Law-makers analysing fast fashion and its impact on the environment
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Young people’s love of fast fashion is coming under the scrutiny of Britain’s law-makers.
MPs say the fashion industry is a major source of the greenhouse gases that are overheating the planet. Discarded clothes are also piling up in landfill sites. and fibre fragments are flowing into the sea when clothes are washed.
The retailers admit more needs to be done, but say they are already working to reduce the impact of their products.
The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee says there is a basic problem with an industry that relies on persuading people to throw away good clothes because they are “last year’s colour”.
It quotes evidence that:
British shoppers buy far more new clothes than any nation in Europe
People are buying twice as many items of clothing as they did a decade ago
Fish in the seas are eating synthetic fibres dislodged in the wash
The MPs have written to the UK’s top fashion bosses asking how they can maintain the £28bn benefit their industry brings to the UK economy, while reducing the environmental harm.
They believe swift action is essential, because if current clothes consumption continues “…they will account for more than a quarter of our total impact on climate change by 2050”, chairwoman Mary Creagh told BBC News.
“Three in five garments end in landfill or incinerators within a year – that’s expensive fuel! Half a million tonnes of microfibres a year enter the ocean. Doing nothing is not an option.”
