In today’s day and age it’s hard to buy a piece of clothing and really love it for a sustained period of time. What previously used to be just three seasons a year has now turned into 52 and with new styles swooping into our favorite stores weekly it’s no wonder fast fashion has so quickly taken over the world.

Fast Fashion relies on speed and low costs in order to deliver new looks straight from the catwalk to the shop floor. Since 2005, the fashion industry has peaked; when the World Trade Organisation dismissed the quota system which capped overseas production of apparel it opened the doors to the mass production of cheap clothing – this then lead to the rise of a 3 trillion pound industry that employs nearly 60 million around the world.

However, this massive industry is particularly bad for the planet, due to the pressure surrounding time and cost when producing garments many corners are cut when it comes to the environment ranging from water pollution to toxic chemical exposure. Today, many negative opinions surround the fast fashion sector with some claiming it to be the ‘Second dirtiest industry in the world’ whilst others think fast fashion is “drowning” the world.

We seem to constantly find ourselves with wardrobes full of clothes but yet still with nothing to wear. But we fail to realise that we are impacting the environment before we’ve even brought home the pair of jeans that just looked ‘so good’ on the model.

So, you grab a basket in your favourite high street store and start filling it with necessities you so desperately need – a few staple t-shirts that are only £4.99 each; bargain! A pair of jeans you need for an event you are attending next week and a pair of boots you just couldn’t resist because they were only £3 in the sale! But after a few weeks your t-shirt has a hole in, the jeans have ripped and the boots you so desperately needed have a broken heel – You throw it all out without even a second thought, it was only £25 anyway.

This constant cycle of buy, discard and then buy again is a vicious cycle that we find ourselves permently caught in. This regular disposal of unwanted clothing is deadly. 235 million pounds of the garments we buy are expected to end up in landfill yearly and this figure is constantly rising. As landfill levels continue to grow Methane, a very dangerous greenhouse gas, is polluting the air, rapidly increasing the threat of global warming on the planet.

Many charities are working to lower landfill levels and provide less fortunate people around the world with clean clothes.

Paul Crewe head of sustainability at Sainsburys works alongside Oxfam to help recycle unwanted garments – he claimed “If clothes go out with the rubbish, they’ll end up in landfill, so we’ve teamed up with Oxfam to help Britons become more charitable and environmentally savvy this spring, no matter if they’re worn out or grubby, we’re calling on shoppers to donate their unwanted clothes at recycling points in our stores across the UK.”

Fee Gilfeather, head of retail brands at Oxfam also added “At Oxfam we can reuse or recycle almost anything. The items donated through Sainsbury’s raise millions, helping us continue our vital work to end extreme poverty around the world.”

The key to reducing the levels of textile waste lies in recycling rather than just throwing items away as explained by Paul Crewe and Fee Gilfeather.

New prints and patterns can be very exciting when we seem them lined up on a clothing rack in our favourite store but the production behind these prints has catastrophic consequences.

Textile dyeing is the second largest water polluter globally. Over 3,600 individual dyes are being used within the industry today. Water is used to dye and wash garments globally. It is predicted the fashion industry uses 2700 litres to produce a single t-shirt, that figure is equivalent to what one person drinks over the course of 900 days – and yet we wonder why we struggle with water shortages.

Textiles leaves one of the biggest footprints for water pollution and consumption around the world.

Dye houses in India and China are especially well known for exhausting local water supplies to produce garments as well as for disposing of unwanted dye water in local rivers and streams – this disposal leads to water becoming polluted and potentially causing illness in anyone who uses it.

Polyester is the most used fabric around the world but when it is washed in domestic washing machines it sheds microfibers. These microfibers are minute and can easily pass through sewage systems, this means that they are released into the ocean and therefore contribute to the already high levels of plastic in the sea. A huge threat to aquatic life is also presented through these microfibers – they are not biodegradable. Small creatures such as plankton eat the microfibers which means when smaller fish and shellfish eat the plankton the microfibers are transferred to them and the cycle continues up the food chain until humans eat the fish.

So can consumers help to reduce the environmental impact of fast fashion?

Recycled content is the best way to go about this, by using recycled materials and recycling our own clothes we can greatly reduce the effects on the environment as well as lower the levels of textile waste going to landfills.

A new brand called Patagonia was the first outdoor clothing brand to create polyester fleeces by reusing plastic bottles. By spring 2018 it plans to offer only two fabric options of either 100 per cent organic cotton or a blend of recycled cotton and recycled polyester, recognising that even organic cotton has a negative environmental impact.

Initiatives such as Love your Clothes are also launching in hopes of lowering the environmental consequences of fashion. The charity offers information to consumers in order to help them with buying new clothes without hurting the planet. It focuses on each stage from the purchasing process, to caring for items and to eventually disposing of them responsibly.

However ultimately the best way to lower the effects of fast fashion on the environment is to keep the clothes we buy for as long as we possibly can and to buy less!