Fast fashion is the rapid production of inexpensive clothing by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends. This practice has led to an overconsumption of clothing. Research has shown that the consumption of clothing has doubled in the last 20 years in America. The fast fashion market requires a great number of raw materials and leads to pollution. According to recent data, greater than 92 million tons of textile are wasted per year. Few of those textiles are sustainable and can be recycled. Also, lots of wastes are created during the production process. 15-30% of fabric is wasted during cutting or due to mistakes. In general, 85% of all textiles go to the dump each year, which is an enormously high number. Because of those wastes, 10% of human’s greenhouse gas emissions are from the fast fashion industry. Additionally, more than 60% of fabric fibers are now synthetics, derived from fossil fuels, so if our clothing ends up in a landfill, it will not decay. Those synthetic microfibers end up in both the ocean and glacier peaks. All these figures show that we need to take action right now and stop deteriorating the environment. 

The rapid production of clothes that facilitates fast fashion means that human welfare is being compromised. We can especially see this in developing countries where 80% of garments are made by women aged 18-24. When thinking environmentally, the greenhouse gas emissions created by fast fashion directly lead to climate change which has been proven to have consequences such as rising sea levels which can harm ecosystems and iceberg melting which means a loss of freshwater. Plants, animals, and humans alike are all being harmed by the fast fashion industry.

Therefore, in order to fundamentally reduce the environmental impact from the fast fashion culture, we strongly urge the U.S. Department of the Treasury to apply new corporate tax policies onto the fashion industry. First, fashion companies should pay 10% of profit as environmental taxes if they are promoting products mainly made out of unsustainable fabrics such as polyester, acrylic and cotton. Environmental taxes are designed to tax behaviours that are harmful to the planet's health, which has already been used in energy and transportation industries. This taxation can not only discourage companies from using unsustainable materials, but also potentially allow the government to invest the tax revenue into more environmental protection projects. On the other hand, we also urge government subsidy that encourages the replacement of traditional fabric with sustainable materials such as organic/recycled cotton and organic hemp. This can be practiced by allowing a 5% corporate tax cut if a fashion company’s production is mainly based on sustainable materials. In fact, many companies have switched to a more environmentally friendly approach on their products, including Boden, Patagonia, Pact, and Eileen Fisher. Their approach should be systematically encouraged so that more manufacturers join the campaign of betting against fast fashion and its negative externalities.