Fashion revolution: Here’s why I don’t buy new clothes

The apparel industry is one of the most polluting in the world, and almost half of all fast fashion produced is disposed of in under a year, so I decided to step out of the vicious circle.

A few years ago, I decided to explore the world of zero-waste living. I began to avoid plastic cutlery, carried a water bottle everywhere I went, switched to reusable menstrual products. Somewhere down the line, I realised that there was one big aspect of my life that was still responsible for generating a significant amount of waste, and that was my large and frequently refreshed wardrobe.

Fast fashion is a huge culprit when it comes to generating waste and eco-unfriendly production practices. New styles on the racks every few weeks, prices going as low as a few hundred rupees for a T-shirt — this kind of consumerism comes at a cost. The apparel industry is one of the most polluting in the world, which is no surprise when you consider that almost half of all fast fashion produced is disposed of in under a year.

The strain on our natural resources is felt through this industry’s entire supply chain. Fiber production has become highly dependent on fertilisers and pesticides, which contaminate soil and groundwater. Toxic effluents from garment factories are dumped in rivers and oceans (untreated, in many parts of the world).

In every wash, clothes made of synthetic materials send micro-plastics into our water bodies, where they are mistaken for food by marine life. And then the clothes end up in our landfills, barely a year after they were first packaged and sold.

Perhaps worst of all, these clothes are produced on such a mass scale that they end up being incredibly cheap, which encourages people to buy them without a second thought, and dispose of them as easily, further intensifying the vicious circle.

(Mallika Arya is a zero-waste advocate and works to create change from the bottom up)