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Appalling or Advantageous? Exploring the Impacts of Fast Fashion From Environmental, Social, and Economic Perspectives
Summary
This study explored the environmental, social, and economic impacts of fast fashion, finding that while low-cost clothing provides consumer benefits, the industry generates substantial negative externalities including textile microplastic pollution, excessive water use, and exploitative labor conditions in developing countries.
Fast fashion is a controversial topic in both academia and among the general population due to its perceived benefits for consumers in developed countries and consequences for the workers in developing countries. This paper explores the effects of fast fashion from environmental, social, and economic perspectives to determine whether fast fashion and its processes generate a net positive or net negative impact on society. This is accomplished by collecting and analyzing current research on the topics of fast fashion and sweatshops and synthesizing this data into a cohesive paper than provides a holistic outlook on the effects of fast fashion. The conclusion of this paper, based on the findings, is that fast fashion offers a net positive impact.
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