Between January and June 2024, the European Parliament adopted laws aimed at holding the fashion industry accountable for its environmental destruction and social injustice. Within months, under pressure from business and political interests, the laws were dramatically weakened and then postponed. While regrettable, legislation alone cannot restrain this industry’s relentless, unbridled overproduction – the heart of the problem.
The head of H&M’s Foundation, Karl-Johan Persson has said, “There’s no question that we’re producing more garments than people buy, people are buying more than they really need, and the planet can’t cope. I think the solution is not to stop consuming...The solution is to consume more responsibly...”
The irony is that H&M and all fast fashion brands spend billions enticing young people to buy ever more clothing, promoting the idea of being “on trend” as central to desirability, capitalizing on the addictive nature of shopping, particularly online, whereby clothes can be purchased with a few keystrokes, delivered with the speed of light while making hardly a dent in one’s wallet and – with so little invested – thrown away after little use.
As Kenneth Pucker reports in the Harvard Business Review, “Like all industries, fashion is nested in a broader system. It is a system premised on growth. The urge to sell more and get consumers to buy more is still in the DNA of the industry.”
The fashion industry is rapacious. Production has doubled over the past 15 years and will double again by 2030 while the amount of time clothing is worn has dropped 40%. Every year, fashion uses vast amounts of earthly resources, makes between 100-150 billion garments, incinerates or landfills 87% and creates 92 millions of tons of waste.
Confronted about its massive overproduction, ‘ultra-fast fashion’ company Shein uses the specious argument that it creates little waste because it uses a small batch ‘test-and-repeat’ model. A new item is pushed out with only 50-100 manufactured, and if it catches on, only then will they increase production. Their argument being that unlike other producers, the result is far fewer unsold garments.
But while some items may be “small batched”, Shein is putting up as many as 10,000 new items on their website daily. From January to April of 2022, Shein added 314,877 new styles to their U.S. website. In fact, a recent study cataloged 1.3 million new products launched by Shein in just one year, and it ships one million packages a day.
The industry is forecast to grow at a steady pace from 2025 to $2.26 trillion by 2030 - roughly 25-35%. Global fiber production will increase from 132 million tons to 169 million tons by 2030. Polyester fiber production increased from 71 million tonnes in 2023 to 78 million tonnes in 2024. By 2030, global apparel consumption is projected to rise 63% to 102 million tons - fast fashion projected to expand at 11% per annum between 2025 and 2035.
What would drive the industry to reduce overproduction, improve sustainability and internalize the true cost of their operations? Economic instruments - chief among them, taxation.
There should be a 3-pronged approach designed to account for overlap.
- A carbon tax on all virgin fossil fuel-based materials - shifting cost parity toward sustainable fabrics.
- A federally mandated Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system requiring brands to fund the collection, sorting, transporting and recycling of their clothing - the “you made it, you pay for the waste” approach. Fees are based on sales volume, product type and environmental impact.
- A Bonus-Malus tax - In October 2025, France’s Assembly and Senate unanimously passed the Demodernizing fast fashion with a bonus-malus system. The law will levy a 5€ tax on all “ultra-fast fashion” clothing beginning in 2025 and rising to 10€ by 2030.
Raising the cost of clothing would encourage the purchase of fewer, better clothes; caring for them longer and replacing them only when necessary. It would level the playing field for companies that prioritize sustainable sourcing and fair wages. It will incentivize investments in alternative materials and end reliance on virgin polyester – the devil in the mix.
Legislation is not enough. As Dilys Williams, Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion in London, has written, “This lack of regulation and incentives to grow infinitely are an absurdity on a finite planet. Fast fashion is far from cheap – someone, somewhere is paying the real price.”
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