On a warm, sunny day, a group of teenage girls stroll through the mall, shopping bags swinging by their sides and beaming with pride for every dollar spent on their newest fast fashion fads. Two years later, across the globe, a young girl from Kenya will find one of those items at a Mitumba market.   

Though they live in completely different worlds, both girls are connected by a single garment — a Brandy Melville tank top that becomes a microcosm of the global textile industry, exposing the deep contrasts between privilege and precarity, desire and discard.   

But how did this garment cycle across the globe and what are the economic ramifications of its journey?   

Fast fashion garments will only interest the consumer for a few seasons, if that. Since the mid-2000s, the average Global North shopper has come to consume twice as many garments as the average global consumer. This surge in fast fashion consumption has turned countries like Ghana into involuntary dumping grounds for discarded clothing.  

Each week, Ghana imports around 15 million garments of secondhand clothing, items locally referred to as obroni wawu or “dead white man’s clothes.” These garments are economic remnants of the vast overproduction of the fashion industry, shipped to the Global South under the guise of donation or reuse. But while some of these clothes are resold, many are too damaged to wear, contributing to overflowing landfills, strained local economies and disrupted domestic textile industries.  

A Double-Edged Sword  

Due to the declining quality of clothing, much of the apparel sent abroad ultimately ends up in landfills. This creates a harmful cycle. 

An estimated 85% of all clothing is either incinerated or discarded in landfills. Although consumers often donate clothing to thrift stores with good intentions, only about 15% of all garments are actually recycled – either sold wholesale on lower markets, downcycled, or exported. Estimates as high as 45% of donated clothing is sent to foreign countries, much of it ending up in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Once there, about 20-50% of garments will end up in open-air landfills, where they release gases and chemical leachates during decomposition, polluting the air, soil, and groundwater. These pollutants also pose serious health risks to nearby communities. To worsen matters, discarded clothing frequently clogs drainage systems, blocking water flow and exacerbating flooding — especially in subtropical and tropical regions that already face frequent flood events.  

Yet secondhand clothing (SHC) sectors still offer critical benefits. In developing countries, SHC provides affordable clothing and reduces the demand for locally produced garments, conserving water, energy, and other resources. In Kenya, for instance, 91.5% of households purchase and rely on secondhand clothing. This reuse contributes to circular economic practices, extending the life cycle of garments while limiting textile waste.  

The SHC import business is also an economic driver. In Kenya alone, the business generates around $107 million annually in tax revenue. A study by Humana People to People showed that each ton of second-hand imported clothing sustains approximately 6.5 jobs, and in Kenya 2,000,000 citizens are involved in 2nd hand trade.  

While there are some benefits, a full assessment reveals a harsh reality — one marked by a default on development, rising health risks, and environmental neglect, all of which define the future of global stability.  

Cha-Ching?  

While SHC imports may generate some employment, this work is often less valuable than the opportunities lost through the collapse of domestic textile industries. In 1980, Kenya’s textile sector employed around 500,000 people. Today, that number has fallen to just over 20,000, largely due to the overwhelming influx of imported second hand clothing that makes it nearly impossible for local manufactures to compete. 

As these clothes continue to flood in, efforts to build domestic textile industries are undermined. Countries that accept SHC are left with weakened industrial capacity, limited development of human skills, and a global identity as mere dumping grounds for the Global North’s castoffs.  

In 2018, East African nations attempted to shift away from dependence on imports by focusing on local manufacturing. Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Burundi increased import tariffs on secondhand clothing to stimulate domestic production. However, this move was met with retaliation from the United States. The Office of the U.S Trade Representative threatened to remove four of the six countries from the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a trade agreement intended to promote trade and economic growth across the continent. Under this pressure, all but Rwanda backed down. Rwanda held firm on the ban, prioritizing long-term economic sovereignty over short-term trade benefits.  

Sick in Style   

Of all the clothing sent from the Global North, only about 1 in 3 pieces are actually usable. In Kenya 2021, about 458 million used clothing items were immediate waste, and 307 million of these garments were made from plastic-based fibers. The waste is known to overflow into the Nairobi River – often from nearby landfills or markets.

In other cases it is either burned in landfills or used as fuel in local markets. In Cambodia, textile waste is used as a fuel to fire kilns in brick factories. As with all locations where textile waste is burned, this toxic practice releases toxic fumes into the atmosphere leading to dire health consequences. The result? People, and especially children, are plagued with many health issues such as asthma, skin infections, diarrhea, lung infections, and cardiovascular disease.

