Sustainable fashion's recommended annual intake: five items
Unsustainable Practices and Mental Health Issues in the Fashion Industry
The fashion industry is entangled in a cycle of excessive consumption and unsustainable practices, driven in part by emotional buying behavior and fast fashion. This cycle contributes significantly to mental health issues for both consumers and workers.
Emotional Buying Behavior and Impulse Purchases
Emotional triggers such as Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), social pressure, and instant gratification heavily influence impulsive fashion purchases, particularly among young consumers. Features like flash sales, countdown timers, and limited stock alerts prompt quick, emotion-driven purchases, leading to overbuying and excess disposal of clothes.
Fast Fashion’s Contribution to Unsustainable Practices
Fast fashion promotes rapid production of low-cost, trend-driven garments that prioritize quantity and speed over quality and sustainability. This business model results in massive waste, toxic chemical use, pollution, and poor working conditions in factories, causing environmental degradation and health harms to workers. The fast turnover of styles encourages consumers to buy frequently and discard clothes quickly, fueling a linear consumption model incompatible with sustainability.
Mental Health Issues Linked to Fast Fashion and Emotional Buying
The relentless pressure to follow trends, maintain social status, and achieve instant gratification can provoke anxiety, stress, and low self-esteem, particularly in socially connected and young populations. The cycle of emotional buying—buying for pleasure or to reduce anxiety—can lead to guilt or regret, worsening mental well-being. Factory workers in the fast fashion supply chain also suffer from physical health risks and mental health tolls due to unsafe, exploitative conditions.
Counter-Trends and Awareness
Despite these challenges, there are signs of change. Gen Z's growing preference for thrifting and secondhand fashion reflects a conscious effort to reject fast fashion’s negative social, environmental, and mental health impacts, favoring sustainability and individuality. However, the resale market faces challenges from the influx of low-quality fast fashion items, threatening the integrity of sustainable fashion movements.
Patricia Eguidazu, after discovering eight bags of unused Zara clothes during a closet cleanout, felt a pang of conscience and unprecedented anxiety from this realization. She now only buys clothes if there's a need, looking for the pattern and material she needs, trying to get the most use out of it, and selling it when she's done using it. Eguidazu emphasizes that there are numerous alternatives for sustainable consumption in fashion suitable for all budgets.
Invisibility in the manufacturing process of the fashion industry contributes to the continuation of excessive consumption capitalism, as when we hide what we're uncomfortable with, it becomes comfortable to consume low-cost clothing, accepting objects without acknowledging the suffering behind them. Sabina Urraca states that reducing consumption in fashion is difficult but necessary.
The fashion industry uses around 215 trillion liters of water annually to meet its demand. The purchase of cheap clothing is an act of irresponsibility due to the prevalence of pollution, human rights violations, and exploitation in the textile sector. The fashion industry is responsible for between 2% and 8% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN.
Eguidazu denounces that the belief that one cannot afford to buy more expensive clothes is a common excuse for accumulating cheap clothing without need. Reading labels is another option for sustainable consumption, as they provide information about where the garment was made and with what materials. Eguidazu attributes her previous mechanical consumption to various emotions such as anxiety, emptiness, euphoria, and boredom.
In conclusion, emotional buying behavior driven by social and psychological triggers exacerbates consumption patterns fueled by fast fashion, which in turn drives serious environmental unsustainability and mental health problems among consumers and workers alike. New consumer awareness and alternative models like thrifting offer some hope but face structural challenges.
The average consumer's emotional buying behavior, driven by factors like FOMO, social pressure, and instant gratification, aligns with the impulsive purchases in the fashion-and-beauty sector, which can contribute to an unsustainable lifestyle. The fast-paced production and disposal of trend-driven, low-cost garments promoted by the home-and-garden sector, known as fast fashion, exacerbate these issues, leading to significant problems in sustainable living.
