The fast fashion industry was popularized by brands like H&M and Zara in the early 2000s. The fast fashion industry, defined as the industry which sells clothes designed to be bought cheap and easily replaced to make way for newer trends, has grown exponentially. The global clothing industry produces more than 150 million garments each year. Consumerism has pushed an ever-growing demand for more clothes, in a faster, cheaper way. And of course, by the laws of the market, companies must rush to supply.

Companies want to make money, fast, but this means they also want cheap sources of labor. The market isn't controlled by the workers who make the clothes - it's created from the consumers who buy them, so companies rush to supply the consumers with what they want while competing to find ever cheaper sources of labor, ever quicker ways to make the clothes and minimize the amount of money spent. In the places where the consumers shop, laws against child labor, minimum wage laws, and basic workplace conditions protect workers from absolute exploitation, but the countries in which clothing companies have their clothes manufactured often aren't beholden to those kinds of laws. Thus, they make for a much cheaper source of labor, which means more money.

I find that giving a specific, real-life example is the best place to start, so we will look at the case of 23-year-old Taslima Aktar. Aktar, who lived in Bangladesh, was, like many people, living in poverty, desperate to find a source of income. A clothing manufacturing job provided her with one of the only opportunities to make a living, so she took it.

Aktar, like so many of her fellow manufacturers, worked in a windowless room choked with fumes from chemicals used in making clothing dye. Workers can normally work around 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes even 16 to 18 hours a day. The wage they work for is nowhere near enough to feed any children the workers may have, or even just themselves.

One day, Aktar began to experience a persistent fever. For two weeks, the fever and hacking coughs went on, and she requested time off to get well. Her supervisor refused. She knew that if she insisted on a day off she risked getting fired. After all, with so many people in poverty desperate for a job, she could be easily replaced, and she couldn't afford that.

Then she fainted at work and she was sent to the factory clinic to be revived. Once she recovered, she was sent straight back to the sewing machine. Come lunch break, she collapsed again. She was rushed to the hospital, where she died ten minutes later.

In the evening, her body was found stowed away at the factory gates. Her corpse was being kept there until her husband finished doing his job and could pick it up.

"This is how little they value our lives," said a worker. "We know the same thing can happen any day, to any of us."

"The building is safer, but as workers in the factory we still don't have any security in our lives. Even if I am on my death bed, they will ask me to finish making two more pieces before I die. We are nothing but machines to them."

If workers don't meet the quota, they are verbally abused and docked what little pay they have, and have been sexually exploited. Many of the workers have tried to form unions in order to demand their rights, but the unions are denied, the organizers fired, or even attacked.

Sritee Akter is a union organizer who has experienced this. She was 11-years-old when she started working at the equivalent of $6 a month to make clothes for Walmart. Akter, in her attempts to organize unions, faced down threats from management. "Factory owners will band together to push back against anything that threatens their bottom line, and most will stop at nothing to shut down union activity." She has been imprisoned and had a pistol shoved in her mouth for trying to organize.

"There's no security for us organizers," she said. "We have to live with the possibility that any day someone can come to our doors and hack us to death."

Managers fired more than 150 workers at the Dacca Dyeing plant in 2015, nearly every one of them supporting the union. Akter had phoned Gap countless times to ask for help, as it insisted it was against worker exploitation, but no help was received.

Recall that Akter was 11 when she joined the industry. According to the International Labor Organization, 170 million children are held in child labor. Child labor is a flourishing practice in this industry. A report by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations and the India Committee of the Netherlands found parents in India were being offered well-paid jobs for their daughters if they got sent to spinning mills. The parents would send their children away so that they could survive, but the offer of good pay was a lie. The report found that "They are working under appalling conditions that amount to modern day slavery and the worst forms of child labour."

Child labor makes sense from a monetary value standpoint. The tasks require low skills, and children's small fingers can be better suited to certain aspects of production, and, best of all, children are powerless. They can't organize, and they're terrified. Adults might fight back, but children find it impossible. The cotton industry is a big culprit, where children work transferring pollen from different plants, being exposed to pesticides and often being paid below the minimum wage.

The problem is a lot more complicated than it seems. The fast fashion industry is so complex and convoluted at this point that factories can sneak under the radar of both consumers and brands.

It's easy to blame it all on the clothing companies, but it's not the full solution. Clothing companies may set standards against child labor, but they're hard-pressed to catch it. Work can get sub-contracted to other suppliers that the clothing company may not be aware of, so even companies with strict guidelines can't solve the problem.

