عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Fashion

Ultra-fast Fashion Charms Young Despite Damaging Environment

Britain's Boohoo, China's SHEIN and Hong Kong's Emmiol operate the same internet-based business model -- produce items and collections at breakneck speed and rock-bottom prices Jade Gao AFP/File
Britain's Boohoo, China's SHEIN and Hong Kong's Emmiol operate the same internet-based business model -- produce items and collections at breakneck speed and rock-bottom prices Jade Gao AFP/File
TT
TT

Ultra-fast Fashion Charms Young Despite Damaging Environment

Britain's Boohoo, China's SHEIN and Hong Kong's Emmiol operate the same internet-based business model -- produce items and collections at breakneck speed and rock-bottom prices Jade Gao AFP/File
Britain's Boohoo, China's SHEIN and Hong Kong's Emmiol operate the same internet-based business model -- produce items and collections at breakneck speed and rock-bottom prices Jade Gao AFP/File

So-called "ultra-fast fashion" has won legions of young trend-setting fans who snap up relatively cheap clothes online amid surging inflation, but the booming genre masks darker environmental problems.

Britain's Boohoo, China's SHEIN and Hong Kong's Emmiol operate the same internet-based business model -- produce items and collections at breakneck speed and rock-bottom prices.

They are giving intense competition to more well-known "fast fashion" chains with physical stores, like Sweden's H&M and Spain's Zara, AFP reported.

Young people under the age of 25 -- widely known as Generation Z -- love placing multiple orders for ultra-fast fashion, which then arrive in the post.

Greenpeace has, however, slammed the "throwaway clothing" phenomenon as grossly wasteful, arguing it takes 2,700 litres of water to make one T-shirt that is swiftly binned.

"Many of these cheap clothes end up... on huge dump sites, burnt on open fires, along riverbeds and washed out into the sea, with severe consequences for people and the planet," the green pressure group says.

Photographs of mountains of shoddy clothing, returned to the vendor or dumped soon after purchase, have gone viral, highlighting the vast amount of waste.

Demand for low-price garments has nevertheless soared due to decades-high inflation, while many Covid-hit high-street shops with big overhead costs struggle to compete.

And it is wildly popular: SHEIN generated $16 billion in global sales last year, Bloomberg says.

Customers purchase T-shirts for £4.0 ($4.80), while bikinis and dresses sell for as little as £8.0 apiece.

For French high-school student Lola, 18, who lives in the city of Nancy, SHEIN shopping has become a cheap hobby.

The brand simply allows her to follow the latest trends "without spending an astronomical amount", she told AFP, oblivious to the environmental cost.

Lola normally places two to three orders per month on SHEIN with an average combined value of 70 euros ($71) for about 10 items.

Ultra-fast fashion's young target demographic -- like Lola -- simply have less cash to spend.

Those consumers therefore "seek quantity rather than quality" of clothing, according to economics professor Valerie Guillard at Paris-Dauphine University.

SHEIN, which was founded in late 2008, now sells across the world helped by its massive presence on social media networks.

Customers post so-called "haul" videos online -- where they unwrap SHEIN packages, try on clothes and review them.

That has boosted its popularity on TikTok, which is favored by teenagers and young adults, while there are also such videos on Instagram and YouTube.

On TikTok alone, there are 34.4 billion mentions of the hashtag #SHEIN and six billion for #SHEINhaul.

Brands extends their reach via low-cost partnerships with a large number of people on social media, to build trust and increase sales.

Irish social-media influencer Marleen Gallagher, 45, who works with SHEIN and other firms, praised them for offering broader size ranges than regular stores.

"They are unrivalled when it come to choices for plus-size women," she told AFP.

Yet the industry has a reputation for devouring valuable resources and damaging the environment.

Ultra-fast fashion companies have also been plagued by scandals over allegedly poor working conditions in their factories.

Swiss-based NGO Public Eye discovered in November 2022 that employees in some SHEIN factories worked up to 75 hours per week, in contravention of Chinese labour laws.

Britain's Boohoo also faced criticism following media reports that its suppliers were underpaying workers in Pakistan.

Added to the picture, the French Agency for Ecological Transition estimates that fast fashion accounts for a staggering two percent of global greenhouse emissions per year.

