This research report explores the unsustainable system dynamics of the fast fashion industry in the UK, offering potential solutions to make it sustainable, and providing further reading in the List of References.
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Executive Summary: This paper looks at the unsustainable system dynamics of the fast fashion industry in the U.K. The unsustainable system encompasses human behavior, environmental, and industrial system dynamics. The U.K. is the largest clothing consumer in Europe, so it plays a significant role in increasing the demand for fast fashion, which encourages the manufacturing of cheap clothing (Oxfam, 2019). Fast fashion can negatively effect garment workers, damage supplier and consumer countries’ environments, and increase CO2e emissions (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017). Due to consumer purchasing and disposal choices, the economic cost of sending clothing to landfills, and environmental degradation fast fashion in the U.K. is an unsustainable system that will continue to operate linearly in the absence of policy intervention (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017). A proposed policy for a more sustainable system is the creation of a governmental agency to assess and monitor fast fashion factories and brands operating in the U.K. The policy could be financed through levies on clothing sales and taxes for non-compliant fast fashion brands and factories.
