Fast Fashion Is Hot Garbage | Climate Town

Whenever I need to look like the kind of guy who understands fashion,

I cram myself into a suit

that looks like it was made for some kind of European heroin addict,

and for the low price of thirty dollars,

you too can walk out of an H&M dressed like you're Slenderman's younger brother.

In fact, at prices like these,

it can be more expensive to clean your clothes than it is to throw

away your dirty clothes

and buy all new ones.

And I know that sounds like the kind of plan

that was invented by some sort of nine-year-old king,

but it's actually pretty close to reality

because the average garment in America is worn just seven times before it's thrown

away.

And if you're thinking, "Well, woooooof,

it's a good thing I donate my clothes to other people," that's not actually

happening.

Oh, you're donating your clothes,

but that basically just means

that your clothes take a little trip to the Salvation Army,

where they say "thank you for your service",

before ninety percent of all clothes donated to a thrift store get rejected

and sent straight to a landfill

or a textile waste mill.

With stores like H&M, Uniqlo, Zara, Guess,

and Gap selling low quality clothes at bargain basement prices,

Americans buy an average of 68 items of clothing every year,

which seems like a lot of clothes,

but it's not even all the clothes

because ten percent of clothing produced gets worn zero times,

because it never gets bought and it just goes straight into the garbage.

Not this specific garbage, obviously this is just a visual represent-- you know what,

you get it -- but the point is,

fast fashion is so big and wasteful that it produces more CO2 than France,

Germany, and the UK combined.

Fast fashion is devastating to the climate,

and it is a husky-sized human rights violation,

but it is so profitable

that it's projected to triple by 2050 unless we change something.

We are currently knocking on the door of a climate catastrophe,

and we need to be reducing our CO2 emissions instead of greatly increasing them,

and how we deal with fast fashion may determine

if we're able to avoid some of the worst parts of a climate disaster.

But unlike most of the systemic causes of climate change there's actually something you

can do about fast fashion,

maybe?

Hi, I'm Rollie Williams,

a sort of discount Burt Reynolds type

and a climate science

and policy grad student,

and this is a video about fast fashion.

Welcome to Climate Town.

Now, fashion wasn't always about buying five dollar dresses

or trying to look like a sexy haysack -- mission very much accomplished,

by the way.

Before the 1800s, people either made their own clothing bought it secondhand from "slop

shops" or went to their local tailors

or seamstresses.

In any case they wore the garments until they fell apart,

or they died at the ripe old age of 29, the way god intended.

So while ultra rich people like kings, queens,

or the wealthiest rooks could afford fancy fashion and trends,

durable clothing was the name of the game for most people.

Basically I'd be wearing this suit until I looked like some kind of accountant

that got sucked into the Jumanji game for 15 years.

But then the Industrial Revolution happened and people who talked like this had more...

People who done talk like this were spending more time working in factories

and had less time to make their own clothes,

so a spike in demand for ready-made clothes was met with an abundant supply

of cotton from America

because of slaver--slavery.

Well, demand for clothes, plus a cotton supply,

plus new textile technology allowed clothing to be produced at a much greater scale

at a lower price,

allowing more people access to more types of clothing.

Now, all of this new technology

and money made factory owners

and slave owners a fat stack of cash,

because they paid their workers practically nothing or actually nothing,

and they profited massively from the economies of scale.

Technically, slavery ended with the ratification of the 13th amendment in 1865,

but poor working conditions and intentionally low wages kept factory owners incredibly rich,

and these cartoonishly evil men did things like lock the exits

and stairwells so that their workers wouldn't be tempted to take breaks from their

nightmarish working conditions,

or steal a pair of socks.

And then on March 25th, 1911, a fire broke out in this building,

and if you're hoping that maybe this isn't the Triangle Shirtwaist factory building,

you're out of luck.

The workers in the factory were unable to escape the fire

because the factory owners did

that thing where they lock everyone in,

and 146 people, mostly women between the ages of 14 and 23,

were killed when they either burned alive

or jumped to the pavement eight floors below.

It was tragic and it shocked the nation

and of f*cking course the factory owners ended up making money on the tragedy

because of an insurance claim

and some shiesty courtroom moves.

