HOW FAST-FASHION IS SHAPING OUR ENVIRONMENT

One week, everyone wants it. The next, nobody does.

A certain style suddenly appears everywhere, on social media, in shop windows, and in our wardrobes. Thousands of people buy it because its the trend of the week. But have we ever stopped to ask what happens before that piece of clothing reaches us?
Fast-fashion brands are rising to the surface, marketing themselves as places where trendy and affordable clothes are just a click away. Behind every “must-have” trend is a long production process that directly affects the environment, involving raw materials, water, dyes, energy, factories and transportation. And when a trend disappears as quickly as it arrived, the environmental cost doesn’t disappear with it.
Let’s take a trendy T-shirt. Cute, right? Not after we look at how it’s made.

The EEA says 60 percent to 70 percent of textiles are made from plastic, mostly polyester, which is produced from oil and gas. So let’s take a T-shirt made of polyester. However, polyester is a synthetic fibre, and conventional polyester is produced from fossil-fuel-based chemicals derived from crude oil. Polyester is currently the world’s most-produced textile fibre, making up about 59% of global fibre production in 2025.
The raw materials are processed into the chemicals needed to create polyester, which are then turned into fibres. Those fibres become yarn, and the yarn becomes fabric.

Our T-shirt has now gone from raw material to fibre, from fibre to yarn, and from yarn to fabric.Now it has to be dyed, treated and finished, and that’s where another part of its environmental footprint begins.

Once the polyester fabric is woven, it moves to the dyeing phase which is widely considered one of the chemically dirtiest steps in fashion manufacturing. To give our T-shirt fabric it’s vibrant, trendy color, it is submerged in massive industrial vats. However, traditional dyeing is incredibly inefficient. A portion of the dye used never actually binds to the fabric. Instead, it is simply washed away into the wastewater stream.

This wastewater is a highly polluted cocktail of environmental hazards.

When inadequately treated textile wastewater enters rivers and streams, the consequences can become impossible to ignore. The water then turns opaque and colorful which blocks sunlight from penetrating the surface, halting photosynthesis for aquatic plants, choking out oxygen, and effectively creating aquatic “dead zones.” Furthermore, this toxic runoff seeps into the ground, poisoning the local soil and destroying agricultural fields that communities rely on for food.

After dyeing, the fabric undergoes drying and chemical finishing, which can involve substances used to provide properties such as wrinkle resistance, water repellency or stain resistance.

Now, our fabric is ready to be transformed into an actual garment. It moves to the cutting and assembly line, where workers cut out the pattern pieces. During this stage, some of the fabric is wasted as scraps and discarded. Due to fast-fashion brands prioritizing keeping prices low, much of their manufacturing takes place in countries where labour and production costs are lower.

But the T-shirt’s journey still isn’t over. It now has to travel across the globe to reach you. Packed into individual plastic bags, millions of these trendy garments are loaded onto cargo ships and planes. This complex global supply chain is incredibly energy-intensive and adds to the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with textile production and transportation.

The T-shirt is finally purchased, taken home, and worn for the perfect social media post. Yet, the environmental toll only accelerates in the consumer’s hands. Because our T-shirt is made from synthetic polyester, washing it can release microscopic plastic fibres. The EEA estimates that around 13,000 tonnes of textile microfibres enter European surface waters each year. Too small to be caught by standard filters, these fibers flow directly into oceans.

Even worse, the shirt’s life in the wardrobe is incredibly short.

When the trend inevitably dies in a week or so, the T-shirt faces its final, permanent destination which is the landfill. The speed at which we discard these expired trends is staggering, globally, the equivalent of one entire garbage truck of clothing is burned or dumped into landfills every single second. Because our ‘cute’ T-shirt is made from synthetic polyester, it does not readily biodegrade. Instead, it will sit in a landfill and persist for a very long time, slowly breaking down into smaller plastic particles while contributing to greenhouse-gas emissions associated with textile waste. The trend lasted a week, but its physical waste will outlive the person who bought it.

Fast fashion thrives on the illusion that cheap clothes cost nothing. But as the lifecycle of a simple T-shirt shows, the planet pays the ultimate price in stolen water, toxic rivers, and mountains of plastic waste. Breaking this cycle starts with us. By choosing quality over quantity, wearing what we own longer, buying secondhand, and demanding accountability from brands, we can slow down the clock. So the question is: Is feeling trendy for a week worth putting the entire environment at risk?

Research References
1.European Environment Agency (EEA). Textiles.
Supports the claim that 60–70% of textiles are made from plastic, mostly polyester, and that these synthetic fibres are made from oil and gas.

2.Textile Exchange. Materials Market Report 2026.
Supports the claim that polyester was the world’s most-produced fibre in 2025, accounting for 59% of global fibre production.

3.European Environment Agency (EEA). Microplastics from textiles: towards a circular economy for textiles in Europe.
Supports the section on microfibre shedding from synthetic textiles during washing and the estimate of around 13,000 tonnes of textile microfibres released into European surface waters annually.

4.United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Putting the brakes on fast fashion. 2018.
Supports information about fashion’s environmental footprint, textile dyeing and water pollution, and textile waste.

5.United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Fashion’s tiny hidden secret. 2019.
Supports the claims about plastic-based clothing, synthetic fibres, microplastic pollution and textile waste.

6.United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The International Day of Zero Waste: Towards Zero Waste in Fashion and Textiles. 2025.
Supports the 92 million tonnes of annual textile waste figure and the comparison of one garbage truck of clothing being landfilled or incinerated every second.

7.United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Connecting the Threads: A coordinated policy response to transform the textile value chain and offer solutions which preserve nature.
Supports information about hazardous chemicals entering waterways during dyeing, microfibre shedding, and shorter garment use.

WriteToWin Monsoon 2026