Fast Fashion Is Hot Garbage | Climate Town - YouTube

Whenever I need to look like the kind of guy  who understands fashion, I cram myself into  

a suit that looks like it was made for some kind  of European heroin addict, and for the low price  

of thirty dollars, you too can walk out of an H&M  dressed like you're Slenderman's younger brother.  

In fact, at prices like these, it can be more  expensive to clean your clothes than it is to  

throw away your dirty clothes and buy all new  ones. And I know that sounds like the kind of plan  

that was invented by some sort of nine-year-old  king, but it's actually pretty close to reality  

because the average garment in America is worn  just seven times before it's thrown away.  

And if you're thinking, "Well, woooooof, it's a  good thing I donate my clothes to other people,"  

that's not actually happening. Oh, you're donating  your clothes, but that basically just means that  

your clothes take a little trip to the Salvation  Army, where they say "thank you for your service",  

before ninety percent of all clothes donated to  a thrift store get rejected and sent straight to  

a landfill or a textile waste mill. With stores like H&M, Uniqlo, Zara,  

Guess, and Gap selling low quality  clothes at bargain basement prices,  

Americans buy an average of 68 items of clothing  every year, which seems like a lot of clothes,  

but it's not even all the clothes because ten  percent of clothing produced gets worn zero times,  

because it never gets bought and it  just goes straight into the garbage.  

Not this specific garbage, obviously this  is just a visual represent-- you know what,  

you get it -- but the point is, fast fashion is  so big and wasteful that it produces more CO2  

than France, Germany, and the UK combined. Fast fashion is devastating to the climate,  

and it is a husky-sized human rights violation,  but it is so profitable that it's projected to  

triple by 2050 unless we change something. We are currently knocking on the door of a climate  

catastrophe, and we need to be reducing our CO2  emissions instead of greatly increasing them,  

and how we deal with fast fashion may  determine if we're able to avoid some  

of the worst parts of a climate disaster. But unlike most of the systemic causes of  

climate change there's actually something  you can do about fast fashion, maybe?  

Hi, I'm Rollie Williams, a sort of discount  Burt Reynolds type and a climate science  

and policy grad student, and this is a video  about fast fashion. Welcome to Climate Town.  

Now, fashion wasn't always about buying five  dollar dresses or trying to look like a sexy  

haysack -- mission very much accomplished, by  the way. Before the 1800s, people either made  

their own clothing bought it secondhand from  "slop shops" or went to their local tailors or  

seamstresses. In any case they wore the garments  until they fell apart, or they died at the ripe  

old age of 29, the way god intended. So while ultra rich people like kings,  

queens, or the wealthiest rooks could  afford fancy fashion and trends,  

durable clothing was the name of the game  for most people. Basically I'd be wearing  

this suit until I looked like some kind of  accountant that got sucked into the Jumanji  

game for 15 years. [screaming]  

But then the Industrial Revolution happened  and people who talked like this had more...  

People who done talk like this were spending  more time working in factories and had less  

time to make their own clothes, so a  spike in demand for ready-made clothes  

was met with an abundant supply of cotton  from America because of slaver--slavery.  

Well, demand for clothes, plus a cotton supply,  plus new textile technology allowed clothing to  

be produced at a much greater scale at a lower  price, allowing more people access to more types  

of clothing. Now, all of this new technology  and money made factory owners and slave owners  

a fat stack of cash, because they paid  their workers practically nothing or  

actually nothing, and they profited  massively from the economies of scale.  

Technically, slavery ended with the  ratification of the 13th amendment in 1865,  

but poor working conditions and intentionally  low wages kept factory owners incredibly rich,  

and these cartoonishly evil men did things like  lock the exits and stairwells so that their  

workers wouldn't be tempted to take breaks  from their nightmarish working conditions,  

or steal a pair of socks. And then on March  25th, 1911, a fire broke out in this building,  

and if you're hoping that maybe this isn't  the Triangle Shirtwaist factory building,  

you're out of luck. The workers in the  factory were unable to escape the fire  

because the factory owners did that thing  where they lock everyone in, and 146 people,  

mostly women between the ages of 14 and 23,  were killed when they either burned alive or  

jumped to the pavement eight floors below. It was  tragic and it shocked the nation and of f*cking  

course the factory owners ended up making money  on the tragedy because of an insurance claim and  

some shiesty courtroom moves. Two years later, the  owner of the factory actually got caught locking  

the doors again and he got the electric chai--  oh no, he got fined twenty dollars which was the  

minimum allowable fine for that kind of thing. Anyway, over the next forty years and with the  

help of Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor  under President Roosevelt, enough labor reforms  

were implemented that working in the fashion  industry was, maybe, kind of okay. I mean you  

weren't making chess piece money, but at least  you had a weekend, insurance, time off, and best  

of all, the goddamn doors weren't locked! At the risk of leaving out a ton of context,  

everything I've described so far is traditional  slow fashion: clothing is designed, manufactured,  

shipped, and sold domestically, and as recently  a-- ooohoohoo! I'm not gonna die for this video.  

