashions since it will not serve them for long. Lately, some designers have claimed that fast fashion infringes on intellectual property rights by illegally duplicating their designs and distributing them as their own.
Theme Three: Fast Fashion and The Working Conditions for Employees
The fast-fashion world employs workers from different walks of life to manage their productions and operations to ensure the fast fashion reaches the target. Research has found that the industry does not give its employees the best working conditions, yet they help in the mass production of fast fashion that sells very fast and gives high returns (Brewer, 2019). Apart from the workers getting little pay, they also work in dangerous conditions with harmful products that are not good for their health (Zamani et al., 2017). The mistreatment of workers and their terrible working conditions also examine the ethical issues that affect the fast-fashion world. Furthermore, the management tasks these workers with manufacturing different products quickly to meet the market demand, and they end up taking shortcuts to get all the orders delivered in time.
Hypothesis
The fast fashion industry is a threat to the environment since it causes global warming by emissions of unwanted gases into the atmosphere.
Research Questions
Research question 1: How does fast fashion contribute to global warming?
Research question 2: How efficient are fashion production methods
Research Objectives
Objective 1: To Determine the Contributions of Fast Fashion to Global Warming
Fast fashion contributes to global warming by increasing the amounts of unwanted gases in the atmosphere, thus increasing the temperatures. As discussed earlier, fast fashion is responsible for 10% of the gaseous emissions that bring problems to the environment and increase global warming.
Objective 2: To Identify the Efficiency of Fast Fashion Production Process
The production of fast fashion clothes and accessories utilizes various chemicals to produce various products. The products are needed in high volumes to satisfy the demands in the markets and fill other gaps created by other outgoing fashions (Bick et al., 2018). The production process utilizes low-quality materials to develop a trendy result that will sell fast n the market. The industry’s products have become successful because they offer instant gratification, especially to customers. The young people are the most buyers of such fashion, thus making the fast fashion business more successful since it has a higher percentage of customers.
Objective 3: To Investigate the Solutions to Fast Fashion
Fast fashion is not all that good to both the consumers and the environment, and there are various ways to save the environment and the clients from further suffering. Shopping from reputable outlets will guarantee one of the qualities of products, and they will use those products for a long time without going back to buy others (Bockholdt et al., 2020). Consumers will buy less but buy high-quality and long-lasting fashion. One can also donate gently used clothes to help save the environment from landfills and littering clothes that have not been used for long. Doing all these will make the sales of the fast fashion industry drop because of the reduction in customers. They may eventually be discouraged and leave the business altogether (Zamani et al., 2017). No more fast fashion business will mean a better and safer environment that is a step closer to reducing global warming.
Reference List
Bick, R., Halsey, E., & Ekenga, C. (2018). The global environmental injustice of fast fashion. Environmental Health, 17(1). Web.
Bockholdt, K., Kemper, J., & Brettel, M. (2020). Private label shoppers between fast fashion trends and status symbolism – A customer characteristics investigation. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 52, 101883. Web.
Brewer, M. (2019). Slow Fashion in a Fast Fashion World: Promoting Sustainability and Responsibility. Laws, 8(4), 24. Web.
Buzzo, A., & Abreu, M. (2018). Fast Fashion, Fashion Brands & Sustainable Consumption. Textile Science and Clothing Technology, 1-17. Web.
Garcia-Torres, S., Rey-Garcia, M., & Albareda-Vivo, L. (2017). Effective Disclosure in the Fast-Fashion Industry: from Sustainability Reporting to Action. Sustainability, 9(12), 2256. Web.
Niinimäki, K., Peters, G., Dahlbo, H., Perry, P., Rissanen, T., & Gwilt, A. (2020). The environmental price of fast fashion. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 1(4), 189-200. Web.
Xu, Y., Ramanathan, V., & Victor, D. (2018). Global warming will happen faster than we think. Nature, 564(7734), 30-32. Web.
Zamani, B., Sandin, G., & Peters, G. (2017). Life cycle assessment of clothing libraries: can collaborative consumption reduce the environmental impact of fast fashion? Journal of Cleaner Production, 162, 1368-1375. Web.