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Papers
61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to The Global Clothing Oversupply: An Emerging Environmental Crisis
ClearEnvironmental Pollution by the Fast Fashion: Current Status and Prospects
This review examines the environmental footprint of fast fashion — mass clothing production that generates enormous textile waste, synthetic fiber shedding, and water pollution. It is relevant to microplastics because synthetic garment washing is one of the largest sources of microfiber pollution entering waterways, though the paper focuses on industry-level sustainability responses rather than quantifying microplastic release specifically.
Evaluating the environmental impacts of textile and fashion industries
This review evaluated the environmental impacts of the global textile and fashion industries, finding that resource overconsumption, water pollution, synthetic fiber microplastic release, and vast waste generation make these sectors major drivers of ecosystem degradation.
Clothing and Textile Sustainability
This review examines sustainability challenges facing the global clothing and textile industry, covering resource use, chemical pollution, and the growing problem of microfiber release from synthetic textiles. Synthetic garments shed millions of microplastic fibers with every wash, making the textile industry a major contributor to global microplastic pollution.
The impact of fast fashion on the environment and climate change
This paper examines how fast fashion's rapid production cycles and disposable consumer culture contribute to growing environmental impacts including carbon emissions, water pollution, and textile waste. The disposal of fast fashion clothing releases synthetic microfibers and eventually contributes to microplastic pollution in soils and waterways.
SUSTAINABLE FASHION INDUSTRY: Why do we need a switch towards conscious consumption?
This thesis examines the fashion industry's environmental and social harms, including its significant contribution to microplastic pollution through synthetic textile washing, and argues for a shift toward more conscious consumer behavior. Fast fashion is one of the largest sources of synthetic microfibers entering waterways globally.
The Impact of Fast Fashion on Marine Plastic Pollution
This paper reviews the fast fashion industry's contribution to waterway pollution, explaining that cheap synthetic clothing sheds microplastic fibers during production and washing, and that the industry's rapid growth — especially in Asia — is making this a significant global pollution source. The authors propose manufacturing regulations and consumer behavior change as solutions to reduce the volume of synthetic microfibers entering waterways.
The current situation of fast fashion industry and how to reduce the waste
This paper reviews the environmental problems caused by the fast fashion industry and evaluates current and emerging solutions including circular economy design and advanced recycling technologies. The authors argue that traditional waste disposal is no longer adequate for the volume of textile waste generated. Transitioning to circular fashion models could reduce the textile fiber microplastics that wash off synthetic clothing into waterways.
The Environmental Impacts of Fast Fashion on Water Quality: A Systematic Review
This systematic review documents how fast fashion contributes to water pollution, including the release of synthetic microfibers — a major source of microplastic contamination. The fashion industry produces about 20% of global wastewater, and these microfibers can end up in drinking water and food sources.
Fast fashion revolution: Unveiling the path to sustainable style in the era of fast fashion
Researchers examined the relationship between fashion orientation and fast fashion purchasing behavior, including how attitudes toward sustainable clothing consumption moderate these choices. They found that fashion orientation strongly influences purchase intention and actual buying behavior, but that sustainable clothing awareness can temper fast fashion consumption. The study highlights the environmental costs of fast fashion, including microplastic-generating textile waste, and calls for greater consumer education.
The global apparel industry: a significant, yet overlooked source of plastic leakage
This study provides the first comprehensive estimate of the global apparel industry's total contribution to plastic pollution, including microfiber shedding during washing, packaging waste, and end-of-life textile disposal. The apparel sector is identified as a major and largely underestimated source of plastic entering the environment.
Sustainable Fashion
This review of sustainable fashion examines how the textile industry's shift to fast fashion has accelerated environmental damage, including the shedding of synthetic microfibres — a major source of microplastic pollution in waterways — and argues that circular production models and consumer behaviour change are needed to reduce the industry's footprint. The paper is relevant because textile microfibres are among the most commonly detected microplastics in marine and freshwater environments.
Appalling or Advantageous? Exploring the Impacts of Fast Fashion From Environmental, Social, and Economic Perspectives
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 and Sustainability Challenges: A Critical Review with Insights from Cyprus
This review examined the environmental impacts of fast fashion, focusing on water and chemical pollution, carbon emissions, and microfiber release, with a case study perspective on Cyprus. The authors argued that fast fashion's business model is fundamentally incompatible with environmental sustainability goals.
