If only fast fashion just turned us into consumption monsters with a penchant for Pugsley Addams inspired outfits, but the industry is also destroying the planet and exploiting human labour. As the purchase price for fast fashion drops, it’s cost on the environment and human lives rises.

The same research by UNECE shows that the fashion industry is the second-highest user of water worldwide and produces 20 percent of global water waste. That one cotton shirt we pay five euros for requires 2700 litres of water to produce. That’s the amount an average person drinks in 2.5 years. Fast fashion isn’t only depleting the world’s water sources but is also poisoning them. According to the Institute of Sustainable Communication, the clothing industry is the world’s second-largest clean water polluter.

The industry also emits 10 percent of the global carbon emissions, which is more than international flights and maritime shipping and produces 21 billion tons of waste each year.

World Resources Institute expects that by 2050, the resource consumption of the industry will be triple the amount of what it was in 2000.