That is as much as air transport and maritime traffic combined.

The genre has meanwhile attracted the anger of climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.

"The fashion industry is a huge contributor to the climate and ecological emergency, not to mention its impact on the countless workers and communities who are being exploited around the world in order for some to enjoy fast fashion that many treat as disposables," Thunberg wrote last year, urging change.

Most Viewed

 
 
Fashion

As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana are Finding a Solution

Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
TT
TT

As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana are Finding a Solution

Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana’s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls selling used and low-quality apparel imported from the West.
At the other end of the street, an upcycled fashion and thrifting festival unfolds with glamour and glitz, The Associated Press reported. Models parade along a makeshift runway in outfits that designers created out of discarded materials from the Kantamanto market, ranging from floral blouses and denim jeans to leather bags, caps and socks.
The festival is called Obroni Wawu October, using a phrase that in the local Akan language means “dead white man’s clothes.” Organizers see the event as a small way to disrupt a destructive cycle that has made Western overconsumption into an environmental problem in Africa, where some of the worn-out clothes end up in waterways and garbage dumps.
“Instead of allowing (textile waste) to choke our gutters or beaches or landfills, I decided to use it to create something ... for us to use again,” said Richard Asante Palmer, one of the designers at the annual festival organized by the Or Foundation, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of environmental justice and fashion development.
Ghana is one of Africa's leading importers of used clothing. It also ships some of what it gets from the United Kingdom, Canada, China and elsewhere to other West African nations, the United States and the UK, according to the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association.
Some of the imported clothes arrive in such poor shape, however, that vendors dispose of them to make room for the next shipments. On average, 40% of the millions of garments exported weekly to Ghana end up as waste, according to Neesha-Ann Longdon, the business manager for the Or Foundation’s executive director.
The clothing dealers association, in a report published earlier this year on the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the nation’s secondhand clothing trade, cited a much lower estimate, saying only 5% of the items that reach Ghana in bulk are thrown out because they cannot be sold or reused.
In many African countries, citizens typically buy preowned clothes — as well as used cars, phones and other necessities — because they cost less than new ones. Secondhand shopping also gives them a chance to score designer goods that most people in the region can only dream of.
But neither Ghana's fast-growing population of 34 million people nor its overtaxed infrastructure is equipped to absorb the amount of cast-off attire entering the country. Mounds of textile waste litter beaches across the capital, Accra, and the lagoon which serves as the main outlet through which the city’s major drainage channels empty into the Gulf of Guinea.
“Fast fashion has taken over as the dominant mode of production, which is characterized here as higher volumes of lower-quality goods,” Longdon said.
Jonathan Abbey, a fisherman in the area, said his nets often capture textile waste from the sea. Unsold used clothes “aren’t even burned but are thrown into the Korle Lagoon, which then goes into the sea,” Abbey said.
The ease of online shopping has sped up this waste cycle, according to Andrew Brooks, a King’s College London researcher and the author of “Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes.”
In countries like the UK, unwanted purchases often end up as charity donations, but clothes are sometimes stolen from street donation bins and exported to places where the consumer demand is perceived to be higher, Brooks said. Authorities rarely investigate such theft because the clothes are "seen as low-value items,” he said.
Donors, meanwhile, think their castoffs are “going to be recycled rather than reused, or given away rather than sold, or sold in the UK rather than exported overseas,” Brooks said.
The volume of secondhand clothing sent to Africa has led to complaints of the continent being used as a dumping ground. In 2018, Rwanda raised tariffs on such imports in defiance of US pressure, citing concerns the West's refuse undermined efforts to strengthen the domestic textile industry. Last year, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he would ban imports of clothing “from dead people.”
Trade restrictions might not go far in either reducing textile pollution or encouraging clothing production in Africa, where profits are low and incentives for designers are few, experts say.
In the absence of adequate measures to stop the pollution, organizations like the Or Foundation are trying to make a difference by rallying young people and fashion creators to find a good use for scrapped materials.
Ghana's beaches had hardly any discarded clothes on them before the country's waste management problems worsened in recent years, foundation co-founder Allison Bartella said.
“Fast forward to today, 2024, there are mountains of textile waste on the beaches,” she said.