Two years later, the owner of the factory actually got caught locking the doors

again and he got the electric chai-- oh no,

he got fined twenty dollars

which was the minimum allowable fine for

that kind of thing.

Anyway, over the next forty years and with the help of Frances Perkins,

the Secretary of Labor under President Roosevelt,

enough labor reforms were implemented that working in the fashion industry was, maybe,

kind of okay.

I mean you weren't making chess piece money,

but at least you had a weekend, insurance, time off, and best of all,

the goddamn doors weren't locked!

At the risk of leaving out a ton of context,

everything I've described so far is traditional slow fashion: clothing is designed, manufactured, shipped,

and sold domestically, and as recently a-- ooohoohoo!

I'm not gonna die for this video.

As recently as 1990,

more than half the clothes bought in America were also made in America.

But between 1990 and now,

so much manufacturing went overseas

that America now makes less than two percent of its clothes,

and now almost every item of clothing worn in America has to first make

a CO2-intensive international trip before anyone wants to dress up to go to brunch.

Or church.

Or baseball game.

What do people do anymore?

And we're not talking about one little international trip to Paris

and back since the only thing manufacturers really care about is minimizing production costs,

the life of a shirt might begin with cotton grown in India,

then gets sent to Mexico to be processed,

then gets sent to Bangladesh to be sewn together,

then get sent to Colombia to have the tags sewn on,

then get sent to Miami to be distributed to a store in Georgia.

But what's a little thousand tons of heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere

if it means you could buy this very real shirt

that says,

"Fridays we be like... squad goals"?

And just to be clear,

clothing manufacturers didn't move their factories to other countries

so that they could make better clothes,

they did it so they could go back to treating their workers like they

did in 1911.

Now since companies didn't have to pay for vacations

or health insurance or fire extinguishers,

their profits shot through the roof like a drunken cowboy.

Hey, are people gonna actually get that cowboy line?

What's up?

The cowboy line, you just said the cowb-- shot through the roof line?

Yeah, it's a, it's like the number one cowboy thing,

where they get drunk at a bar,

they got too much whiskey and they're like, "wooo, whiskey", you know?

They shoot up into the room.

I think that's prospector.

You get it, right?

You getting this?

I don't think I get it.

You're me, what do you mean you don't get it?

I just don't think it's clear.

It's -- you know what?

*sigh* What?

Okay, we'll put a part where both of us belabor this,

and then I'll do a Patreon page plug at the end of it,

okay?...right here?

And people can just make fun of you in the comments?

If they wanna roast me in the comments and sign up for my Patreon,

they're gonna do tha--

And their profits shot through the roof like end of sentence.

And, sure, these major American manufacturing companies who move their factories to China, India,

Bangladesh, etc., could have used that money to pay their workers a living wage.

And they did!...not.

Sh*t, they did not.

They used that money to expand executive salaries by five hundred percent.

But wait, it gets worse,

because as the cost of manufacturing clothes shot through the floor like a drunken

cowboy's upstairs neighbor,

clothing companies were able to sell clothes for cheaper,

which means people were able to buy more clothes.

And not like an extra shirt

that says "catch up with Jesus,"

or "my other shirt is a truck," the average American is now buying five

to six articles of clothing every month,

which is five times more than we did in the 1980s,

the decade we did everything right.

So as consumers bought more and more clothes,

it started a cycle

that paid executives to hire more overseas workers at starvation wages to make more

low-quality clothes to ship them over to America to put them in stores

that told people that the color of the season is blue,

baby, and you just gotta buy it.

Ahh, no one has landed a kickflip since 1999.

And if you're familiar with my general kind of climate change shtick, uh,

you'll guess that I'm only talking about this

because the spike in manufacturing has come at an enormous cost to the climate.

When you grow cotton or manufacture plastic to make clothes, it generates CO2.

You also need like 1800 gallons of water to make a single pair of

jeans,

which seemed high to me, and then I did the research,

and it turns out all of the sources confirmed that, including Levi's own website,

so, like, wow!

When you process the cotton and plastic, it also generates CO2.

When you transport it to stores around the world,

when you buy it in an online purchase, hell,

when you throw it away

or donate your clothes all of

that is generating more CO2.

Are you an actor?

I'm doing a YouTube video.