Slow Fashion in a Fast Fashion World: Promoting Sustainability and Responsibility
This study examines the "slow fashion" movement as a sustainable alternative to fast fashion, analyzing how different business models, consumer behaviors, and policy frameworks can shift clothing production and consumption toward more responsible practices. Slow fashion is directly relevant to reducing textile microfiber pollution, since synthetic clothing is a major source of microplastics in wastewater.
Role of Textile Industries in Microfiber Pollution
This review examines the role of textile industries in generating microfiber pollution, tracing microfiber release during fabric production, consumer use, laundering, and end-of-life disposal as synthetic textile demand grows with fast fashion. The review documents pathways by which textile microfibers enter freshwater and marine environments and accumulate in aquatic biota, linking industry growth trends to escalating environmental microfiber loads.
Perspectives of Textile Waste Management in the U.S. – A Review
This review examines the growing textile waste crisis in the United States, driven by fast fashion and population growth, and surveys current disposal and recycling practices. Textile waste is an important but underappreciated source of synthetic microfiber pollution when fabrics degrade or are laundered.
Sustainability Challenges of the Textile Industry
This review examines the environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges facing the global textile industry, including high water consumption, chemical pollution, labor exploitation, and the compounding effects of fast fashion on waste generation and resource depletion. The authors argue that addressing these interconnected challenges requires a multidimensional approach spanning supply chain transparency, regulatory reform, and shifts in consumer behavior.
Transformation Toward Slow Fashion: A Literature Synthesis on the Ecological and Social Impacts of Fast Fashion
This review synthesized literature from 2014 to 2024 on the ecological and social impacts of fast fashion, finding that the industry contributes up to 10% of global carbon emissions, generates significant microplastic and textile waste, consumes large water volumes, and is linked to labor exploitation — while identifying slow fashion as a viable sustainable alternative.
The Phenomenon of Greenwashing In The Fashion Industry: A Conceptual Framework
This paper develops a conceptual framework for understanding greenwashing in the fashion industry, where brands make misleading environmental claims. The fashion industry is a major source of synthetic microfiber pollution, making honest sustainability reporting especially important for environmental protection.
The Environmental Impact of the Fashion Industry: The Necessity of Sustainability
This study examines the environmental impact of the fashion industry across six dimensions — carbon emissions, clothing waste and synthetic material pollution, chemical and dye water contamination, water resource consumption, microplastic fiber shedding, and land use — arguing for the necessity of systemic sustainability transitions in fashion production and consumption.
Fashion to Dysfunction: The Role of Plastic Pollution in Interconnected Systems of the Environment and Human Health
This review traces how the fast fashion industry contributes to microplastic pollution through the production, laundering, and disposal of synthetic textiles. Researchers found that microplastic fibers released from clothing bypass wastewater treatment and accumulate in human organs including the liver, lungs, and brain. The study highlights urgent gaps in understanding airborne textile microplastic emissions and calls for changes in textile design to reduce fiber release.
Sustainability of the Fashion Industry: An Examination of the US Fashion Industry's Impact on Water Quality
Researchers examined the impact of the US fashion industry on water quality, conducting a review of the literature on garment production-related water pollution while noting that the US has been underrepresented in global studies that typically focus on countries with large manufacturing sectors. The study found that domestic fashion industry activities contribute measurably to water quality degradation, including through microfiber and chemical discharge.
Sustainability Initiatives in the Fashion Industry
This paper examines sustainability efforts in the fashion industry, where synthetic textiles are a major source of microplastic fiber pollution during washing. It reviews industry initiatives and consumer behavior changes aimed at reducing environmental impacts, including microfiber shedding.
Students' Level of Awareness on the Waste Contribution of the Fast Fashion with Their Clothing Consumption Behavior
Researchers surveyed 104 students to assess their awareness of fast fashion's environmental waste contributions and examined the relationship between that awareness and their actual clothing consumption behavior. While students demonstrated high awareness of wastewater and solid waste impacts, Goodman and Kruskal gamma analysis revealed only a negligible to moderate correlation between awareness and purchasing behavior.