by Ten Bottemiller

As we prepare for another round of seasonal styles, it’s important to remember the negative effects that fast fashion have on the environment. Bellbrook sophomore with a passion for clothing and the fashion industry, Nora Scarbro, wants to remind students that fashion isn’t just about looks, and that wearing only the trendiest items can have serious consequences on the earth.

Fast fashion is the mass production of trending clothing to take advantage of those trends and the initial high demand.

“I think fast fashion is a really controversial topic for a lot of reasons,” Scarbro said. “Fast fashion comes from people not being able to afford certain clothes, but it also comes from people wanting to stay with trends but not having the resources to invest in those trends long-term.”

Scarbro used Shein as an example of a widely known fast fashion brand. “Shein focuses heavily on specific trends and gets rid of them immediately, as soon as they go out of style,” she said. “A lot of those clothes go to landfills, which is obviously not good for the environment. Both the production and the quick dumping of clothes when they go out of style are super harmful to the planet.” 

One of the largest fast fashion landfills in the world is in Atacama Desert in Chile. According to Waste360, more than 66,000 tons of used clothes flood the area as of June this year and the damage is even visible from space due to high-tech satellites. 

“With companies like Shein,” Scarbro said, “it’s not just the fact that they get rid of things fast and unethically, it’s also that they have children working to make their stuff. The child labor is the main reason why people boycott places like Shein.”

While Shein denies they use forced labor, there was congressional investigation of the company ahead of its recent IPO bid.

Scarbro believes there are ways to fix the fast fashion issue, but they’re not always ideal for everyone.

Thrifting and investing in better, more high quality brands are two ways to stop contributing to the problem. “It’s really hard though,” she said. “With thrifting, it comes down to the fact that people actually need those clothes. Thrifting ups the price of thrifted clothes, which then makes it so that people who actually need those clothes will turn to brands like Shein that are arguably cheaper in the long run.”

“Investing in brands means that you’re investing in quality, long-lasting pieces that are really expensive,” Scarbro said, “And that is a very difficult thing to do. So the solution is not the solution, it’s kind of a loop.

It’s such an interesting thing to think about because just last year, there was this really cool sustainable Reformation dress that was hundreds of dollars and people were just buying that, buying that, buying that; because they thought it was an investment into a long-term trend, but it’s completely gone, nobody wears it now.”

Like all major brands and high quality clothes, rip-offs of this Reformation dress were mass-produced and sold at lower prices, contributing to fast fashion when the original intent was to help it. 

Scarbro acknowledged the struggle of not being able to invest in less harmful brands, not only because they’re expensive. “Shein is also one of the few brands that are really size inclusive,” she said. “They have a variety of sizes. Many brands that are considered high quality brands are not size inclusive in the slightest, meaning honestly a majority of people cannot buy them, whether it be general size or just the way the clothes fit body types.”

Although she urges society to help end fast fashion, Scarbro knows it isn’t possible for most people to invest in sustainable clothing. “It’s such a difficult thing to try and end,” she said, “Because that’d mean every single brand would have to be size inclusive, they couldn’t charge so much money for a single piece of decent quality clothing, and forced labor around the world would have to stop entirely. It doesn’t seem possible, but it also doesn’t hurt to try.”