Ohhhh.

I'm not an actor, I'm a comedian, which is way worse.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Love you too, James, good to meet ya.

What a nice guy!

All told, the fashion industry contributes to ten percent of our global greenhouse gas

emissions,

which is crazy high,

but it's also a little abstract

and it's not super landing for me right now,

and I promise I can do better.

How about this?

Take a company like Zara.

Zara did roughly 26 billion dollars in sales in 2019

and is so insanely profitable

that the dude who invented Zara,

Amancio Ortega, became one of the 10 richest people on the planet for selling

shirts that say sh*t like "Kiss me...

I'm Monday."

They make so much money

that every other brand is just gagging to be

as profitable as Zara.

So they're trying to do more like what Zara does, which,

as it turns out,

is crank out CO2 thirty percent faster than the nearest fast fashion competitor.

Zara manufactured about 840 million garments this year.

About ninety-seven percent of all the cotton, plastic,

and metal used in all those garments was brand new, never before used material,

made specifically for those garments.

Now if you remember the intro, which feels like it was so long ago,

roughly ten percent of fast fashion merchandise is never sold and just thrown away,

which means Zara just manufactured roughly 84 million pieces of trash out of almost

entirely new material.

All that cotton?

Gone.

All that oil extracted to make the plastic?

Gone.

All the fossil fuels used to transport all that material?

Wasted, and for what?

So we could stock a shelf full of literal garbage.

Well, sheesh, Daniel, could recycling our clothes maybe help us out here?

Unfortunately, not really.

See, in the same way

that it's cheaper for a company to make a new plastic bottle than it

is to recycle an old one,

fast fashion clothing is this delightful blend of plastic microfibers

and cotton to give our pants

that double-baked-in stretch.

The problem is it takes a lot of work to separate those plastic fibers

back out,

which means more workers and less profits.

And that's just not gonna work for these companies that really love money.

And at a time when we can't throw out clothes fast enough, Zara,

H&M, Guess, and the other fast fashion super friends are making billions of disposable

garments every year.

That's trillions of gallons of water, billions of barrels of oil,

airplanes and freighters crisscrossing the globe to distribute these disposable clothes,

burning fossil fuels at insane rates,

and making piles of textile waste in our landfills.

And some brands will make the argument

that fast fashion is the only way poor people can afford to dress well,

which is maybe an okay argument

if you hear it

and then immediately get kicked in the head by a mule.

Because if you think about it for about five seconds,

you'll realize their argument is just,

"we don't want to exploit the poor people we already exploited

when we ship their jobs overseas by making them pay high prices for clothes,

so we're going to go ahead

and exploit the even poorer people overseas,"

and they really don't want you to think about the third option

which is,

"hey let's not exploit any poor people

and let's just reduce the profits at the top by a little bit!"

And also also, do you remember the triangle shirtwaist factory fire

and all those human rights violations?

Well, working conditions are literally worse than that in dozens of countries right now.

Hundreds are dead, hundreds more might still be buried alive after officials in Bangladesh

say factory owners ignored an order to evacuate.

Some four hundred dead, hundreds still believed to be missing.

Now much better hosts than me have made much better videos than this one

about the human rights violation

that is just at the heart of fast fashion,

and so rather than butchering all of those, I've linked them in the description,

and I encourage you to watch some of them.

Okay, okay, calm down, dogs.

I know this script has be-- cool it!

I know this script has been super, super dark up until this point,

but we have officially entered the "we have a way out" phase,

and the big change we need to make is policy.

Now despite fast fashion having a documented history of labor abuse and environmental destruction,

it is largely unregulated.

Let me give you an example a company like Gap subcontracts to a factory

in Bangladesh.

That company uses child labor.

Gap turns a blind eye until some journalist figures it out.

How old are you?

Do you go to school?

Gap pretends to be shocked, they fire that subcontractor,

Gap then just gets a new unregulated subcontractor-- You're 14.

and the whole cycle starts again.

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.

You're winning sir.

Oh, thank you very much!

Regulating the supply chain means passing laws like Germany's recent Supply Chain Due Diligence

Act,

which basically forces companies to assess any human rights

and environmental risks in their supply chain

and to establish an adequate

and effective risk management system.

