by Courtney Wight ’26 on October 9, 2025
environment
As October rolls around and fall begins, I get excited about all of the fun activities to do in the upcoming months. Fall’s best holiday, Halloween, is always one of my favorite times of the year as people get together to celebrate and let loose with a variety of creative costumes. My mom still has most of our childhood Halloween costumes in the basement, just in case we ever need them. However, now many people are planning multiple costumes and buying brand new items for each outfit, which they never intend to wear again.
This issue with Halloween costumes highlights the more serious underlying problem of fast fashion. A majority of clothing companies have shifted from creating quality products to producing cheaper and poorer quality items to hop onto trends before they change. Fast fashion is extremely bad for a variety of reasons, including from an environmental standpoint and a labor rights perspective.
The fashion industry as a whole is responsible for roughly 10 percent of global carbon emissions. From 2000–2014, clothing production doubled, with these problems continuously getting worse, resulting in over 90 million tons of textile waste every year. Additionally, fast fashion clothing is bought with the intention of wearing it a few times before discarding it; therefore, less than 1 percent of fashion textiles are recycled and many of these items end up in landfills.
To combat this growing issue, governments have started to propose potential solutions to minimize the negative impacts. France has been the first major nation to acknowledge fast fashion as a major issue and enact legislation to penalize companies for selling fast fashion. Additionally, the state of New York has proposed legislation to attack the other main con of fast fashion, which is exploitative labor conditions. The proposed bill would require clothing companies to disclose their supply chain in an effort to encourage companies to use properly sourced labor and reduce their excess waste in the supply chain.
Nonetheless, legislation can’t change everything. Ultimately, it is up to consumers to better educate themselves on the impacts of their actions. Social media has created a culture of constant consumption of goods, including clothing, leaving many feeling a constant need to buy and shop more. With the rising costs of necessities and a potential for a recession, consumers need to avoid falling for micro-trends and purchasing cheap, poorly made clothing that they will only wear twice.
Now, I’m not saying don’t have more than one costume, or not to buy clothes online anymore. I just ask that students take a second thought before buying more things online. Are there fun costumes you can do from pieces you already own? Do you have any existing items, either at home or from your friends, that you can wear instead of buying something new? Can you and your friends take a trip to the thrift store or Spirit Halloween to buy items in person, instead of online? Small changes like these matter, and it is necessary to change our mindsets regarding fast fashion for real progress to be made.