Reduce Textile Waste with these December Clothing Swaps! 🌱

University courses Geography, Environment & History
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Textile waste has become a huge issue in recent years. By 2030, Greenpeace projects there will be about 200 billion garments produced per year and 92 million tonnes of it will end up as waste. This is due to a culmination of factors on both the production and consumer side. On the production side, many textile and fashion companies used what is called planned obsolescence. This is a trend that emerged in the early 1900s in which manufacturers would design products to have a shortened lifespan to force their customers to buy their product again and make high profits. On the consumer side, customers are forced to throw away their products after they have nearly half the lifespan that they should. In addition to this, the increasing rate of the trend cycle has effects on both the consumer and production. Manufacturers now overestimate how long an item or style will remain trendy leading to their sales decreasing before all of their product can be sold. This creates an over abundance of deadstock. Social media has been cited as the main contributor to the increased trend cycle speed. This means that consumers not only have their immediate in-person social interaction to seem trendy for, but also an entire online audience. The struggle to keep up with quickly changing micro-trends leads to consumers buying more than truly need or even want and more clothes ending up in the bin. After it’s in the bin, this landfill and deadstock is often incinerated or dumped in the Global South. In the EU, only 1% of clothing is recycled. This has devastating effects on the coasts in which these clothes are dumped. In Accra, fishers say that they catch more clothes than fish. This waste is choking out a food source for these people and because of planned obsolescence the clothes they do catch often can’t be reused. The secondary clothing market is huge in these areas, but the clothing is of such bad quality that they cannot be reworn or even reworked into other items like tarps.

It is not just physical waste that clothing contributes to. The process of making clothing is incredibly water intensive. A cotton t-shirt can require 2.5 years worth of drinking water to produce. The dyes used in the textile process are often toxic which pollute waterways and pose health risks to the workers. Microplastics from clothing production and washing clothes can also pollute waterways. This is because lots of clothing products are derived from petroleum which also eats away at the Earth’s finite stock of fossil fuels. Overall, the fashion industry contributes 8-10% of greenhouse gas emissions. This is why we, as consumers, must contribute to slow fashion production by buying products that already exist in the second-hand market. The most sustainable option is what is already in your closet!

But this doesn’t mean that you can’t get some new-to-you clothes, so check out these clothing swap events this month to get some new clothes and maybe even some gifts for the holidays:

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This is such an important issue that often gets overlooked! The combination of planned obsolescence, fast fashion, and the waste it generates is unsustainable for both the environment and communities. It’s shocking to hear about the scale of waste and the effects on places like Accra, where the clothing waste harms local ecosystems and livelihoods. As consumers, shifting to second-hand clothing and supporting slow fashion can make a real difference. We also need stronger policies to promote recycling and more sustainable production methods. The most sustainable choice is indeed what we already have!

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how do you think we can encourage more people to buy second-hand or participate in these swaps? I feel like there’s still a stigma around wearing second-hand clothes, especially with social media putting so much pressure on trends. How can we shift that mindset and make sustainability more mainstream?

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Honestly, sometimes you have to switch your own mindset and try to be free of other people’s judgements! If you’re constantly trying to be on trend rather than finding what you actually like, you’re constantly going to be shifting through clothes. I recommend looking for influencers who have a sense of style that you like or rely on thrifting for their style. I think we also need to go back to teaching more about how to repair your own clothes and up-cycle them. There’s plenty of people of older generations who know how to repair clothing, but not a lot of young people know.

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