Hi, Lennon! 👋

📖 Reading Passage

The True Cost of Fast Fashion

Walk into any high-street clothing store and you will find hundreds of styles priced so cheaply they seem almost disposable — because, for many shoppers, they are. "Fast fashion" describes a business model that pushes enormous quantities of cheap, trend-driven clothing onto the market at extraordinary speed. A style may appear in stores just weeks after a celebrity wore it, sold at a price low enough that a customer might wear it once and discard it. The human and environmental costs are staggering. Most fast-fashion garments are manufactured in countries where labour laws are weak, meaning workers often earn less than a living wage in dangerous conditions. Textile dyeing is the world's second-largest polluter of clean water — the chemicals used to colour fabrics frequently end up in rivers, making water undrinkable for nearby communities. Cotton farming, which supplies much of the world's fabric, uses an enormous amount of pesticides and water: it takes roughly 2,700 litres of water to produce a single cotton T-shirt. Microplastics are another hidden danger. Synthetic fabrics like polyester shed tiny plastic fibres when washed. These fibres pass through wastewater treatment systems and end up in oceans, where fish and other sea creatures ingest them. Scientists have found microplastics in fish sold in markets, in drinking water, and even in human blood. Consumers, however, have power. Buying second-hand clothing, choosing quality over quantity, and supporting brands that use ethical supply chains can all reduce the damage. The cheapest shirt in the store may carry a price tag that the planet simply cannot afford.