Fast fashion, the environment and guiding
Reflections from a Queen's Guide
The Queen’s Guide award is the highest award you can work to in guiding. It gives you the chance to develop your skills, give back to guiding, and support your local community.
One of the sections of the award is a community action challenge, where you increase your knowledge of an important issue through research and practical activities, then share what you learn with other Girlguiding members.
As part of that challenge, Eleanor got in touch with us to tell us about her research on fast fashion, and how she’s working on bringing that topic to life for girls in her unit.
‘Hello! I’m Eleanor from Norfolk and as part of my Queen’s Guide award I’ve been researching the issue of fast fashion and its environmental impacts on the world. I know how much Girlguiding members and volunteers care about the environment, so I thought this would be the perfect place to share what I’ve learned along with tips on how to work on your fast fashion footprint!'
What is fast fashion and why does it matter?
Fast fashion is a complex issue that directly or indirectly affects all of us. It brings together aspects of social inequality, exploitation of women and girls, waste, and CO2 emissions into one big, troubling industry.
As members of a global collective of women and girls trying to improve and benefit ourselves, each other and the planet, fast fashion is so relevant to us in guiding. Through my research, I hope to educate, encourage and empower members of guiding to think about their clothing consumption and work together to make a positive change, as we so often do!
Fast fashion can be defined as inexpensive clothing rapidly produced in large quantities in response to the latest fashion trends. This has obvious positive impacts, such as making fashionable clothing more affordable. However, the environmental and social impacts of fast fashion are what I really want to highlight with my research, especially as we know it’s an issue that matters to girls and young women.
What I learned – the environment
It shocked me to learn how big an impact the fashion industry has on the environment - more than flying and shipping combined. Growing and processing raw materials like cotton or producing synthetic fabrics (such as polyester) make up the bulk of the emissions produced by the fashion industry.
But there are also emissions that happen once you stop wearing the item, like decomposing or being transported elsewhere as waste.
'The fashion industry makes up 10% global emissions and produces 20% of all waste water in the world.'
As the majority of emissions come from the production stages, it has been suggested that second hand clothes are almost always better for the planet. With styles changing rapidly throughout the year, there’s always a hot new trend and it’s easy to feel pressured to buy.
And the low quality of many fast fashion brands’ items means that, although many items are bought, few are worn more than once or twice before being discarded. This adds to waste pollution and makes it harder to dispose of clothes ethically through charity shops or second-hand websites and apps. Even if we make an effort to keep fast fashion garments for longer, their low-quality materials and production often means that they degrade and become unwearable fast.
Lots of fashion waste from countries such as the UK also often ends up causing pollution in other countries (including lots of items donated to charity, which are regularly sold to buyers abroad to sell on or recycle). An example I found of this is the Kantamanto Market in Ghana, where around 100 tonnes of second-hand clothes from the UK become waste around the city of Accra every day.
While it’s great to donate to charity and extend the life of our clothes, it was eye opening to learn how these systems work behind closed doors.
'For me, being aware of the whole picture has helped to make more informed decisions about what I buy.'
What I learned – the social impact
Something I think really makes this issue relevant for Girlguiding is the people involved, as the majority of workers are women and girls from lower economic backgrounds.
In Bangladesh, for example, 80% of garment workers are women and girls who are underpaid.
Bangladesh has also seen one of the worst disasters in the garment industry, with the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building on the outskirts of Dhaka in April 2013. 1,134 people were killed, and thousands more were left with life-changing injuries.
It brought world-wide attention to working conditions in the garment industry, sparking campaigns for compensation and more transparency. There’s also a growing movement of Bangladeshi entrepreneurs and designers who are leading on sustainable and ethical changes in the industry, and making positive changes.
It’s not just an international issue - workers in the UK are also exploited by the fast fashion industry. A fairly recent scandal in 2020 discovered that garment workers in a factory in Leicester were being paid as little as £3.50 an hour and were working in conditions that didn’t align with national Covid-19 guidelines.
