How to stop fast fashion

What is Fast fashion?

Fast fashion is a term used by retailers such as Adidas, BooHoo and H&M, to describe clothes or trends that are quickly in and out of style.
The idea behind fast fashion, is for retailers to sell as many clothes as possible, as quickly as possible.
The need for clothes to be produced quickly, is so great that retailers are often seen 'stealing' clothes ideas from other brands and making them their own.


Why is Fast fashion bad?

Retailers often use cheap labour, which normally comes in the form of sweatshops. People who have to work in sweatshops, are often made to work ridiculously long hours for ridiculously small amount of money. They often have no rights in the workplace such as maternity leave or allocated breaks.

The products are often poorly made, which means we end up throwing them away in half the time! I’m sure we have all multiple purchases, which resulted in the tops or pairs of jeans we brought to last 2 or 3 weeks. The seams come apart or they have shrunk after 3 washes, and they no longer have a use. As a result of this, 3/4 of the waste we produce is textile waste!
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How can I stop Fast fashion?

Follow the 7 R’s

There are 7 R’s you should implement into your lifestyle.The 7 R’s stand for Re-think, Refuse, Reduce, Repurpose, Re-use, Recycle and Rot. They mean as follows;

Re-think encourages you to look at your lifestyle and see how and what you change, to make it more eco- friendly.

Refuse means exactly that. If your offered something and you don’t need it then say ‘No thank you’.

Reduce wants to look at what you have but don’t need and encourages you to change that. This can be done by donating these products to others.

Repurpose encourages you to look at what you no longer need or use and see what other uses you could have for them. A leftover jar doesn’t need to be thrown away.Wash it out and use it to store leftovers in or use as a drinks glass.

Re-use means looking for things that you are going to use once or to take things that you could re-use from someone else. For example, buying a reusable water bottle the buying a single use bottle.

Recycle. This ‘R’ wants to use put the things you definitely can put to any use, into recycling so it can be made into something else.

Finally we have Rot. It is encouraging you to compost what you can and to choose compostable products. For example, buying clothes that 100% cotton because these can be composted.

Buy and sell your clothes second hand

There are many places you can go and get clothes.Charity shops are everywhere now days, I would say, that there is at least one on every high street. Most charity shops are over run with clothes donations! Most of the clothes are in good condition and have minimal stains and marks on them.

Give and take clothes from friends and family member.

This is something we as a family quite often do. I will go through my wardrobe bag up everything I don’t need or wear anymore and take it to my mum. She takes what she wants from the bag and gives it back to me and I then take it back home and give the bag to my friends. When its done its rounds everything left gets put on Facebook. They also do the same with me. I recently got given a massive bag of clothes from Mikes mum and I got some really nice bits from it, including some lovely summer dresses.

Repair old clothes

If your jeans or your top has a hole in it, instead of throwing it away stitch it up. There are so many brilliant videos on YouTube that shop you how to sew some gorgeous things in clothes so easily! This way you have double the wear from your clothing.