Similarly, the UGG shoe brand found itself in the spotlight with its Tasman II, a shoe style that has exploded in popularity with celebrities and the general public.

However, with trends usually only popular for a set amount of time before social media users move on to the next, what happens to these items that are now considered “old” and “outdated,” and can these trends affect the environment?

Associate professor in the Department of Community Sustainability and Environmental Science and Policy Program Adam Zwickle said the “number one impact” that individuals can have on the environment boils down to consumption.

“...Quick fads, whatever they are, almost always require you to go out and buy that new cool thing. So it drives up consumption, and if you want to look at the life cycle of whatever it is, the thing that you're looking at, skinny jeans or Stanley water bottles, like increased consumption, then sort of trickles down the line,” Zwickle said. “It means more skinny jeans get made, which means more skinny jeans get shipped, and more skinny jeans get, you know, the natural resources that make the baseline of skinny jeans have to get grown and harvested or manufactured or whatever.”

Communication senior Mya Barr said she purchases items that are considered trendy at the time, but doesn’t do so “just because they’re trendy.”

“...If something catches my eye the first time I see it on TikTok, and then I start to see that a lot of people are recommending it, and I'm looking for a product in that particular area, then I'm going to be more inclined to get the one that people recommend, rather than something that I'm not really aware of what it is,” Barr said. “So I tend to go for the things that are on trend, not just because they're trendy, but more because they're reliable, because if enough people are getting them, then it seems that it's worth my money to buy.”

However, child development and early childhood education sophomore Sanjana Saha said she personally avoids purchasing items that are trendy.

“...I think I see this, especially a lot with fast fashion, like, especially on websites like Shein, and AliExpress and Temu,” Saha said. “I dislike those websites a lot because I feel like all of it, like it kind of feeds on everyone's trends. And it's sort of like, they buy it because they want to wear it, but then, there's a new trend that comes along, and it ends up being thrown away or hopefully donated, but, I don't think I've really been buying any of anything that's been trending.”

After the trendy items start to die down in popularity, some individuals may choose to abandon the “outdated” item and purchase the next viral item.

Barr said she still finds a use for her previous purchases.

“Honestly, I think that I still kind of use everything, like the Tasman UGGS, I still use my Owala or my Stanley, I still have everything that I kind of like hop on the trend, and it honestly becomes a part of my routine, or like a part of just, like, my normalness,” Barr said. “It doesn't feel like a trend anymore, the more I use it.”

After the trend dies down, Zwickle said these once-trendy items end up in “one of three places.”

“It lives in your home for as long as you can handle it. Or you throw it away, so it ends up in the landfill. Or you thrift it, you sell it a garage sale, like you sort of pass it on to somebody who doesn't care that they're operating out of the fashion cycle,” Zwickle said.

Barr said she’s personally seen where some of these items end up after the trendy cycle ends.

“I also used to work at Plato's Closet, and we would often see that as like trends come and go, [and as it] came and went, we'd receive the back end of the trend[s],” Barr said. “So, as the trend might be dying down, there are people like donating the clothes, or the shoes, or the hats, or whatever to Plato's Closet because they don't want it in their own closet anymore.”

Plato's Closet is a retail reseller that allows anyone to sell their old items to Plato's to be added to their in-store stock.

However, for items that end up in landfills, Zwickle said there are a few different ways they can impact the environment.

“I mean, just the landfill, like the nature of a landfill is that it's the end of the line. It just sits there forever, depending on what you're throwing away, maybe it's going to slowly break down over time, and then it gets converted into methane, which most landfills, I don't know about most, I don't know the percentages, but a lot of landfills will cap that methane and then burn it to create electricity,” Zwickle said. “Other times, (it) just goes straight into the atmosphere. If you're talking about something like Stanley water bottles, holy smokes, I don't know how long those things are going to be around, but it's, you know, a long time we're talking centuries, like those things are going to be around forever.”

Saha said these disposed items may even impact wildlife. 

“...I feel like that definitely negatively impacts the environment and the animals who are living in there,” Saha said. “I just imagine a lot of animals being exposed to plastics and different materials that they normally don't get exposed to.”

