MPs warn that fast fashion also has a ‘huge’ impact on the planet

Plastic bags, bottles, cups and microbeads have all been targeted in the war on waste.

Now MPs are turning their attention to so-called ‘fast fashion’ and its cost to the environment.

They say cheap, throwaway clothing is having a ‘huge’ impact on the planet with the use of toxic chemicals and production of climate-changing emissions. 

The Commons environmental audit committee is to investigate the carbon, resource use and water footprint of clothing throughout its life cycle and will look at how clothes can be recycled and waste and pollution reduced.

Chairman Mary Creagh said: ‘Fashion shouldn’t cost the earth. But the way we design, make and discard clothes has a huge environmental impact.

‘Producing clothes requires toxic chemicals and produces climate-changing emissions. 

‘Every time we put on a wash, thousands of plastic fibres wash down the drain and into the oceans.

‘We don’t know where or how to recycle end-of-life clothing. Our inquiry will look at how the fashion industry can remodel itself to be both thriving and sustainable.’ 

Plastic rubbish washed up on a beach littered all over the shore

A report last year by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on ‘redesigning fashion’s future’ found that if the global fashion industry continues on its current growth path, it could use more than a quarter of the world’s annual carbon budget by 2050.

It also found that the growth of clothes production is linked to a decline in the number of times a garment is worn.