Landfill fashion: the fashion industry’s biggest secret

 

I’ve always enjoyed online shopping and the satisfaction that comes with treating yourself from the comfort of your own home. Not to mention how easy it is to try on your new purchases with several potential outfit choices and send it back if you decide it doesn’t go. But it has only just come to my attention how damaging this 21^st-century-habit is.

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I recently discovered that the majority of returned online orders end up in landfill or being incinerated.

Our generation’s urge to have it all and have it now has led to a culture of Fast Fashion which is seeing more people buying cheap, on-trend clothing at a faster rate than ever before. In fact, figures show that between 2000 and 2014 people were buying 60 percent more clothing than they were 15 years ago. It doesn’t take a scientist to work out that the introduction of online shopping has impacted this figure  - Americans alone are spending on average $1,800 a year on their favourite online brands.

I’ve always thought of landfills as being full of household waste, unrecyclable plastics or scraps of metal. It had simply never occurred to me that textile waste was really an issue for our environment, nor did it dawn on me that I was aiding and abetting such a filthy habit by taking full advantage of free returns and buy-now-pay-later schemes that allowed me to buy the same item in several sizes.

Yet textile waste in the fashion industry is HUGE – and its also a massive secret.

When most people return an item, they do so on the assumption that it will be restocked and resold by the same retailer. However, this could not be further from the truth. With more and more designers offering free returns, they simply cannot afford the man power needed to asses each item, steam it, repackage it and put it back on the shelves.

The average consumer returns or throws away 31.75kg of clothing per year, contributing to the 13 million tonnes of textile waste is generated annually. 10 million tonnes of clothing ends up in landfill and 3 million tonnes are incinerated. The sad thing is, 95% of this waste is recyclable. Yet only 2.5 million tonnes are actually recycled properly.

Instead of re-selling returns many companies choose to export them overseas, where most are destined for landfill or incineration. Brands claim to not be able to afford or keep up with the return demand and rolling new trends, so often resort to destroying ‘dead stock’ or returned items as a cheaper alternative. 

Whilst this is something the fashion industry has been doing for years, the greater number in online orders – and ultimately returns – has had drastic effects on our carbon footprint. Experts warn that e-commerce return rates have spiked 95% in the last five years and at this rate, the carbon emissions produced by the fashion industry is set to increase from 10% to 30%.

As consumers, we need to ask what we can do to prevent textile waste...

Whilst the fashion industry itself is responsible for finding greener, more sustainable alternatives, I recognise that a certain level of responsibility also falls on me - the consumer - to educate myself on matters concerning textile waste, returns policy and fast-fashion habits. We need to re-think how we use items of clothing and focus on creating a culture that is more sustainable by choosing to reuse and recycle, lending and sharing clothes, shopping at more ethical or sustainable brands and paying more money for better, longer lasting items.

But more importantly, we need to put an end to high return rates by choosing to try on in-store and challenging brands to disclose their return policies. Let’s start questioning the ‘free returns’ policies advertised by so many high street stores and question what happens to the clothes which we discard so freely. Let’s start demanding that clothing brands disclose their policies on dead stock or returned items. If you knew where it was heading, would you think twice before discarding unwanted items of clothing?

It’s time we all became more conscious of the fashion industry’s contribution to climate change and how we are all accomplices. 

In the words of Vivienne Westwood: “Buy less and choose well, make it last. It’s about quality not quantity.”