As recently as 1990, more than half the clothes  bought in America were also made in America.  

But between 1990 and now, so much manufacturing  went overseas that America now makes less than  

two percent of its clothes, and now almost every  item of clothing worn in America has to first make  

a CO2-intensive international trip before anyone  wants to dress up to go to brunch. Or church. Or  

baseball game. What do people do anymore? And we're not talking about one little  

international trip to Paris and back since  the only thing manufacturers really care about  

is minimizing production costs, the life of a  shirt might begin with cotton grown in India,  

then gets sent to Mexico to be processed, then  gets sent to Bangladesh to be sewn together,  

then get sent to Colombia to have the tags sewn  on, then get sent to Miami to be distributed to  

a store in Georgia. But what's a little thousand  tons of heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere if it  

means you could buy this very real shirt that  says, "Fridays we be like... squad goals"?  

And just to be clear, clothing manufacturers  didn't move their factories to other countries  

so that they could make better clothes, they did  it so they could go back to treating their workers  

like they did in 1911. Now since companies  didn't have to pay for vacations or health  

insurance or fire extinguishers, their profits  shot through the roof like a drunken cowboy.  

Hey, are people gonna actually get that cowboy  line? What's up? The cowboy line, you just said  

the cowb-- shot through the roof line? Yeah,  it's a, it's like the number one cowboy thing,  

where they get drunk at a bar, they got too much  whiskey and they're like, "wooo, whiskey", you  

know? They shoot up into the room. I think that's  prospector. You get it, right? You getting this?  

I don't think I get it. You're me, what do you  mean you don't get it? I just don't think it's  

clear. It's -- you know what? *sigh* What? Okay,  we'll put a part where both of us belabor this,  

and then I'll do a Patreon page plug at the  end of it, okay? ...right here? And people  

can just make fun of you in the comments? If  they wanna roast me in the comments and sign  

up for my Patreon, they're gonna do tha-- And their profits shot through the roof like  

end of sentence. And, sure, these major American  manufacturing companies who move their factories  

to China, India, Bangladesh, etc., could have used  that money to pay their workers a living wage.  

And they did! ...not. Sh*t, they did not. They  used that money to expand executive salaries by  

five hundred percent. But wait, it gets worse,  because as the cost of manufacturing clothes  

shot through the floor like a drunken cowboy's  upstairs neighbor, clothing companies were able  

to sell clothes for cheaper, which means people  were able to buy more clothes. And not like an  

extra shirt that says "catch up with Jesus,"  or "my other shirt is a truck," the average  

American is now buying five to six articles  of clothing every month, which is five times  

more than we did in the 1980s, the decade we  did everything right. [80s synthwave music]  

So as consumers bought more and more  clothes, it started a cycle that paid  

executives to hire more overseas  workers at starvation wages  

to make more low-quality clothes to ship them  over to America to put them in stores that told  

people that the color of the season is  blue, baby, and you just gotta buy it.  

Ahh, no one has landed a kickflip since 1999. And if you're familiar with my general kind of  

climate change shtick, uh, you'll guess  that I'm only talking about this because  

the spike in manufacturing has come  at an enormous cost to the climate.  

When you grow cotton or manufacture  plastic to make clothes, it generates CO2.  

You also need like 1800 gallons of water to make  a single pair of jeans, which seemed high to me,  

and then I did the research, and it turns  out all of the sources confirmed that,  

including Levi's own website, so, like, wow! When you process the cotton and plastic, it also  

generates CO2. When you transport it to stores  around the world, when you buy it in an online  

purchase, hell, when you throw it away or donate  your clothes all of that is generating more CO2.  

Are you an actor? I'm doing a YouTube video.  Ohhhh. I'm not an actor, I'm a comedian,  

which is way worse. Sorry. Thank you. Love you  too, James, good to meet ya. What a nice guy!  

