We have already had the opportunity to talk about today's consumer attitudes in many product sectors, but fashion, perhaps, fully embodies these questionable behaviors.

Fashion is moving from fast consumption to ultra fast, with the consequence of buying, dressing and throwing everything away in a very short space of time.

This attitude is facilitated by the cost reduction of clothes that has been achieved through the globalization of production, mainly centered in poor or very poor countries and by the use of fibers cheaper synthetics.

Furthermore, the international distribution chains have created a business based less on the profit of the single garment and more on the amount of high sales in high rotation.

The rush to compress the final prices of the garments has reverberated throughout the supply chain, creating ever smaller margins for logistics and of course production.

If sales decrease, you lose the financial sustainability of a huge induced, which would put the system in crisis. For this reason, more and more are produced, more and more raw materials are consumed and more and more waste is created.

This spiral seems an advantage for the final buyer who finds a piece of clothing cheap, but it is absolutely deleterious for the environment and for those who work there .

If we look at the problem from an environmental point of view, we can say that such a high turnover of clothing items, most of which lie unused in our closets, involves :

• a very high use of synthetic raw materials, mainly plastic, which have a very negative environmental impact both in production and in disposal.

• a dispersion of nanoplastics in the environment during washing, materials that end up through drains into rivers and seas and enter the food chain. This means that we remain, in small doses, the clothes we continue to buy.

• an increasing amount of textile waste, which can also be dangerous for the environment due to the colors they are impregnated with and due to the low or zero biocompatibility .

• a growing problem for the disposal of textile waste in the world due to the low propensity to circularity of the supply chain, therefore to recycling.

If we then look at the problem from a social point of view, the fight against the economy of scale prevailing in the sector has imposed ever smaller margins for workers in the supply chain. We remember these problems only when tragedies occur, such as fires in garment packaging companies, or in dyeing companies, or in shoe factories, all located in third world countries.

An oppressive and exploitative attitude of workers manifests itself in various ways:

• distribution of garment finishing work in countries where labor costs very little and hourly production is high

• exploitation of child labor to further reduce costs in disregard of international labor and school dropout standards

• bargaining power between supplier and customer absolutely unbalanced towards the latter through which there is no working dignity

• contempt for the environmental problems that can arise in the countries of production of the garments.

As we have always said, the real power to change things is always in the hands of the final consumer, who can change the course of things by making purchases more sustainable and change his habits in the field of clothing.

Each of us can take responsibility for the urgent problems that haunt our planet and those who are working in the fashion production sector, trying to do something to contribute to its improvement and perhaps, someday, to its resolution.

What can we do?

• get out of the logic of ultra-fast fashion, making the garments we already have last longer, limiting new purchases, for the most part they could be superfluous and buy only the necessary things.

• do not become succubus to the marketing of fashion companies (but in general of any other sector) that always pushes new purchases, manipulating our mind, creating needs which probably are not there, relying on the psychological weaknesses of the population, such as the growth of self-esteem while shopping.

• contribute to the growth of slow fashion, made of garments that do not age in our eyes, pay attention to their conservation, learn again how to make small tailoring repairs so as not to lose the manual skills that once existed in families.

• participate in new movements that allow the exchange of clothes and accessories or by making purchases of used garments with the aim of saving money, environmental resources and participating in the reduction of waste.

• Reject the globalization of styles and promote the exchange of different production cultures, in order to reconstruct the supply chains multilaterally to the detriment of the production of a few international brands.

Remember that every purchase you make affects more or less the pollution of the planet.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.

Photo: WP.F