If you’re concerned about the future of our planet, you may be feeling pretty discouraged right now. The current administration has just undermined a vital component in our effort to reduce air pollution, handing its multimillionaire donors a big win. Those who back the fossil fuel industry have triumphed over years of scientific evidence demonstrating how greenhouse-gas emissions from cars and trucks have polluted our atmosphere. The result will be adverse consequences for human health, not only for those living today but, even worse, for our kids and grandkids.
Feeling discouraged by this dictate from DC, we can to throw up our hands, viewing ourselves as helpless to effect change except at the ballot box, which unfortunately, in 2026, is not a sure thing.
But there’s one surefire way you can promote a safer environment. Stop polluting our world by refusing to buy “fast fashion.”
If you’ve never encountered this phrase before, please let me explain. Clothing manufacturers in recent years have been pumping out cheaper and cheaper products to sell to their customers. They rely on cheap fabrics that are produced fast using polluting methods, then design styles that can be made quickly, then rush their shoddy clothes to market as fast as possible. The result is “fast fashion.”
The horrendous methods employed to produce fast fashion are described in shocking detail in an article published in the January 2026 issue of The Nation magazine. This article, “Our Global Fashion Emergency,” emphasizes that fashion is one of the most environmentally-destructive industries on the planet. According to the authors, fashion is the third-most-polluting industry, after energy and food. One estimate, from 2015, was that the process of making polyester, the favorite textile used in fast fashion, produced as much annual carbon pollution as 180 coal-fired power plants. And when fabrics like polyester are woven, washed, treated, and sewn into garments, they continually shed plastic microfibers.
Plant-based fabrics like cotton and linen also have environmental consequences. Cotton production uses huge amounts of water, and the chemical pesticides to grow it are flushed into waterways.
Please don’t assume that putting cast-off fast-fashion garments into charity bins solves these problems. Even when clothes are donated, they often end up burned or in a landfill, where they produce greenhouse gases like methane as they decay. Synthetic fibers keep shedding plastic microfibers into soil and waterways. And even in states like California and New York, where bans of toxic forever-chemicals (PFAS) have been enacted, decades of their use waterproofing outdoor wear means that discarded rain jackets continue to leach those pollutants.
The global consequences are appalling. Well-meaning donations of clothing to charities has created “fashion garbage patches” like one in Chile, where mountains of used clothing have been dumped for years. These are growing bigger and bigger every year. In 2022, the largest mound—possibly containing some 100,000 tons of discarded fabric–was set on fire, filling nearby towns with smoky, unhealthy air.
The problems created by fast fashion cannot be solved by individual shoppers. We need to force the industry to change. We can, for example, urge our lawmakers to enact more textile-recycling regulations wherever possible.
But there are things each one of us can do. First, we should buy quality clothing that will last. The key is sustainability. Paying a few dollars more for a sustainable garment will go a long way toward solving these problems. One American clothing company, Eileen Fisher, has taken responsibility for the full life-cycle of their clothes. It has created Eileen Fisher Renew, which saves and repurposes its old clothing. A director of the company states that “We will take them back, no matter the condition, and we’re going to [try to] figure out …the best thing to do with them.” But the catch is that “you have to make a good product the first time. You make something that hopefully lasts, and then you build the infrastructure and the systems to keep it lasting.”
Second, we can play a vital role as well. As consumers of new clothes (when we need them), we should no longer patronize clothing manufacturers who emphasize speed. Some of us are addicted to the cycle of buying new products quickly, then tossing them after wearing them for only a short time. We need to break this cycle. If more of us can discipline our buying habits by adopting this new approach, we’ll help to stem the pollution currently created by the fashion industry.
My favorite attire? Comfy old clothes I plan to wear for a very long time.
susanjustwrites
Susan Just Writes 