Black Friday Sales Expose How Little Corporations Care About the Environment
By: Zo Sajjad
Tags: Earth, Pop Culture, Business, Environment, Fashion

A slew of upset Twitter users chimed in on the controversy and said

“Black Friday just seems to be a race by some retailers to prove how unethical their clothes are?” ‘Whilst this and all the other Black Friday deals look extremely appealing, please think before you buy into these fast fashion brands selling clothes under £1. Think about who, where, and how these items are made. These brands are not ethically operating!!!!!’

The overwhelmingly negative response to the sale prices, however, did not stop Pretty Little Thing from selling out of most of their range in a matter of minutes. Some deals are just irresistible I guess! — no matter the ethical cost!

Fanning the flames of controversy, environmental groups took notice of the corporations’ history of fast fashion promotion and said

“The perpetuating cycle of overproduction and consumption relies on the use of natural resources that contributes substantially to environmental degradation,” — — Kerry Bannigan, founder of the Conscious Fashion Campaign. “Fashion has a bigger environmental footprint than aviation and shipping combined. Single-use clothing is bad for the environment, and doesn’t necessarily save customers money in the long run.” — Libby Peake, Green Alliance

The damning comments made by environmental groups has further sparked a conversation amongst primarily Gen-Z to purchase more sustainable and ethically made clothing while holding massive corporations accountable for their wrongdoings.

According to, the Guardian

‘PLT’s parent company Boohoo Plc launched an internal investigation in July after a report from The Sunday Times said that workers in an English factory were being paid as little as £3.50 ($4.37) an hour, far below the UK’s national minimum wage of £8.72 ($10.89).’

Fast fashion may be a way for some to have access to trendy clothes at a cheap price,but the environmental cost may be too high. Business Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnsen previously reported that the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions, with 85% of textiles going to dumps yearly.

How you can help!

The first thing you can to do is make a conscious effort to change your habits. Once you get yourself in the mindset that you want to change the way you consume to a more ethical and sustainable way — you’re already on the road to success.

The second thing that we all need to start taking into consideration when we want to start building our ethical closet, no matter what budget you’re in, is learning like the five R’s. Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, and Recycle!

Refuse

This is the first step. Learning to say no to impulsive purchases. Learning to say no to buying things just because they are cheap. Learning to not buy things just because they’re in style. There’s a lot of things we need to first learn to say no to.

Reduce

Then the next step is reducing the number of clothes that you buy and you might be buying a lot of things and you might actually like all of them but then the other question is do you need them? — Does all that stuff add value to your life? — Can you cut down on shopping so much even if you like everything? — Reducing means just cutting down on the volume of things you’re buying.

Reuse

The next step is to constantly reuse. This entails reusing all the clothes that you already have until they’re not wearable anymore. This is because a lot of us buy things — we buy things we like — we buy things we need — and then we just end up not wearing them.

I’ve heard that you have to wear every single item of clothing at least 30 times to make up for the environmental cost that it took to make that item of clothing. So you should keep that in mind the next time you go shopping. I certainly have in the past bought a lot of new clothes that I wore like once or twice and never wore again — but now I’m making strides to a more sustainable lifestyle.

Repair

The next step is repairing. So taking clothes that might be damaged might not fit well and making sure you do the necessary adjustments so that you can keep wearing those clothes because even if something rips — there are many creative ways to keep using it. If you’re not certain on how to repair your clothing, YouTube has a ton of tutorial videos and inspiration to give you advice on how to do that. Lots of people can interpret that in a lot of different ways!

Recycle

Recycling your clothes — in my opinion — is not the best solution. It should be the last resort. If you have clothes that are too damaged that you don’t want to wear or just clothes that you know are in fine condition. You just want to donate them — recycle them or whatever the best solution is first.

Trying to find a home for those clothes before you donate them or recycle them. So either sell them on your new pop or Poshmark or whatever other app is local or popular in your area or try and give them away to your friends family. You can host a code swapping party at your place. Hold on to your clothes.Find a home for them.

Make sure that that clothing gets used because once you donate those clothes, there is not a guarantee that that item of clothing is not going to end up in the landfill because a lot of donation centers receive a huge amount of clothing. They can’t use all of it and they end up sending a lot of it to the landfill but if you have found a company that recycles a hundred percent of the clothing they receive — then go ahead and donate.

In my opinion before you recycle an item of clothing that is too damaged to get resold or re-worn, just turn it into cleaning rags. You can also turn old damaged t-shirts into totes There’s just a bunch of ways. You can upcycle old clothing!

When it comes to purchasing things, what options do you have?

In my personal opinion, I do believe that secondhand is the most environmentally friendly way because you are not contributing to the production of new items.

If second hand isn’t an option and buying online isn’t an option and there is something that you need to buy I’d say is find an ethical brand in your area that you can try that specific item you want. But I’m gonna be realistic here the chances of that happening and the chances of an ethical store existing in your area are very low. If you can’t support ethical fashion — then your option is to support an unethical brand……..