Fast fashion is a contemporary term used to describe a relatively new phenomenon in the fashion industry: the run to capture every temporary trend while making the production processes increasingly faster and cheaper. Fast fashion is the quick response to new trends at low prices; fast fashion is disposable fashion.

Its low price, however, does come to a cost, as the clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world; being second only to oil. With the changes that the fashion industry made in the past few decades, it’s not a surprising fact.

For the average designer, the fashion calendar used to revolve around 2 or four collection releases per year, but now companies such as H&M produce a new micro-season every week, which amounts to 52 collections per year. In the meantime, the average American, encouraged to buy more and more low quality garments, discards over 68 pounds of clothing into landfills annually.

But the incredible amount of waste produced by the fashion industry isn’t the only issue, as the production of textiles is highly problematic too. It’s estimated that in 2015, 50 million tons of polyester, which is a petroleum by-product, were produced. Even cotton and other natural materials are mostly harmful, as growing them usually involves the heavy use of pesticides.

Another factor to consider is the journey that our clothes make: multiple components of a single clothing piece can travel all around the world to be cut in a country, sewn in another and finished in a third one; to then be shipped in stores, get briefly worn, and then tossed in landfills.

So, what is the solution?