Author(s)

Che Liu, Guanhua Liu and Xiaorui Gong

Corresponding Author

Che Liu

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the fast-fashion clothing industry has caused increasingly serious environmental pollution during the process of clothing production and inventory disposal. This essay discusses the respective advantages and disadvantages of the fast fashion industry and the slow fashion industry, especially the problems and benefits in terms of environmental pollution. The results show that from the perspective of environmental protection, the slow fashion clothing industry is more environmentally friendlier than the fast-fashion clothing industry; however, slow fashion also has the disadvantage of lagging behind, and its shortcomings make it difficult for consumers to favor. As a result, the fast fashion industry still dominates the apparel market, and it is more popular due to its low production cost and fast production speed. However, the fast fashion industry poses many threats to the environment, such as the pollution of wastewater by dyes during the production process, and the toxic gas emitted by the burning of stored clothes, polluting the atmosphere. This essay compares the fast fashion industry and the environmentally friendly clothing industry fashion in terms of the pollution range of the two different clothing industries, the use of dyes during production, the choice of clothing fabrics, and the disposal of inventory clothing. From the point of view of chemical engineering and operation unit of chemical engineering, the results show that the slow-fashion clothing industry is superior to the fast-fashion clothing industry in the use of dyes, the choice of fabrics, and the disposal of waste clothing. The purpose of writing this article is to form a concrete awareness of the harm caused by the fast fashion industry and to popularize the culture of the slow fashion industry to the general public. It is expected that the two different clothing industries can learn from each other in order to rectify for more environmental friendly solution, and therefore, reduce the pullulation and damage to the ecosystem.

KEYWORDS

Fast Fashion, Slow Fashion, Environmental impact, Pollution, Chemical Engineering