Like other consumers around the world, New Zealanders are buying so-called fast fashion in droves.
By SUNDAY's Mava Moayyed
Promising to deliver the latest trends rapidly from catwalk to consumer at knock-down prices has seen a new wave of global clothing brands like Spain’s Zara, Sweden’s H & M and China’s Shein experience phenomenal growth to dominate the world clothing industry in just a few decades.
The owners of those companies, like Zara’s Armando Ortega, have amassed vast wealth to become some of the richest individuals on the planet.
Shein, started by 30-year-old Chinese engineer Chris Xu, has an estimated value of $105 billion and is planning to list on the US stock market this year in what is expected to be one of the biggest IPO’s of 2023.
But behind the spreadsheets lies another story.
Seething sweatshops staffed by underpaid workers with few, if any, labour protections and supply chains outside the oversight of environmental agencies.
There is growing controversy over the impacts of the millions of tonnes of discarded fast fashion clothing that ends up in the world’s landfills.
Waste Management NZ’s Ingrid Cronin says in the last eight years she has seen the amount of clothing waste taken in by Auckland’s landfills double, and that’s largely down to our consumption of fast fashion
Around 70 truckloads of discarded clothing arrives at Waste Management’s Redvale landfill every week, but it is not just the volume that has Cronin concerned, it is what the new tide of clothing is made up of.
“What you see is the reduction in natural fibres going into the fashion and the increase in synthetics going into it,” she says. “We really have just a buy new and throw it away kind of culture.”
It is those synthetic fibres that make fast fashion so cheap and attractive to consumers that Cronin sees as its biggest problem.
“If you think about a plastic bottle, it is easy to wash and then palletise it and turn it back into plastic. With clothing it’s really complex and hard to turn back into another piece of clothing.”
And that’s the rub, while various initiatives are underway to come up with ways to recycle fashion textiles, in Cronin’s view they are of limited promise.
“It is great that we are actually innovating and recycling, you know fabrics and plastics, but ultimately you will not be able to necessarily recycle that. In the end you are just delaying disposal. It is just half as bad and its still going to ultimately end up in a landfill.”
Its estimated around 180,000 tonnes of clothing and textile waste is dumped in New Zealand landfills every year.
Associate Fashion Professor Jennifer Whitty of Victoria University estimates that the Shein website alone produced a staggering 49 billion garments last year alone, that is six outfits for every person on the planet.
“It is just beyond comprehension. It’s just mind boggling. We’ve been taught that fashion is not important. It’s a bit of fluff. It is disguising how impactful it can be. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
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