In places with extreme poverty, people can always be exploited into working in appalling conditions because they will choose it over death and starvation. While many people who care about this issue advocate a return to clothing production in the U.S., they fail to acknowledge that these jobs are the only sources of income many people have. If the factories were too close down, these people would be left completely unemployed. The way to help people is not to deny them jobs, but to improve their job opportunities and lift them out of poverty so they aren't forced to make this choice in the first place.

Even crackdowns won't work forever. Once unions, government action, and company crackdowns improve conditions in one place, factories often move into an even worse location with less protections to keep their profits rising and the labor cheap. Because consumers aren't aware and never give up their desire for cheap clothes, the demand doesn't go down, and the child labor doesn't stop being profitable.

If the child labor and terrible conditions are to be eradicated, it will take a concentrated effort by companies, consumers, and governments to stop it. Companies need to be stricter with figuring out where their factories are, governments need to secure more union rights and factory protections for citizens, and education is a must. When parents don't get educated, they have trouble making an income and resort to sending their children to work. Simple education in lifeskills, work, career paths, and on union rights can save countless people. Because poverty is what's driving people to send their children to these places, one of the best ways to end it is to help achieve the UN's goal of eradicating extreme poverty.

But alas, child labor and worker abuse is only half of the issue with fast fashion. As if human lives aren't enough of an incentive to make a change, the clothing industry is in fact the world's second largest polluter, second only to the oil industry. The average American throws away 81 pounds of clothing per year, adding up to 26 billion pounds of clothing in landfills per year. The fabrics used in the majority of clothes are non-biodegradable, which means they'll be sitting in the landfills for generations. Because of the incredible amount of resources lost each time someone throws away their clothes, the U.S. has lost $88 billion dollars. $88 billion which could be used improving the lives of people in the country.

Dye-run off from the production stage infects rivers like the Citarum River in Indonesia, one of the world's most polluted rivers. Five million people live by the river and are affected by the toxicity, often becoming inflicted with disease. Producing the cotton required for a single pair of jeans uses up 1,800 gallons of water - which is as much water as about 105 showers. Producing just a single shirt less does more to save water than someone not taking showers for about a third of the year. Farming cotton accounts for a quarter of all pesticides used in the United States, pesticides which kill bees and make people ill. Without bees, our species won't be able to survive, yet the pesticides continue.

What can you do? Mainly, don't fall into the consumerist trap. Before rushing off to buy the latest fashion, give some thought as to whether you actually need the clothes. Too often, people buy clothes for the sake of buying something, then never wear them and throw them out later. Only buy clothes if you need new ones. If the clothing item is something you're going to wear for a month and then discard, don't buy it. Save money and fabric, and help decrease the demand for fast fashion.

Thrift stores aren't always an option, but when you can try to shop at them. Despite common misconceptions, many of these clothes are in great shape and will last until you outgrow them. Plus, they're less expensive. This doesn't mean you can never shop at your favorite clothing store or grab the latest fashion, it just means that you should save these times for special occasions.

Choose to educate yourself. Seek out more information. The Netflix documentary "The True Cost" is a great place to start and is available on streaming. Please watch it to get a more in-depth look at this issue and hear first-hand stories and footage. Talk to family and friends about this to stop consumers from being unaware of the problem. Don't be so quick to throw clothes away and see if you can reuse them or give them to someone in need. Maybe, if you don't want clothes, you could give them to a homeless shelter or something similar. At the very least, acknowledge that the clothes you're wearing are likely made by small children trapped in terrible conditions and in poverty, and think about what happens when you throw your clothes away. Nothing is going to change unless people force it to.

Sources:

Anastasia, Laura. "The Real Cost of Cheap Fashion." The New York Times Upfront, 4 Sept. 2017, upfront.scholastic.com/issues/2017-18/090417/the-real-cost-of-cheap-fashion.html#1070L.

Kamat, Anjali. "Bangladesh's Factories Might Have Safer Buildings Now. But the Conditions for Workers Are Still Deadly." Slate Magazine, Slate, 15 Dec. 2016, slate.com/business/2016/12/bangladeshs-apparel-factories-still-have-appalling-worker-conditions.html.

Moulds, Josephine. "Child Labour in the Fashion Supply Chain." The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, labs.theguardian.com/unicef-child-labour/.

Tan, Zhai Yun. "What Happens When Fashion Becomes Fast, Disposable And Cheap?" NPR, NPR, 10 Apr. 2016, www.npr.org/2016/04/08/473513620/what-happens-when-fashion-becomes-fast-disposable-and-cheap.

Yardley, Jim. "Fighting for Bangladesh Labor, and Ending Up in Pauper's Grave." The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Sept. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/world/asia/killing-of-bangladesh-labor-leader-spotlights-grievances-of-workers.html.