What we can do
Environmental and social issues like this can often feel like a massive uphill climb on some very slippery grass – it sometimes feels like the obstacles in the way of ‘saving the planet’ are too big to solve. But everyone wears clothes, and the choices we make with our clothing can add up to make a big difference overall. By shopping second hand or reducing the number of items we buy, we can save so many resources, including water, power and raw materials.
What can we do as individuals?
The biggest ways to reduce our personal impact on the environment through our clothing choices include:
Shop second hand!
Charity shops, thrift shops and online apps and websites such as Vinted, Depop and Ebay are having a real renaissance. It’s more affordable, and lets us have a lower environmental impact by keeping old clothes in circulation for longer, rather than buying new. Buying second hand has also become trendy, especially among younger age groups. And this has led to second hand retailers improving their size ranges, opening new branches and encouraging people to invest in the second-hand market. Some high street fashion brands have also introduced second hand elements to their shops, encouraging buyers to bring unwanted items back to the shop in exchange for vouchers. Check out sustainable fashion brands like Lucy & Yak for examples of this.
Experiment with your style.
The most sustainable clothes are the ones we already own! Styling items we already own in a different way, or upcycling them into a new garment can be a fun way of creating that exciting feeling of a new outfit without the cost (on our purses or the planet). If you have sewing skills, you could really go to town creating new outfits from items you already own. But even if you don’t know one end of a needle from the other there are plenty of styling hacks to help items you already own feel more exciting and reduce the need to buy more.
Make do and mend!
Looking after the clothes in our wardrobes and fixing small repairs when possible is a great way of making sure we don’t need to make unnecessary purchases to replace things. Making repairs into a statement can also be fun. Embroidering flowers over holes or patching with scraps of contrasting material (maybe from an item of clothing that is too far gone to be wearable) are both ways of making repairs visible on purpose.
Research your purchases.
If you do choose to buy new, try to make conscious choices about which brands you choose. Researching a brand means we can find out what kind of production system our money will be contributing to. And it gives us time to think about purchases to make sure we really want them and aren’t just being influenced by adverts or trends. If you do have a favourite brand who isn’t as environmentally and socially friendly as you’d like, you could encourage them to improve by writing to them, organising online actions or signing open letters and petitions.
These are all great ways to make a difference, but it’s important to acknowledge that shopping sustainably, both second hand and with brands, isn’t always size inclusive. As individuals, this is just about doing the best that we can, and recognising that this can look different for everyone.
How can we help in Girlguiding?
We know that fast fashion and the environment are big passion areas for lots of girls. Action on this area was one of the things girls asked for in Girlguiding’s 2024 manifesto.
As part of my Queen’s Guide Award, I am designing a challenge badge for Guides and Rangers to encourage them to think about how their clothes impact the world and give them ways of making that impact as positive as possible.
Some of the ideas from the badge, which can be done in units, include:
Organising and holding a clothes swap at a meeting – everyone has clothes they don’t really wear, whether they’re the wrong size, not our style, or we’ve just worn them for long enough and want a change.
Why not organise with other Guides or Rangers to bring in unwanted items from our wardrobes at home and create a swap shop at your meeting place? You could even go a bit further and sell the items for low prices and then donate the money to a charity that supports garment workers or works on helping environmental issues.
Check out the environmental impact of high street names using the Good On You directory online (and other similar online tools).
This site allows you to search fashion brands and see a rating based on how sustainable and ethical they are. Whether you want to avoid animal products, make sure workers are being paid a living wage, or are just curious to know more about how our choices impact the world, Good On You and other similar sites are useful tools to help us understand what we are being sold and to avoid greenwashing.
What Girlguiding is doing for the environment
We launched an environmental plan this year to make sure that we’re actively working to reduce our impact on the environment and address climate change. One of our main objectives is to cut our carbon footprint by 50% by 2040.
Our new uniform, launching in 2026, is a great opportunity for us to make a difference and we’re on a mission to improve the way we’re sourcing and manufacturing our clothing. Some of the ways we’ll be doing this is through choosing more sustainable materials, looking at ways to improve our packaging and continuing to partner with manufacturers that are leading the way in doing things sustainably.
You can also find our ethical code of conduct on our online shop.
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