The large proportion of organic textile waste, combined with ideal conditions for anaerobic decomposition leads to significant methane generation, and thus spontaneous fires. Meanwhile, 69% of SHC clothing consists of synthetic textiles. These do not biodegrade in landfills and when they are incinerated, the emissions will contain many toxic elements that can lead to cancer, birth defects and lung diseases among other serious health problems. 

When clothing waste infiltrates fresh waters or oceans, they can affect livelihoods through their pollution. An example is Ghana’s Korle Lagoon, once a thriving freshwater ecosystem supporting a fishing industry and used for recreation, now ranks as one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The now blackened water, flows into the coastal water off Ghana where it affects the livelihood of the fishers who find textile waste clogged in their nets. Nearby communities are also affected, as the polluted water they rely on for drinking, bathing, irrigation, and livestock is polluted. 

Contaminated water sources are both environmental catastrophes and economic lifelines. Soil and water contamination from textile dumping contributes to soil degradation. The leached chemicals disrupt natural processes impairing soil fertility affecting plant life. Moreover, the microplastics shed from these materials during use and their persistence in landfills pose a long-term threat to soil health, altering its physical and chemical properties and impacting microbial communities. This can potentially reduce crop yields, destabilizing agricultural economies that entire communities depend on.

Clothing waste pollutes at the end of its life cycle, just as it does at the beginning. For example, Indonesia’s Citarum River, used by over 15 million people, hosts textile factories that discharge chemicals above international safety standards. These toxins have declined 60% of rice and fish yields, cutting off foundational revenue sources.  

In Lesotho and Tanzania, rivers once used for drinking, bathing, and irrigation are now toxic, with water pH levels as high as bleach. The result is a widespread decline in health and productivity, as communities face medical burdens and economic hardship from tainted ecosystems they can no longer rely on. 

What starts as a consumer choice in developed nations begins and ends as a crisis of health, hunger, and lost income in developing regions. 

Waste Fashion Colonialism  

Africa has become a dumping ground, one shaped largely by the economic gap between its population and wealthier industrialized nations. Even in textile waste, the imbalance is sharp: people with higher incomes generate, on average, 76% more clothing waste than those from lower-income communities. This reflects a center-periphery dynamic, a structure where developed nations (center) benefit from the less developed nations’ (periphery) resources, while limiting their development, keeping peripheral nations dependent and underdeveloped. This theory is seen through the Global North offloading its excess onto the Global South. 

In African countries, buying new clothes is a luxury that most people cannot afford. Yet the promise of Western fashion creates a trap, preventing a local textile industry while leading to the destruction of waterways, increasing health risks, and growing dependency, all in pursuit of access to “Western privilege”.  

Western Nations ship their used clothing to Africa even though the region lacks the infrastructure to handle the huge volume of waste. But in doing so, they avoid the environmental consequences and legal responsibilities of handling it at home, offloading not just clothes, but the pollution, toxins, and long-term damage that come with them.  

There is a deeper meaning behind the economics of global waste —  one that reflects the unhealthy relationship between consumption and global well-being. At its core is a culture of disconnection: a lack of care for what sustains us — our environment, communities, and the labor behind our resources. The detachment from both the origins and consequences of our choices is unsustainable and the driver of the health and environmental crises we see today. The cycle of overconsumption, disregard, and displacement of waste clothing, creates a ripple effect that burdens the most vulnerable while protecting those most responsible.    

So, the next time you’re strolling the mall, ready to purchase a new skirt or top or dress, ask yourself: Is it really worth it? 

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As the climate crisis accelerates, fashion continues to focus on mitigation – cutting emissions, reducing water use, and sourcing sustainable materials. But there’s another side to climate action that remains dangerously overlooked: adaptation, particularly for the garment workers who power the fashion industry. Despite growing sustainability efforts, the fashion industry continues to ignore how climate change endangers the workers and communities behind global garment production. 

While the world warms and extreme weather events escalate, the apparel workers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Vietnam, backbones of global garment production, bear the brunt. In these tropical and subtropical production zones, climate change manifests not only as rising sea levels, but in heat-stricken factory floors and flooded neighborhoods. 

Flood events in worker neighborhoods that have relatively poor infrastructure are chronic irritants for workers in South Asia. They lead to delays in getting to work and the loss of income. Face-to-face surveys conducted in Dhaka by the BRAC University Center for Entrepreneurship Development (CED), found that apparel workers miss an average of three full days of work due to flooding and heat illness.  

Flood events last for several months in South and Southeastern Asia, as water rises to the point where some Dhaka area factories must send boats to collect workers. The floods lead to illnesses like rashes and diarrhea, raising medical costs while production and income is lost. This can amount to 10% of garment workers total income during periods when living costs, such as electricity and medicine, surge due to heat-related impacts.

