It’s everywhere you look. Haul videos flood our social media pages. Sale alerts appear in our inboxes on the daily. Trending pieces of months past overload thrift store racks. We are living in a time and within a culture that promotes buying for the short-term, and it’s led to an incredible, seemingly inescapable overconsumption problem in fashion.
Waste in fashion is so excessive that it can be difficult to wrap one’s brain around the statistics. The most recent data released by the United States Environmental Protection Agency estimates that, in 2018, over 9,000,000 tons of clothing went into landfills. In 2000, the number was less than half of that—still an incomprehensible amount, but compared with the more recent estimates, it feels like something to long for. The issue of clothing waste is not only increasing year after year, but increasing significantly. It’s also not a single-faceted issue. Clothing in landfills is just one tiny piece of a much larger puzzle. The environmental impact of fast fashion is a huge problem, and one that will only have a hope of being addressed if we all come together to do so.
And it is we, as college students, who need to take a stand on fast fashion. A 2022 survey from clothing resale site ThreadUp found that 72% of college students had purchased from a fast fashion brand in the past year. This same survey, however, also found that over half of respondents wanted to buy less fast fashion, if not cut it from their lives entirely. The two statistics are clearly at odds with one another, but they don’t have to be. We can turn thoughts into action.
Cutting fast fashion entirely may not be feasible for everyone, but this doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing issue. Sustainable swaps are as much about the environment as they are about your lifestyle. If you can’t realistically implement a change, then it might not be sustainable for you, and that’s okay! Small steps add up, especially when we all play our part and take honest stock of what we can realistically do.
So, what can we do? We can practice intentional purchasing by buying pieces we envision wearing long-term. We can develop our own sense of personal style, rather than reach for our wallets every time a new microtrend emerges. We can buy second-hand if and when it is an option, we can rewear and restyle pieces we already own, we can mend torn clothing to extend its life—there are so many ways to contribute to change. Sustainability doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive or exhaustive.
Hauls, sales and trends are enticing. But what is more enticing is the idea that we could work together to leave the planet a little better than we found it.
