By: LEENA KHAN
Staff Writer
Fashion is an important part of everyone’s identity, however, most people don’t know where their clothes came from or who made them. Where the material comes from, and where clothes go after you dispose of them, are all questions that people don’t usually pay attention to. Online shopping makes it so easy to buy clothes these days, and this explains why we don’t question why our clothes are so cheap through certain websites. There is a huge issue with waste, most people only wear some items of clothing once, never to be worn again. Fashion is becoming so fast, it’s disposable. The more we buy, the more we waste. One and a half million tons of textiles go into landfills in Britain every year. Many people don’t know that cotton – a plant that is widely made to be used for fabric – is picked in some countries where forced labor is happening. This isn’t a vastly known problem because that cotton is mixed with ethical cotton, so it isn’t deemed an issue. Some smaller independent designers are focused on using sustainable textiles and have a goal of making the world void of so much fashion waste. These days, it is important to shop ethically – because no one wants to wear garments knowing that someone was oppressed by making them. This leads to the question, can we ever be 100% sure our clothes are ethically produced? There are some designers that base their brand and business off of making their items 100% traceable. The garments are all handmade and consumers can trace them back to threads being grown from plants. Steps that can be made to more sustainable buying habits include, not buying something you don’t love. Oftentimes we will still buy garments even if we don’t love them. Looking at the label can help us identify the origin of the garment, and fixing or repurposing clothing all help with keeping vast amounts of clothing out of bins.