The Human Price of Fast Fashion’s “Solution”: How Our Donated Clothes are Choking an Indian City 

While the global fast-fashion industry promotes recycling as a sustainable solution, the reality in Panipat, India—the “castoff capital of the world”—reveals a grim human and ecological cost, where the process of shredding millions of tonnes of donated clothing from the West creates a health crisis for its workers, who inhale hazardous microplastics and suffer from chronic lung diseases, while illegal dyeing units poison the local water supply with toxic chemicals and heavy metals, making this form of “recycling” not a virtuous loop but a destructive system that externalizes its true price onto the health of a vulnerable community and its environment.

The Human Price of Fast Fashion’s “Solution”: How Our Donated Clothes are Choking an Indian City 

We drop our bags of old clothes into donation bins with a sense of virtue, believing we’re contributing to a circular economy. We picture them finding a new home or being responsibly recycled. But for the city of Panipat in northern India, the final stop for millions of tonnes of this castoff clothing, this global trade is not a story of sustainability, but one of slow-motion suffocation. 

Touted as a “global hub for textile recycling,” Panipat is the grim underbelly of the fast-fashion machine. Here, the very process of managing our waste is creating a public health crisis, poisoning the air, water, and bodies of the workers who make this global recycling effort possible. 

The Suffocating Air of “Progress” 

Step inside one of Panipat’s thousands of recycling units, and the air is thick with a blizzard of synthetic lint. It glints under the dim factory lights, a deceptive glitter before settling like a film of toxic snow on every surface, and more critically, in every lung. 

Neerma Devi, 27, is on the front line of this crisis. Her job is to cut through the collars and seams of donated t-shirts and polyester track pants, feeding the scraps into roaring machines. Each snip of her scissors unleashes a fresh cloud of microfibers. Her only protection is a traditional dupatta wrapped tightly around her face—a flimsy barrier against an industrial hazard. 

“The doctor tells me it’s because of all this dust I breathe every day,” Devi explains, her voice likely strained even as she speaks. “He gives me medicine, but it only works while I take it. Once I stop, the coughing comes back. He says I should leave this work. But I can’t afford to.” 

This is the brutal economics of Panipat. Workers like Devi and her husband, Kailash Kumar, are trapped. They migrated for the promise of steady work, fully aware of the risks, because the immediate need to survive outweighs the long-term threat of a chronic illness. Kumar works in the same mill as his father, who now suffers from advanced Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), his lungs irreparably damaged by decades of the same airborne poison. 

A government doctor in Panipat, speaking anonymously, confirms the alarming prevalence of lung disease. “Microfibres settle in their lungs with continuous exposure,” the doctor states, making workers vulnerable not just to chronic diseases like asthma and fibrosis, but also to infections like tuberculosis. 

Beyond the Factory Walls: A Poisoned Ecosystem 

The health catastrophe in Panipat is not confined to the factory floors. The recycling process requires bleaching and dyeing the shredded “shoddy yarn”—a term for the low-quality material made from mixed fibers that is never free of microplastics. 

The city is ringed by hundreds of dyeing and bleaching units, a significant number of which operate illegally. In these facilities, workers handle toxic chemicals like sulphuric acid with their bare hands, leading to severe skin conditions. But the most devastating impact is on the water. 

An estimated 80% of the wastewater from these units is discharged directly into the environment, contaminating the land and waterways. Official records point to over 80 discharge points funneling industrial effluent into a major drain that feeds the Yamuna River. Laboratory tests reveal pollutant levels catastrophically above safe limits, with dissolved solids at nearly four times the permissible level and oxygen levels so critically low that the waterway is uninhabitable for aquatic life. 

The contamination seeps deeper, into the very groundwater. A 2022 government report found the water in Panipat laced with manganese, lead, nitrate, fluoride, and heavy metals like cadmium and nickel. For villagers like Hartej Singh, water has become a “curse.” After discovering his borewell water was unsafe, he was forced to shut it down. Communities report widespread skin ailments and a rising fear of cancer, directly linking their suffering to the contaminated water they once relied on. 

A 2022 household survey near these textile clusters found 93% of families reported serious health problems in the past five years, with a sharp rise in non-communicable diseases alongside the more immediate skin and lung conditions. 

A Cycle of Inaction and Empty Promises 

The response to this crisis has been a masterclass in bureaucratic failure. While India’s National Green Tribunal has ordered the closure of illegal units, activists like environmentalist Varun Gulati point to a revolving door of enforcement. “Units shut down under one name [only to] reappear under another,” he says. 

Out of billions of rupees in penalties levied by pollution boards, only a fraction has been collected. Factory owners, on their part, often downplay the risks. One owner dismissed the lint as harmless, claiming it causes nothing more than a “little cough and cold,” and shifting blame to workers for not wearing the inadequate masks provided. 

This ecosystem of neglect allows the system to perpetuate. The global North offloads its textile guilt onto Panipat, and the city, desperate for industry, bears the cost. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi praises Panipat as a “global hub,” it highlights the stark disconnect between macroeconomic success and microscopic human suffering. 

Rethinking “Recycling”: The Path Forward 

The situation in Panipat forces a uncomfortable reckoning with what we mean by “recycling.” This is not a clean, technological loop, but a dirty, labor-intensive, and hazardous process that externalizes its true cost onto the health of a community and its environment. 

Real solutions must be multi-pronged: 

• Responsibility at the Source: Western brands and consumers must move beyond simply donating and towards reducing volume. The focus needs to shift to durable, repairable clothing and true circular design—garments made to be easily disassembled and recycled, not downcycled into low-quality shoddy. 

• Investment in Safe Technology: The recycling process itself needs technological innovation. Factories require mandated and enforced industrial-grade ventilation, water filtration systems, and proper personal protective equipment for workers. This will increase costs, which must be borne by the global brands that profit from this system. 

• Radical Transparency: Consumers have a right to know the full lifecycle of their clothing. Campaigns for transparency must extend beyond factory conditions for new garments to include the end-of-life process. 

The tightness in Neerma Devi’s chest and the toxic water in Hartej Singh’s well are the unlisted ingredients in our fast-fashion bargains. They are the human and environmental price of our disposable culture. Until we confront the reality that the castoff capital of the world is choking on our waste, the virtuous cycle we imagine will remain a destructive one, spinning out of control far from sight, but at a cost we all ultimately share.