Fast Fashion and Its Hidden Costs

Walk into any shopping mall in Malaysia and you will find racks of bright, cheap clothing that change every few weeks. This is fast fashion: garments made and sold at great speed so that shoppers can copy the newest looks cheaply. For young people with little pocket money, the appeal is obvious. Yet the price on the tag hides costs that are paid somewhere else.

One of those costs is the pressure to keep buying. (27) ________ This habit turns clothing into something disposable, worn a handful of times and then forgotten at the back of a wardrobe. A shirt that felt exciting in March can look tired by June.

A second problem is quality. Garments made to be sold quickly are often stitched from thin fabric that fades, stretches or tears after a few washes. Shoppers who paid so little feel no reason to repair them. (28) ________

Producing so much clothing also places a heavy load on the environment. Growing the cotton for one pair of jeans swallows thousands of litres of water, and the dyes are often flushed into rivers. (29) ________ Damage of this kind is far harder to mend than a torn shirt.

The people who sew the clothes pay a price too. To hold prices down, factories push their workers through long shifts for wages that barely cover rent and food. (30) ________ In the worst cases, unsafe buildings and badly maintained machines put lives at risk.

However, shoppers are not powerless. Buying second-hand clothing has become popular among young Malaysians. (31) ________ Thrift shops, swap markets and online resale pages make it easy to find something unusual, and every purchase keeps a garment out of the bin.

Therefore, we can all shop more thoughtfully. This begins with asking whether a new item will still be worn a year from now. It also means choosing stronger fabric and learning to sew on a button. (32) ________ It is equally useful to ask a shop where and how its clothes are made.

In conclusion, fast fashion offers style at a speed and a price that are hard to refuse, but the real bill is paid by rivers, by workers and by the planet. Shopping with more care costs us little, and it lets us enjoy our clothes without leaving so heavy a mark.

Sentences A to H

A It can be a cheaper and far more creative way to build a wardrobe.
B This waste of water and pollution of rivers harms the farmers and fishermen who depend on them.
C Cheap clothing also allows families with small incomes to dress their children neatly.
D Many shoppers respond by buying new outfits every month just to keep up with their friends.
E Shoppers should therefore give up shopping for clothes at the mall altogether.
F For example, a seamstress may finish two hundred garments in a day and still struggle to feed her family.
G These damaged items are thrown away rather than mended, and the rubbish quickly piles up.
H Additionally, shoppers should care for the clothes they already own instead of replacing them.