Now, you may have noticed

that a lot of those words haven't exactly been hitting the gym,

and the law only forces companies to make an effort,

rather than guarantee they prevent the violations,

but compared to America's complete lack of federal clothing supply chain legislation,

they're the goddamn Incredible Hulk.

France also passed a law

that requires a carbon label be included on their textiles,

but trying to fix a supply chain from the demand end is like trying

to turn a cruise ship by leaning really hard to one side.

There are a handful of state-level supply chain

and manufacturing bills coming through the pipeline

that have similar flavors to the German one,

and you can check those out and throw your support behind them.

Links in the description.

And if you're looking to make a difference on a personal level, surprise,

you actually can!

Fast fashion is very much a social movement,

and you can be a leader by moving in the other direction

and refusing to buy fast fashion.

You can even use the three R's.

Number one: if you have a big event you can rent an absolutely bangin'

outfit,

or borrow it from a friend, but that counts as the "R" from rent.

And if you need clothes, you can buy pre-owned clothes,

and I know that's not exactly starting with R,

but that's the best I could do, and I'm so sorry.

And also if your clothes are damaged you can repair them, okay?

That's fun, plus you learn a new hobby!

Remember hobbies?

It's what we used to do before we had phones.

Those are the three R's, baby!

Hey webheads, a little note here: there is some controversy about that first R,

rent.

A study from Environmental Research Letters found that in some cases, the extra driving,

transportation, and frequent dry cleaning makes renting clothes worse than buying new clothes,

so research wherever you're renting from beforehand, or maybe wear something you already have.

It looks great, I promise.

And somebody please tell me a word for pre-owned that starts with R,

because I honestly could not find one.

Anyway shout out to Dana Thomas, Fashionopolis, great book.

And when it's time to get rid of your clothes,

try your best to resell them

or go to clothing swaps

or give them to friends

or family.

I mean you can still donate them as a last resort,

but just know that ninety percent of what you donate is probably about to

make really good friends with a seagull at the dump.

And if you do have to buy new clothes (and you don't),

but if you do (you don't), but if you do,

you should buy from someplace

that actually gives a sh*t about their supply

and manufacture.

So the next time future You just has to buy something,

consider starting by researching the brand you're buying from,

or by using a third-party source like United by Zero.

Now, I offered to plug United by Zero for free,

but those dorks literally paid me to shout them out right here.

This is it.

Fifteen minutes into a video,

they paid me for this. bottom line is

that companies are going to chase after customers,

so if you as a customer place more of an emphasis on measurable sustainability,

companies are going to try to cater to you.

So, first and foremost, push your representatives to pass laws about fast fashion,

and join up with organizations that are already working towards that.

I linked a couple in the description,

but if you have a little bit of a google,

I bet you can find some local groups in your area to join up

with.

And by all means, be part of the movement by avoiding fast fashion.

From now on, the color of the season is "there is no color",

because that's a stupid idea, unless it's blue.

I have this blue suit I got a bunch of blue shirts

that I wear all th-- no,

you know, no, there's no color of the season, that's dumb and bad,

and it's gone.

Okay thank you so much for watching Climate Town.

See you later.

Well that was about four minutes longer than it needed to be, huh?

Seriously, thank you so much for watching, I really appreciate it.

And I'm going to keep making more videos,

but if you do want to support the channel I just started a Climate

Town Patreon page,

and the link is in the bio.

Wait, people have to pay for these videos now?

Oh no, they're still all on YouTube for free,

this would just be

if you wanted to like help me make them faster

and better.

Oh, also, uh, exclusive behind the scenes content and interviews and, like,

stuff that gets cut from the final videos.

So you want people to pay for the stuff that's not good enough to

be free?

I am just hoping

that a few people might want to send like five bucks a month,

uh, my way because you appreciate what could be described as highly researched,

low budget, super try-hard climate comedy. *pffft* Climate comedy?

Or like edutainment?

No, like infotainment.

And you have to pay for it?

Only the bad stuff, the good stuff is still free, right?

Okay, this-- I feel like this really went off the rails.

Hey man, don't look at me you're the one trying to get people to

donate to your climate comedy Patreon page,

and the link is in the bio. *pffft* I have not tried marijuana.