All told, the fashion industry contributes to ten  percent of our global greenhouse gas emissions,  

which is crazy high, but it's also a little  abstract and it's not super landing for me  

right now, and I promise I can do better. How about this? Take a company like Zara.  

Zara did roughly 26 billion dollars  in sales in 2019 and is so insanely  

profitable that the dude who invented  Zara, Amancio Ortega, became one of the 10  

richest people on the planet for selling shirts  that say sh*t like "Kiss me... I'm Monday."  

They make so much money that every other  brand is just gagging to be as profitable  

as Zara. So they're trying to do more like  what Zara does, which, as it turns out,  

is crank out CO2 thirty percent faster  than the nearest fast fashion competitor.  

Zara manufactured about 840 million garments  this year. About ninety-seven percent of all  

the cotton, plastic, and metal used  in all those garments was brand new,  

never before used material, made specifically for  those garments. Now if you remember the intro,  

which feels like it was so long ago, roughly  ten percent of fast fashion merchandise is never  

sold and just thrown away, which means Zara  just manufactured roughly 84 million pieces  

of trash out of almost entirely new material. All that cotton? Gone. All that oil extracted  

to make the plastic? Gone. All the fossil  fuels used to transport all that material?  

Wasted, and for what? So we could  stock a shelf full of literal garbage.  

Well, sheesh, Daniel, could recycling  our clothes maybe help us out here?  

Unfortunately, not really. See, in the same way  that it's cheaper for a company to make a new  

plastic bottle than it is to recycle an old one,  fast fashion clothing is this delightful blend of  

plastic microfibers and cotton to give our pants  that double-baked-in stretch. The problem is it  

takes a lot of work to separate those plastic  fibers back out, which means more workers and  

less profits. And that's just not gonna work  for these companies that really love money.  

And at a time when we can't throw out clothes  fast enough, Zara, H&M, Guess, and the other  

fast fashion super friends are making billions of  disposable garments every year. That's trillions  

of gallons of water, billions of barrels of  oil, airplanes and freighters crisscrossing  

the globe to distribute these disposable clothes,  burning fossil fuels at insane rates, and making  

piles of textile waste in our landfills. And some brands will make the argument that  

fast fashion is the only way poor people can  afford to dress well, which is maybe an okay  

argument if you hear it and then immediately get  kicked in the head by a mule. Because if you think  

about it for about five seconds, you'll realize  their argument is just, "we don't want to exploit  

the poor people we already exploited when we  ship their jobs overseas by making them pay high  

prices for clothes, so we're going to go ahead  and exploit the even poorer people overseas,"  

and they really don't want you to think  about the third option which is, "hey  

let's not exploit any poor people and let's just  reduce the profits at the top by a little bit!"  

And also also, do you remember the triangle  shirtwaist factory fire and all those human rights  

violations? Well, working conditions are literally  worse than that in dozens of countries right now.  

Hundreds are dead, hundreds more might  still be buried alive after officials  

in Bangladesh say factory owners ignored an  order to evacuate. Some four hundred dead,  

hundreds still believed to be missing. Now much better hosts than me have made  

much better videos than this one about the human  rights violation that is just at the heart of  

fast fashion, and so rather than butchering all  of those, I've linked them in the description,  

and I encourage you to watch some of them. Okay, okay, calm down, dogs. I know this script  

has be-- cool it! I know this script has been  super, super dark up until this point, but we have  

officially entered the "we have a way out" phase,  and the big change we need to make is policy. Now  

despite fast fashion having a documented  history of labor abuse and environmental  

destruction, it is largely unregulated. Let me give you an example a company like  

Gap subcontracts to a factory in Bangladesh. That  company uses child labor. Gap turns a blind eye  

until some journalist figures it out. How old are you?  

Do you go to school? Gap pretends to be shocked,  they fire that subcontractor, Gap then just gets  

a new unregulated subcontractor-- You're  14. and the whole cycle starts again.  

I'm shocked, shocked to find that  gambling is going on in here.  

You're winning sir. Oh, thank you very much! Regulating the supply chain means passing laws  

like Germany's recent Supply Chain Due Diligence  Act, which basically forces companies to assess  

any human rights and environmental risks  in their supply chain and to establish an  

adequate and effective risk management system.  Now, you may have noticed that a lot of those  

words haven't exactly been hitting the gym, and  the law only forces companies to make an effort,  

rather than guarantee they prevent the violations,  but compared to America's complete lack of federal  

clothing supply chain legislation, they're the  goddamn Incredible Hulk. France also passed a  

law that requires a carbon label be included  on their textiles, but trying to fix a supply  

chain from the demand end is like trying to turn  a cruise ship by leaning really hard to one side.  