The cycle of purchasing trendy items and disposing of them once the popularity dies down, Barr said, draws similarities to the cycle of fast fashion.

“...Fast fashion tends to be a major part of these trends. People see it, and I know, like, for example, people will see an expensive trend, and there will be a dupe on Shein or on Amazon, so they're going to get the cheaper fast fashion items, because one, they can afford it, and two, you can't really tell a difference, especially if it's just a quick trend,” Barr said. “So they're not being produced in, like, a safer, smarter way. They're just being produced, like, a brand hears about a trend and they want to try to produce the product as fast as they can to keep up with the trend, rather than, kind of, like, coming up with something themselves. So, again, adds into, like, this over-consumption and this fast fashion, which is completely destroying our planet.”

Although there are environmental impacts to participating in purchasing trendy items, Saha said individuals may feel more inclined to do so because of social media.

“I feel like it's just because social media has a way of, kind of, like, whatever's recommended to you, it's because it's trending,” Saha said. “And, like, every week, almost, you'll find a new song that's trending, or, like, a new clothing item that's trending, and that's what's getting recommended to you. And then you're like, ‘Oh, I want to try that instead of doing what I've been doing.'”

Barr said individuals may hop from trend to trend due to the attention they bring.

“I think people just stop using it because they don't find value in something that not everybody is still hype about,” Barr said “People are getting it to kind of, like, get this point of virality, or get it so that people, like, pay attention to them, and when that attention is gone, they don't see it, like, needed in their life anymore.”

This cycle, Zwickle said, is not a new phenomenon and has “definitely existed in the past.”

“I would say that fads were perhaps as powerful in the past, but because of social media, it's the speed at which they turn over and in which there's a new fad to be adopted, you know, like pre-Internet things did spread, they just spread really slowly,” Zwickle said. “Stuff (used to) spread through commercials and radio, and just kids talking, like, it spread really slowly. So I think, yeah, it's the cadence of it is much faster. There's a new fad and then a new fad and then a new fad.”

Saha said that she hopes “people change” when it comes to frequently hopping from trend to trend and disposing of items that aren’t considered trendy anymore.

“I feel like people might be trying to maybe use trends as a way to kind of push for, like, maybe reusing materials, like, with what I was saying about the upcycling that's becoming really trendy, people are buying all of these things, or finding, like old clothes in their mom's closet or something, and they turn it into something they really love,” Saha said. 

However, Barr said she doesn’t “ever see that dying out.”

“I think it's kind of existed forever, if you think about it like I even think about to when my mom was young, and she'd watch like Mariah Carey on TV, and she'd see the way she wore her hair, and then she had to get that headband, or the low rise jeans, or like, even you see it heavily how, like, the 2000s trends are coming back,” Barr said. “Well, those trends existed in the 2000s, and now we hop up on them. It's kind of like, we're recycling the trends of the 2000s. They had the same thing back then. And I think it's only going to evolve.”

If choosing to engage in these trends, Zwickle said, there are ways to dispose of the items while leaving less environmental impact.

“The number one way is to not dispose of them. So, thrifting is actually it's a great way, because everything old will eventually be new again,” Zwickle said. “...selling stuff to Goodwill or whatever vintage upcycle, whatever you want to call it, thrifting, not only does it keep things out of the landfill, but it's also great if you're a lower-income family and you don't have the luxury of caring about these, the latest fad.”

Zwickle said one way students can help create a difference is by choosing where and what to spend money on.

“As you know, college students don't have a ton of power when it comes to affecting the climate, you know, and like individuals in general, don't have a ton of power, which is frustrating…like fads are created based on individual decision-making, individual behaviors,” Zwickle said. “I would say, if you really want to make a difference in the environment with your purchasing decisions, like, just sit out every other fad, like you don't have to be completely lame like me, but even if you just sort of say, ‘You know what, I jumped on the last Stanley water bottle, or I went out and bought some Uggs or whatever’, like, the next thing that comes around just be like, ‘Yeah, I pass. I choose not to participate in this one’. And, that'll have a big impact. Like, that's actually one of the more important things you can do for the environment, is just consume less.”