An example unfolds in ready-made garment (RMG) factories in Bangladesh, where a study published by BMC Public health found that more than half RMG workers surveyed from 10 randomly selected sweatshops had faced damage from natural disasters related to climate change. Workers were affected by flooding (79.9%), drought (52.2%), river erosion (49.5%), earthquakes (45.1%), storm surges (39.7%), and landslides (13%).  Nearly half of those interviewed were forced to migrate, increasing job competition within factories in urban areas, further lowering wages as a result.  

Respondents also identified climate change as a primary contributor to illnesses. About 59% mentioned no air conditioning or extra cooling protocols to resolve increased heat, and 78% were affected with illness as a result. Despite this, none of the factories gave any risk allowance for illness as a result of climate change.

The Price of Climate Change… 

Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labour Relations (ILO), projects exorbitant economic losses if adaptation is not agreed upon. Without adaptation, high heat and humidity will create a loss of 4.9% of Bangladesh’s 2030 projected GDP, with similar impacts for Cambodia (-6.5%), Pakistan (-5.1%), and Vietnam (-4.9%). Fashion’s earnings are expected to fall 22% (65.6 billion USD) by 2030 and 68.7% by 2050 (1,424 billion USD) without adaptation. 

A research study by Harvard shows that damage by climate change impacts hot, low-income countries most, as a one-degree Celsius rise in temperature reduces economic growth by 1.3 percentage points, a notable decrease and an effect that will not be seen in developed nations.  

Globally, some workers can earn extremely low wages. In one documented case a supplier paid as little as $1.58 per hour. In Bangladesh workers are paid an average of $113 per month for full-time work, making every hour of work vital. In 2022, it was estimated that potentially 490 billion hours of labour were lost due to heat.   

These losses in GDP and available working hours will be almost completely felt by those in developing countries.  

Sink or Swim 

Adaptation is crucial to protecting garment workers ᠆᠆ so how do we?  

One solution is encouraging social dialogue between leadership and workers. When factories operate with unsafe equipment or when extreme heat makes labour dangerous, the demands for change must come from those affected: the workers themselves. However, supply chain factories must prioritize social dialogue to encourage safe and healthy workplaces. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social dialogue was the only mechanism workers had to protect themselves, proving its effectiveness in crisis. But the protections provided during emergencies should not be exceptional, rather set a standard. Importantly, both governments and fashion companies must institutionalize these practices as part of their daily operations.  

Investment in green energy can transform factories into sustainable and climate resistant workplaces. Beyond reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions, renewable energy can efficiently power cooling systems, lowering indoor air temperatures by 3-4 degrees Celsius.  

But the primary, and most effective and immediate form of climate adaptation in developing nations is raising wages. Without adequate income, workers cannot meet basic standards for health and safety. When wages are among the lowest globally, people are extra susceptible to malnutrition, poor healthcare, and a diminished living standard. A study published by the National Library of Medicine found that among female garment workers in Bangladesh, 43.33% were underweight, and 96% of those had health issues. Over half the participants reported multiple health complications, even before factoring climate stressors. This situation will only worsen as temperatures rise.  

In Dhaka, workers have told the Executive Director of the Global Labor Institute at Cornell,  Jason Judd, that they often resort to selling or pawning household goods to pay electricity bills. During climate-intensive periods, medicine prices reportedly rise as much as 10 times, putting healthcare further out of reach. Paying a living wage means compensating workers adequate for a standard workweek so they can afford a decent standard of living ᠆᠆  essentials like food, water, housing, and education. Yet despite this, only 2% of garment workers make a living wage.  

Raising wages is often argued to threaten industry competitiveness, but in Cambodia a decade ago, wage increases were implemented which grew orders, revenue, and jobs.  

Raising wages would reshape the fashion industry with positive benefits. Heightened wages slows production by disrupting the low-wage system that enables fast fashion. This pressure leads to more sustainable practices across supply chains. According to The Business of Less, increasing workers’ pay by just $100 could reduce global CO2 emissions by 65.3 million metric tons ᠆᠆ because higher wages raise production costs, in turn moderating consumption.  

A living wage would enable climate adaptation among workers by allowing them to afford and invest in essential resources, such as sanitation, food, clean water, and basic needs ᠆᠆ foundational elements that build resilience to climate change.  

No Relief on the Factory Floor   

Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labour Relations (ILO) also monitors legislation. Currently, international regulations on heat stress for workers are limited to two non-binding recommendations – The Hygiene Recommendation (No. 120, 1964) and Protection of Workers Health Recommendation (No. 97, 1952). These recommendations urge governments to set standards and enact laws protecting workers from extreme heat, inadequate ventilation, and lack of water access. However, implementation has been minimal, with only Vietnam as the notable exception.  

