Environmentalists are getting more worried about the effects of fast fashion on the environment. Fast fashion is the mass production of clothes at a low cost.
Fast fashion items are put in shops and online quickly to create a high demand. Manufacturers make 100 billion items of clothing every year. This is expected to grow by 60 percent by 2030. The fast-fashion business model is having a negative effect on the environment.
In Chile's Atacama Desert, new dunes are forming, not of sand, but of last year's unsold clothing from around the world. Piled on top of last year's fast fashion casualties and unpurchased clothing lines, the garments are often full of toxins and dyes and do not biodegrade. The result: a fast fashion mistake and an environmental disaster that has been overlooked, until now.
According to a report published by Tiffany Duong for EcoWatch space, she comments that clothing can take hundreds of years to biodegrade, if at all. Municipal landfills do not accept textiles because of the chemicals they contain, reported the NY Post. As a result, up to 39,000 tons of unsold and unwanted clothing are trucked to the world's driest desert each year.
Women search for used clothes among discarded tons in the Atacama Desert in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile, on September 26, 2021. MARTIN BERNETTI / AFP / Getty Images
The way people are buying clothes is adding to the problem of clothing waste. Many years ago, people went to stores and tried clothes on. People took more time and thought more carefully before they bought clothes. They also wore them for longer.
Today, people order cheap clothes on the Internet and if they don't like them, they send them back. Some people say this is causing a throwaway society. Some people buy clothes and never even wear them.
Working with vocabulary.
Effect: a change that is because of an earlier action
Mass production: making large amounts of something by using machines.
Demand: the amount of things asked for by people who want to buy
things
Dyes: a natural or synthetic substance used to add a colour to or change
the colour of something
Environmental: relating to the natural world and the impact of human activity
on its condition
Biodegrade: (of a substance or object) be decomposed by bacteria or other
living organisms
Landfills: a large area in which trash is put.
Waste: unwanted or unusable material, substances, or by-products
Cheap: low in price, especially in relation to similar items or services
Throwaway: denoting or relating to products that are intended to be discarded
after being used once or a few times.
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Sources: breakingnewenglish.com - Ecowatch.com Tiffany Duong