The essence (本质) of fast fashion is to make clothes inexpensively and quickly, to get new trends and styles into stores and online as soon as possible, and it comes at a high social and environmental cost. Keeping production costs low means they can make their clothes cheap, using cheap labour in unsafe working conditions, and in countries with bad environmental regulations.

Throw-away culture is deeply rooted in our society; three in five of our clothing pieces are thrown out within a year. Fast fashion brands keep the consumers hungry and feeling like they need more by attracting them with newness and convincing the consumers that they need what they’re selling. This only results in increasing textile (纺织品) waste as people no longer want but throw it away.

Criticisms of the fast fashion industry include its negative environmental impact: water pollution, the use of toxic (有毒的) chemicals and increasing levels of textile waste. Textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of clean water globally, after agriculture. Fast fashion companies rely on their products being made cheaply and quickly, so they avoid talking when it comes to being aware of their impact on the environment. Greenpeace’s recent Detox Campaign showed that many brands use toxic and dangerous chemicals in their supply chains, and many of the chemicals are either banned or strictly controlled in lots of countries.

In conclusion, the fast fashion industry has a bad effect on our environment through fast fashion brands’ ecological practices and only continues to make the problem last for a long time in the future through extreme consumerist culture. In order for change to happen, the common people need to open their eyes and take measures to prevent the fast fashion from growing.

White sand beaches of the Cocos Islands, which are known as a splendid tourist destination surrounded by greenish blue water, have now been filled with wastes like abandoned plastic water bottles, toothbrushes and cigarette lighters.

Jennifer Lavels, a marine scientist, went to these tropical islands with her research team. Knowing that lots of beaches were polluted by plastic wastes, the team conducted a careful scientific examination on the coast, only to find the problem caused by pieces of trash humans left was worse than expected.

Not all plastics are to blame. They are necessary in places like hospitals and airplanes , and make our vehicles lighter and more efficient. However , other plastics, especially disposable(一次性的) plastics , account for the growing mess on the beaches. Islands all over the world are jammed with plastics. And the Cocos Islands are no exception.

It requires the greatest effort of all time to control plastic pollution in modern society. No matter how tall the hurdles are , something has to be done.

Apparently, demand for disposable plastics must be reduced greatly. “Why don't we carry around bags that we can use over and over again?” asked Richard Gross, a chemist who researches innovative ways to make more sustainable plastics. “Let's carry about reusable lunch boxes. We should understand how serious the situation is.”

Although it is important for individuals to make an effort to avoid using disposable plastics, it is also generally believed that only with international rules can such a deep- rooted, common, and worldwide disaster be tackled.

However, the U.N, which engages in dealing with accelerating climate change and public health crises , obviously isn't paying enough attention to calling for international action on plastic pollution. As a result, billions of plastic products will still be produced every year, many of which will end up in the ocean.

Nowadays, fish are eating plenty of plastics, and people eat those fish. It remains unrevealed how it will affect human health, but clearly the amount of plastics used has increased many times in the last several decades, and if this tendency goes on , by 2050 an enormous amount of carbon will be released into the already carbon-saturated

In North America, most large wildfires occur in the western states and Canada. But smoke generated (引发) in the West doesn’t stay there. It tends to travel east. Within days, it can dirty the air in the Midwest and even East Coast towns. Today, most asthma-related (哮喘相关) U.S. deaths and emergency-room visits from wildfire smoke occur in Eastern cities.

The big problem comes from tiny aerosols (气溶胶) —bits of ash and tiny water drops in the air. Scientists refer to this mix as particulate matter, or PM. The smaller the PM, the longer it can stay in the air. And the longer it floats, the farther it can travel.

An especially worrisome size is known as PM2.5. These bits are no more than 2.5 micrometers wide, about one-thirtieth the width of a human hair. These aerosols are so small that they can be breathed deeply into the lungs. PM2.5 has been linked with breathing related injury, diabetes and heart disease. These aerosols also can cause asthma and other chronic conditions in otherwise healthy people. And especially in kids, smoke-related aerosols can lead to flare-ups of eczema, a skin disease.

Over the last few decades, U.S. clean-air laws have cut down on emissions (排放) of PM from industrial sources. That’s helped clean the air in many cities. But these rules don’t cover PM from wildfire smoke. Especially worrisome: Recent studies have shown that aerosols from wildfires are more poisonous than industrial sources of these pollutants. What’s more, exposure to wildfire smoke has been growing—in many places, by a lot.

How far and where the smoke travels depends in part on the weather. How high it goes into the sky also matters. The stronger and hotter the fire, the longer the smoke can last and the farther it can fly. Last year, distant wildfires badly polluted the air in the Great Plains. That’s a region stretching from Montana and Minnesota in the north down to New Mexico and Texas. But the smoke didn’t stop there. Some continued to move east, polluting the air from New York City to Washington, D.C.