EigoPro 2級 読解 — The True Cost of Fast Fashion

The True Cost of Fast Fashion Walk down any shopping street and you will see clothes at prices that would have seemed impossible a generation ago: a T-shirt for the cost of a sandwich, a dress for less than a cinema ticket. This is the world of fast fashion — an industry built on producing cheap, trendy clothing at remarkable speed. New designs can move from the drawing board to store shelves in as little as two weeks, and many chains introduce new items every few days to keep customers coming back. The business model behind these low prices is simple: produce enormous quantities, sell them quickly, and encourage shoppers to treat clothes as almost disposable. Many garments are worn only a handful of times before being thrown away. In fact, studies suggest that the average piece of clothing today is kept for half as long as it was just fifteen years ago. When trends change weekly, last month's purchase soon feels out of date. The environmental price of this cycle is enormous. The fashion industry is one of the largest consumers of water in the world — producing a single cotton T-shirt can require thousands of litres. Dyeing fabric pollutes rivers in many manufacturing regions, and most discarded clothes end up buried in landfill sites or burned, releasing greenhouse gases. Because so many garments are made from synthetic materials such as polyester, they can also shed tiny plastic fibres every time they are washed, which eventually reach the sea. Awareness of these problems is growing, and so are the alternatives. Second-hand shopping, once seen as embarrassing, has become fashionable among young people. Some brands now offer repair services or take back old clothes for recycling. Campaigners say the most powerful change, however, is also the simplest: buying fewer clothes, choosing well-made items, and wearing them for years rather than weeks. As one designer famously put it, the most sustainable garment is the one already hanging in your wardrobe.

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