The Environmental & Social Costs of Fast Fashion on the Leather Industry

The adverse effects of fast fashion in the clothing industry are much similar and akin to the impact of fast food-it is cheap, bad for the environment and bad for your health. It encourages the modern consumer to invest in cheap and poor quality clothing, which is mostly unnecessary, and yet, it has become increasingly popular over the years.

When it comes to the leather industry and the processes of leather manufacturing, fast fashion has given birth to a great environmental and social hazards, including increasing wastage and leather disposal. By making leather cheaper and reducing its quality, fast fashion has made leather less durable and more disposable, and a fabric that was once associated with its finesse and durability has become another chunk of unrecyclable waste.

Research reveals that as fast fashion continues to rise, the fashion industry generates 32 kg of fabric waste each year, which includes leather, suede leather, and cotton amongst other fabrics. This fabric waste increases the annual garbage and pollution added to the landfill each year by a staggering 1.7 billion kg and leather makes up over 5% of this wastage that harms the environment, water bodies and marine life.

Fast fashion has given rise to a wide range of hazards and threats to the health of the human beings, animals, and the environment at large. When we take a look at the leather manufacturing and consumption in the fast fashion industry, we find it tied to a diverse range of pollutants. For instance, the quantity of fossil fuels, water resources, land and feed that are consumed in raising livestock, mainly for the production of leather, causes a great deal of harm to Mother Earth.

Aside from the menaces of animal cruelty and animal hide retrieval processes, the leather tanning processes is by far the most hazardous and toxic source of pollutants that has given a bad name the entire fashion industry.

It not only causes harm to the environment by adding pollutants to the water bodies and marine life, and giving birth to diseases and infections in the surrounding environment, but also, it exposes the workers and consumers to toxic and hazardous chemicals. Research reveals that the leather tanning chemicals used by most fast fashion brands are one of the risk factors of cancer. At nobrand. we take great care to provide our customers with ethically source and cruelty-free leather, so they can flaunt the finesse and luxury of leather with a guilt-free conscience.