Do you like shopping? Fashion brands are constantly producing new clothes, and people think they lack clothes even though they don't, and continue to consume clothing. With the development of the internet, the number of people who buy clothes online is increasing, and fashion has become a common denominator for people all over the world. There are probably very few people who buy clothes because they really have no clothes to wear.

Many people already know that disposable wipes, paper cups, plastic cups, and straws are causing environmental problems. Seeing disposable products thrown away on the streets makes you think about environmental problems. However, clothes are not easily thrown away, and even if you throw them away, few people are interested in how they are treated after being thrown into a clothing recycling bin.

More than 70% of the clothing produced worldwide is not sold and is disposed of by incineration. In the UK alone, 13 million garments are discarded each year, and if you add up the data for countries where statistics do not even exist, you can expect an unimaginable amount of clothing to be discarded.

These are clothes discarded in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the world's largest clothing waste landfill. It is said that the scale is so large that discarded clothes can be seen even in satellite photos taken from space.

Clothing has a greater impact on the environment than you might think. First of all, the amount of water used to produce clothing is enormous. It is said that up to 2,700L of water is used for one T-shirt. Also, microplastics generated when clothing is incinerated and landfilled are a problem. Microplastics do not rot and remain in nature, mixing into the food of many animals, and eventually entering the human body through the consumption of those animals. The clothing industry is also said to be a major industry that emits greenhouse gases. About 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the clothing industry. In addition, polyester, a representative material used to produce clothing, requires 350 million tons of oil every year.

‘Fast fashion’ refers to the fashion industry that produces cheap clothes to keep up with trends. Some examples are UNIQLO, ZARA, and H&M. You must have bought clothes from these brands at least once. People are unknowingly destroying the environment by consuming fast fashion.

What kind of clothing consumption and disposal methods should we choose for the environment in the future? It is better to donate unused clothes than to throw them away. FILA Korea conducted a campaign to upcycle unused clothing. They upcycled discarded clothing donated by employees and customers to create furniture for children at disability welfare facilities. Freitag also declared ‘NO Black Friday.’ To prevent overconsumption due to Black Friday, they temporarily suspended sales for 24 hours at online and offline stores and ran a campaign with the slogan “DON’T BUY, JUST BORROW,” lending bags to customers for free for up to two weeks.

Some countries are also taking legal action against fast fashion. France has legally obliged clothing producers to recycle or donate unsold clothing and banned them from discarding it.

Recently, with the trend of vintage, more and more people are visiting thrift shops. I hope that using thrift shops will not be just a fad, but will become a starting point for saving the environment that is being destroyed by clothing.