A survey of national legal frameworks in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Vietnam reveals the disparities within each country. While Vietnam has stringent laws on climate adaptation for labour, such as paid sick leave, heat thresholds, and pay during force majeure work stoppages, the other countries have few or no legal provisions addressing climate-labour disruptions.  

Cambodia, in particular, remains virtually silent on climate-related labour protections. There are no requirements for paid breaks, pay during work stoppages, or rights to stop working in dangerous conditions.  Furthermore, none of the countries, besides Vietnam, have indoor heat standards and extreme heat protocols. Even basic protections, such as access to drinking water, fall below acceptable thresholds across all four national legal frameworks.  

S.O.S   

For these workers, climate change isn’t conceptual or invisible, rather a daily struggle for health, stability, and survival. As heat rises ᠆᠆ long-term health risks and a loss of income do too.

It is already apparent that several major apparel production hubs that are responsible for a significant share of current output are unlikely to escape the accelerating impacts of the climate crisis. While about one million jobs and $65 billion in export earnings are expected to be lost by 2030, only 3% of big brands disclose efforts to support workers affected by climate change. 

Adaptation among all nations is critical to global development, determining industries where every human has a decent standard of living. As climate change threatens the lives of millions ᠆᠆ collective, equitable action is not just necessary, it’s urgent. 

Photo credit: Liuser

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While generating an expected $1.84 trillion in 2025 (1.6% of global GDP), the fashion industry remains almost entirely unregulated, relying on a linear model of take-make-waste that exploits the world’s finite natural resources and its labor force.  

The production of 100 billion garments damages the Earth in myriad ways. It pollutes clean air and clean water systems with toxic chemicals, contributes to global GHG emissions, fills oceans with microfibers, degrades soil, creates industrial and post-consumer waste on a gargantuan scale, destroys forests, and threatens biodiversity.  

Contemporary labor practices in the industry are referred to as a “modern day slavery” characterized by poverty wages. Only an estimated 2% of garment workers make a liveable wage, leading to malnourishment, insufficient health care, inadequate housing, and other related problems.  

Furthering the impact, according to a study by the Cornell Chronicle, if current warming trends persist, the four most exploited garment-producing countries – Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Vietnam — could expect a 68.8% loss in industry earnings, followed by a 34.5% employment drop, threatening a larger economic crisis for these same garment workers.  

The industry is trapped in a cyclical loop where, without regulation, fashion production grows and the negative consequences enlarge. Voluntary sustainability efforts on the part of companies or consumers are ineffective.  

But now in the U.S., legislation is emerging in various states imposing long-overdue regulations and restrictions that have the power to reshape the future of fashion. These fashion act bills signal a shift, one that acknowledges the industry’s harm and holds the potential to disrupt the enduring cycle of exploitation.  

Let’s Talk Business  

There are currently four fashion act bills that propose action in New York, Massachusetts, Washington and, most recently, California. Each bill demands environmental due diligence — a process that requires companies to identify, cease, prevent, mitigate, account for, and remediate actual and potential adverse impacts to the environment in their operations. In practice, this means corporations face obligations to disclose supply chain data, report environmental harm, and set targets to reduce their ecological impact.  

Obligating supply-chain mapping requires companies to disclose the name, address, parent company, and product type of each Tier of the supply chain — which is depicted below. This creates transparency and traceability in the production process of each garment, so that your shirts can be traced from a piece of raw cotton all the way to the clothing rack at your local mall.  

Fast Fashion Supply Chain Tier (2025-26) 

In terms of supply chains, currently New York and Massachusetts require mapping 80% of Tier 1 suppliers within 12 months by volume, 75% of Tier 2 within 2 years by volume, 50% of Tier 3 within 4 years by volume or dollar value, and 50% of Tier 4 within 6 years by volume or dollar value,  Washington ask for 50% of a company’s total supply chain activity, and California asks for reporting of 80% of Tier 1 by 2027, 75% of Tier 2 by 2028, 50% of Tier 3 by 2030, and 50% of Tier 4 by 2032. Each percentage refers to the share of total production or sourcing activity those suppliers represent.  

Companies must also adhere to OECD guidelines integrating responsible business practices into their operations including: contract renewal, longer-term contacts, price premium, providing reasonable assistance to suppliers to meet environmental standards (such as carbon reduction targets), as well as developing pricing models that account for the cost of sustainable investments. 

