Fast fashion is a rapidly mounting problem. It’s thought that this year an estimated 18.6 million tonnes of clothing will end up in landfills around the world.
The average consumer will throw away 60% of perfectly good new clothing within the first year, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
By 2050, the amount of clothes thrown away across the globe, will total 150 million tonnes – which would be be bigger than 8 famous monuments including Big Ben/Elizabeth Tower in London, the Empire State Building in New York, the Angel of the North in Gateshead, The Colosseum in Rome and
Great Wall of China twice over.
The ethos of mass production and heavily discounted prices, is having a huge impact on our environment, where chemical laced clothing lies in landfill for centuries. But it’s often swept under the carpet, as we don’t see the landfills filling up with clothes and it’s hard to imagine what 150 million tonnes really looks like (aside from equally 937 billion men’s T-shirts).
What’s Wrong With Fast Fashion? Our 5 Min Guide Will Catch You Up
Now UK-based NeoMam Studio has created a series of stills and a video that shows the scale of the impact if our fast fashion clothing waste was piled up and compared to some of the world’s most iconic monuments.
Big Ben equals 363 tonnes of clothing waste, while the Empire State Building equals a whopping 81,853 tonnes of discarded clothes.
5 Ways You Can Reduce Your Clothing Waste
1. Avoid fast fashion. Download Your Free A-Z Guide To Ethical Fashion
2. Mend your clothing to keep it in circulation longer. 5 Simple Ways To Make Your Clothes Last Longer
3. Swap your clothes with friends, neighbours or family. How you can run a clothing swap event
4. Shop secondhand. How to (successfully) shop for vintage
5. Recycle your clothes when you are done with them. Traid off: What happens to your clothes when you recycle them?
