As you grow Forever 21, we are watching you and guess what? Most people aren’t. So let’s do a closer inspection and not only ask why consumers still think it’s fun (and okay) to buy throwaway clothes in your fluorescent jungle, but just why you, Forever 21, have slipped under the radar unlike your sister stores H&M, Target, Kohls and Wal-Mart.

First dear reader, I want you to Google, “Forever 21 + environment,” and see if anything good comes up.

Maybe some new eco-initiatives? A juicy sustainability program? Donations to a green charity? You’ll find nothing but bitching about working there and lawsuits.

Is it just me, or does the environment at Forever 21 mean you can expect large areas for shopping and a candy-coated atmosphere filled with knock offs from hard working designers who actually design for a living?

And it gets worse.

According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the newest Forever 21’s located in Times Square (which opened last Friday), “will be the brand’s biggest location, taking over the space of a former Virgin Megastore. The store spans four floors and the equivalent of 1.5 football fields. The modestly sized street-level entrance gives way to three sprawling subterranean floors, with 151 dressing rooms and 32 cash registers.”

It’s hard to make out what we’re supposed to do with you, America, waiting in lines like cattle to be let in the glossy new Forever 21 doors rife with VOC paints and lead-tainted clothes manufactured in places that aren’t so much gushing oil into the ocean as discharging gallons and gallons of toxic effluent into delicate ecosystems daily with every dyed shirt and distressed denim micro mini.

If you thought about Forever 21’s impact on the environment with distaste like you do for a BP spill, that store would never have opened.

And that’s how dangerous it is. Maybe that’s all the Gulf needs, just a little neon to divert you.

Image courtesy of The Wall Street Journal

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