Failure to comply with fashion act regulations would result in significant penalties. After receiving notice of non-compliance and a three-month correction period from the Attorney General, companies may face fines of up to $15,000 per violation per day in New York, $5,000 for a first offense and $10,000 for repeat offenses in Washington, and a civil penalty of 2% of a fashion seller’s annual revenues in California and Massachusetts. 

Companies resist these policies because global economies, shaped by the industrial revolution, have become economies of scale where increased production lowers average costs. This model maximizes profits and enables brands to offer lower consumer prices to stay competitive in a saturated market, normalizing overconsumption. It’s a consistent trade-off of ethical responsibility versus capital gain, and the winner has always been clear. Requiring companies to report and trace their environmental and human rights violations threatens to upend this system, which is why the fashion acts are essential.  

This is what the fashion acts will do.  

Tailored Laws 

As the first fashion bill to be introduced, New York’s Fashion Environmental Accountability Act (S4558A/A4631A), serves as a model for other states. The Act mandates greenhouse gas emissions reporting, with establishments of quantitative baseline and reduction targets. Tier 2 dyeing, finishing, printing, and garment washing suppliers must also sample and report wastewater chemical concentrations and water usage. Reporting must also include the fashion seller’s annual volume of material produced including a breakdown by material type. 

As the model, the New York Fashion Act has set the standard for Massachusetts, Washington and California’s bills as these require the same conduct. The Acts diverge in the way they integrate with existing state policies, along with slight variation in requirements. 

Here’s how:  

Massachusetts’ An Act to Establish Environmental Accountability in the Fashion Industry (H420) mirrors the New York Fashion Act, having received input from its architect, Maxine Bédat, during the development of the legislation. This collaboration underscores the power of collective action in creating policy movements across states.   

Washington’s Washington Fashion Sustainability Act (SB5965/HB2068) emphasizes transparency by requiring companies to publish environmental due diligence online, enforcing public disclosure and incentivizing a clean manufacturing process. Other bills that support fashion regulation include establishing a producer responsibility for textiles. An Extended Producer Responsibility taxes brands for the collection, sorting and recycling of their waste through payment to a registered private collection agency to support recycling or waste management programs and cover the costs of end-of-life management. 

Washington has also proposed, Washington Transparency in Supply Chains, a bill that mandates brands that gross more than $100 million to report efforts to address human trafficking and forced labor in their supply chains.  

California’s Fashion Environmental Accountability Act of 2025 (AB405) builds on the state’s strong environmental framework, which includes the “Safer Clothes and Textile Act” and the “Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024”. The newly proposed bill incorporates greenhouse gas emission reporting on Scopes 1,2, and 3, however the act applies only to corporations with over $1 billion in revenue, unlike other states which set the threshold at $100 million.  

California also has imposed legislation set for garment workers, such as “The Garment Worker Protection Act of 2022” which served as a model for the Federal FABRIC Act, holding garment factories and corporations liable for labor violations, while banning companies from producing “at a piece rate”, which effectively prevents wage theft.  

These Fashion Acts represent immense progress, signaling a chance for revolution — they are mandating reporting and implementing restrictions on an industry which relies on exploiting marginalized communities and using the environment for profit. When passed, these bills may be the starting point for a transformation of global development.  

Your Turn to Act…  

These bills are currently in their most critical stages where the voices of the public are vital.  As headlines become echoes of the crises, words, actions, and contributions have strength and can influence the passage of these bills.   

Legislation only gains momentum through the support of the public. “There can be 5,000-6,000 bills filed every session, so it’s less about people thinking it’s a good idea, and more about it rising to the top of people’s attention levels. A lot of it is about starting a conversation and making people more aware of it,” says Kira Arnot, Chief Staff Leader to Representative David Rogers, sponsor of the Massachusetts Fashion Act.  

Reach out to your state representatives or senators and ask them to cosponsor fashion act bills — or encourage them to create one. You can also submit testimonies in support of these bills and sign petitions, such as EARTHDAY.ORG’s petition addressing the U.S. Administration. 

One of the most effective ways to contribute to these movements is through lobbying,  which entails advocating directly with lawmakers to influence their vote. Lobby days allow communities to get in front of legislators, have meetings with them, and one on one use their voice to express what they want to see change.    

Pullquote: “There’s been so much media out there about how nothing matters. In this instance it really, really does. Showing up and getting on that bus or signing that petition, does have real consequences and makes an impact. There are things that we can do, and we must do,” Bédat tells Earth Day. 

Upcoming lobby days include New York’s on May 6th where the community is encouraged to come and show their demand for the passage of the act.  

If passed, the fashion acts could become the most powerful tool to reign in an industry long left unregulated …but the future of fashion relies on you. Want more action? Sign the Fashion Industry Must Change petition.

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