With fast fashion’s status as the second most polluting industry (second only to the oil industry) and its 2.1 billion tons of annual carbon emissions making up at least 4% of the world’s total, the environmental impact our clothes have on the planet can’t be overlooked. While efforts to move towards sustainability have progressed in other industries like construction, energy, and transportation, the fashion industry has seen little progress towards decreasing its planetary impact in the past few decades. Production of shirts and shoes, for example, have doubled in the past quarter century, but three quarters still wind up being buried in landfills or burned. “Fast fashion” brands have catered both to increasing consumer demand for cheap, trendy clothing and shareholder pressure for unrelenting growth, resulting in overproduction, complex, opaque, and often unethical supply chains, and reliance on fossil fuel-based synthetic materials that are cheaper than natural fibers. 

Anchored in relevant human rights standards like the UN Sustainable Development Goal 9 and Articles 23 and 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this lesson plan facilitates classroom discussion among students about the human rights and environmental implications of the fashion industry and how individuals can be more responsible consumers.