New York City (NYC) is a hub for fashion, but with the rise of fashion cycles, we have seen an alarming rise of waste. In the United States, it is estimated that 11.3 million tons of textile waste end up in landfills each year, and the number of times a garment is worn has significantly declined around 36% in 15 years. With the quickly changing fashion cycles and frequent disposal of “out of trend” clothing, these textiles are contributing to various health and environmental issues.
With the majority of clothing being produced in low to middle income countries, the fashion industry has relied on vulnerable labor forces, specifically children during the production of a clothing garment. The high global demand for inexpensive clothing has created conditions where child labor has become commonplace. With over 160 million children engaged in activities that prevent them from engaging in healthy development ventures, the fashion sector often hires these children. This type of labor is contributing to health inequalities because children are not receiving an education and are working a physically laborious job, which will continue to lead to a cycle of poverty. Child labor directly goes against children’s human rights as stated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). The four main principles of this convention are non-discrimination, best interest of the child, right to survival and development, and respect for the views of the child. Throughout the world, there is an acknowledgment to uphold the rights of children from exploitation and doing work that is harmful to their health, education, and overall development. The fashion industry is struggling to uphold these values as high demand for quickly changing clothing trends leads to overproduction and greater labor need.
The overproduction of clothing not only negatively impacts children’s health and life outcomes but also the environment. Specifically, dyeing and finishing fabrics are responsible for over 20% of global water pollution, and water consumption is extremely high during the production of clothing as it takes 20,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton. Beyond pollution, the fashion industry's wasteful production model is also contributing to climate change, further negatively impacting global health and wellness. The over utilization and damage of the Earth’s resources goes against the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Since 2022, the UN general assembly has recognized the importance of a sustainable world as a right, highlighting the changing recognition to understand one health—the connectedness of health between people, animals, and the environment.
Clothing is an essential part of every person's day-to-day life and offers the ability for expression of personal identity, culture, and social belonging. Although there are existing interventions in place in NYC to track large revenue clothing companies’ supply chains and track the amount of clothing in landfills from companies, preventing the creation of these clothing by limiting the amount of clothing garments a large revenue company can produce per season would more effectively prevent environmental issues and the onset of health issues. In order to slow the harms emerging from the fashion industry, it is important for governments to impose production caps, reducing overproduction and waste. When production caps are embraced, a shift to slow fashion can begin, which will slow the exploitation of labor and the land.