UW club offers free solution to fast fashion – The Badger Herald

Clothing trends often come in and out of fashion on a whim, but research has shown that fast fashion has negative environmental impacts. The University of Wisconsin Club Re-wear it offers a way to keep up with trends while remaining environmentally conscious.

Re-Wear It is a sustainable fashion club on campus that advocates conscious consumerism by providing sustainable options to students.

Sonakshi Garr, co-president of Re-Wear It, said fast fashion is characterized by “microtrends” that appear in pop culture. Shein and Amazon are usually two of the most popular stores selling clothing that follows these trends. Garr said fast fashion is often low quality and unsustainable.

Xiaoyang Long, professor of business operations and information management at UW, co-author of 2021 book study on the environmental impacts of fast fashion, speed is the goal of fast fashion in order to keep up with ever-changing trends.

Long said fashion trends have always changed quickly, but with the development of social media, they now move even faster. Instead of trends changing in a weekly or monthly magazine, trends can change in a day on TikTok.

That poses problems for other companies that aim for quality, Long said. As they introduce more styles, they tend to have more remaining inventory. If these companies adapt their production system to that of fast fashion, the quality of their clothes will most likely decrease.

Long said the life cycle of a garment has many stages of pre-production, production and post-production. Farmers grow cotton and factories use the cotton to sew clothes. The clothes are then sold, worn and finally thrown away.

Every step of manufacturing causes pollution, Long said.

[After] there is post-consumer waste, how long does it take for the consumer to get rid of the clothes and throw them away? » Long said. “Or do they recycle it?” Do they reuse it? How long does this last?

Long said fast fashion features operational innovations that claim to help the environment. Fast fashion companies are constantly testing the market to see what sells and what's trending. They produced a wide variety of different styles in small quantities to test these trends. Since the companies produce small batches, they can be considered environmentally friendly because they do not waste clothing if it is not sold.

But that's not the whole story. Long said an important implication of the supply chain is the environmental aspect.

When companies make smaller batches, they tend to use low-quality materials for their clothing, Long said. As the quality of clothing decreases, its lifespan is reduced. This is a problem because after each wash, the quality decreases and tears eventually appear.

Long said that instead of wearing a sweater for years, consumers are more likely to wear a low-quality sweater once or twice before throwing it away. It is a vicious cycle in which the consumer buys cheap clothes, wears them once or twice, throws them away and then buys another one. This cycle results in faster draining of natural resources.

Throwing away clothes ends up in landfills and chemicals pollute waterways, Garr said. These low-quality clothes are usually made of plastic polyester and are not biodegradable. This means they take a long time to decompose, which harms the environment.

Garr said there are some benefits to fast fashion options and convenience. Thrift stores have a limited range of sizes, and people who buy larger sizes, are large, or extra small can't always find a piece that will fit them there. It's more convenient to quickly go online and buy something in their size for less than $10 than to go to thrift stores, where you have to browse racks of clothes.

I mean good [of fast fashion] is accessibility, that's why we [Re-Wear It] “We’re so focused on building our own inventory in a diverse way,” Garr said. “We're just trying to keep people away from this [fast fashion]but we recognize and see the ease that fast fashion has brought.

Garr said consumers buy these clothes cheaply, only to wear them once or twice before donating or throwing them away. Unfortunately, many donated clothes don't make it into thrift store windows if they are torn or torn.

Re-Wear It offers a sustainable program to combat this problem, Garr said. The club teaches students the importance of mending and repairing clothes and provides sewing machines so students can repair their clothes instead of buying new ones or throwing them away.

Garr said the club hosts clothing swaps every other Friday, where students can choose free clothing. He has a store of donated clothing that they have collected over the years, but encourages people to bring clothing to donate when they shop at the swap.

People like to go out, they like to have new clothes. But most of the time, when you just buy from Amazon or Shein, you're essentially supporting an entire system of environmental oppression,” Garr said. “So we're trying to get people away from that and give them the opportunity to refresh their wardrobe, in a way that's simple, accessible and free.

Re-Wear It wants to help people understand that the clothes they already own have value, Garr said. If a person doesn't think they'll wear an item of clothing more than 10 times, it's not a good purchase.

For people to make more sustainable decisions, Long said they need to follow the three Rs of sustainability: reduce, reuse and recycle. Reducing means buying fewer clothes and buying better quality. Reusing means selling old clothes and buying second-hand clothes. And recycling means donating old clothes.

In France, the government has long taken a stand against waste in the fashion industry. The French government is considering adopting a tax on fast fashion, similar to the tax on cigarettes. Government regulation can promote change in the fashion industry by providing economic incentives for greener fashion.

The most revolutionary thing you can do when it comes to sustainability is simply to be more conscious, Garr said.