Easy! You just mix it with the right buzzwords.

Maybe you had missed it, but “fast” or “throwaway” fashion, that is replacing clothes after wearing them just a few times, so you can show off always new outfits with friends and on social media, is a BIG problem:

• January 2018: Water pollution, toxic chemical use and textile waste: fast fashion comes at a huge cost to the environment
• March 2018: Fashion’s crippling impact on the environment is only getting worse

The common theme of those two (and many more similar articles and reports) is that “the textile industry emits more greenhouse gas emissions than international shipping and aviation combined.” making Fast Fashion The Second Largest Polluter in The World.

Quite a result, isn’t it? There is only one way to make it even more impressive: add polluting, hard to recycle electronics to clothing. Lots of electronics. By means of…

The Internet of fashionably polluting things

The “INTERNET OF FASHIONABLE THINGS” is a business and marketing strategy that “Track and protect your brands and enhance the customer experience at Point of Sale and beyond”. In other words, it’s clothes and accessories that, together with things that, at least in theory, DO make sense (e.g. real time inventory) ALSO:

• track and nag you much more than before, thanks to their ability to (seriously!):
• “understand how they are being used to deliver individualized digital services and content via smartphones”
• make YOU pay for being a 24/7 testimonial, er I mean “connect with consumers, their social networks, fitness apps, wearable devices and digital lives to build brand loyalty”

Please, no. Adding electronic tags to prevent theft, track shipping, etc… are positive services with a lot of potential to do good. But don’t buy stuff that has electronics in it after you have paid for it. Don’t make your clothes much more polluting than they already are, and spying and nagging for good measure.