There are a handful of state-level supply chain  and manufacturing bills coming through the  

pipeline that have similar flavors to the German  one, and you can check those out and throw your  

support behind them. Links in the description. And if you're looking to make a difference on a  

personal level, surprise, you actually can! Fast  fashion is very much a social movement, and you  

can be a leader by moving in the other direction  and refusing to buy fast fashion. You can even use  

the three R's. Number one: if you have a big  event you can rent an absolutely bangin' outfit,  

or borrow it from a friend, but that counts  as the "R" from rent. And if you need clothes,  

you can buy pre-owned clothes, and I know that's  not exactly starting with R, but that's the best  

I could do, and I'm so sorry. And also if  your clothes are damaged you can repair them,  

okay? That's fun, plus you learn a new hobby!  Remember hobbies? It's what we used to do before  

we had phones. Those are the three R's, baby! Hey webheads, a little note here: there is some  

controversy about that first R, rent. A study  from Environmental Research Letters found that  

in some cases, the extra driving, transportation,  and frequent dry cleaning makes renting clothes  

worse than buying new clothes, so research  wherever you're renting from beforehand,  

or maybe wear something you already  have. It looks great, I promise.  

And somebody please tell me a word for  pre-owned that starts with R, because I  

honestly could not find one. Anyway shout out  to Dana Thomas, Fashionopolis, great book.  

And when it's time to get rid of your clothes,  try your best to resell them or go to clothing  

swaps or give them to friends or family. I mean  you can still donate them as a last resort,  

but just know that ninety percent of what  you donate is probably about to make really  

good friends with a seagull at the dump. And if you do have to buy new clothes (and you  

don't), but if you do (you don't), but if you do,  you should buy from someplace that actually gives  

a sh*t about their supply and manufacture. So the  next time future You just has to buy something,  

consider starting by researching the brand you're  buying from, or by using a third-party source like  

United by Zero. Now, I offered to plug United by  Zero for free, but those dorks literally paid me  

to shout them out right here. This is it. Fifteen  minutes into a video, they paid me for this.  

Insane. But, just so they get their money's worth,  United by Zero aggregates a bunch of independent  

brands that are vetted by actual scientists,  and are either upcycled or made to order or  

economically circular or just generally produced  in a more thoughtful, sustainable, lower-carbon  

way. They have a whole website you can scroll  through and check out if you feel like it, but the  

bottom line is that companies are going to chase  after customers, so if you as a customer place  

more of an emphasis on measurable sustainability,  companies are going to try to cater to you.  

So, first and foremost, push your representatives  to pass laws about fast fashion, and join up with  

organizations that are already working towards  that. I linked a couple in the description,  

but if you have a little bit of a google, I bet  you can find some local groups in your area to  

join up with. And by all means, be part of the  movement by avoiding fast fashion. From now on,  

the color of the season is "there is no  color", because that's a stupid idea,  

unless it's blue. I have this blue suit I got  a bunch of blue shirts that I wear all th-- no,  

you know, no, there's no color of the season,  that's dumb and bad, and it's gone. Okay thank you  

so much for watching Climate Town. See you later. Well that was about four minutes longer than it  

needed to be, huh? Seriously, thank you so much  for watching, I really appreciate it. And I'm  

going to keep making more videos, but if you  do want to support the channel I just started  

a Climate Town Patreon page, and the link is  in the bio. Wait, people have to pay for these  

videos now? Oh no, they're still all on YouTube  for free, this would just be if you wanted to  

like help me make them faster and better. Oh,  also, uh, exclusive behind the scenes content  

and interviews and, like, stuff that gets cut  from the final videos. So you want people to  

pay for the stuff that's not good enough to be  free? I am just hoping that a few people might  

want to send like five bucks a month, uh, my way  because you appreciate what could be described as  

highly researched, low budget, super try-hard  climate comedy. *pffft* Climate comedy? Or like  

edutainment? No, like infotainment. And you have  to pay for it? Only the bad stuff, the good stuff  

is still free, right? Okay, this-- I feel like  this really went off the rails. Hey man, don't  

look at me you're the one trying to get people  to donate to your climate comedy Patreon page,  

and the link is in the bio. *pffft* I have not tried marijuana.