Chapter 3
The environmental impact of textiles and SHC
Research shows 10% of the entire global carbon budget is used for clothing and textiles (more than aviation and maritime transportation combined); 80% of that figure arises in the production phase, 3% during distribution and retail, 14% in the use phase (washing, drying and ironing), and 3% during end-of-life (collection, sorting, recycling, incineration and disposal).27 Another study found that clothing and footwear reuse reduces primary textile consumption by 24% and textile value chain greenhouse gas emissions by 16%, compared to 8% for fiber-to-fiber recycling.28
The used clothing sector provides robust infrastructure and operating models to transform the fashion industry from reliance on over-consumption and waste to long-term sustainability. The most effective way to secure environmental goals is to maximize the reuse of clothing worldwide, particularly in the Global North. To prevent waste and safeguard sustainability, reuse and waste prevention must take precedence. Reusing clothes means fewer new clothes need to be produced, reducing the environmental impact of the global textile sector.
Legislative initiatives are underway in the US to reduce the environmental impact of the textile industry by limiting the over-consumption of mass-produced clothing and promoting reuse. Such schemes include mandatory collection of discarded textiles to increase collection rates and reduce the percentage that end up in landfill. Legislators are also focusing on the export market in SHC. While it has been claimed that the SHC market is close to saturation in many emerging economies, evidence suggests that the reuse market will continue to grow if effective distribution systems are in place.
Further market growth will help mitigate demand for new clothing production while further reducing carbon emissions and energy use that have increased global warming.
Rising Consumption
Over the last 40 years, clothing consumption in much of the Global North has increased exponentially. Consumer demand for new clothing has risen significantly as production costs have declined due to textile value chain globalization and liberalization. This has led to the phenomenon of fast fashion: low-priced, stylish clothing that can be produced quickly and in volume. The fast fashion industry incentivizes shoppers to purchase clothes more frequently. Our survey reveals that US consumers buy 7.7 billion fast fashion items each year or 148 million items a week.
Young people are driving this trend, with
of Gen Z consumers buying fast fashion at least once a week, and
buying new items daily.
Yet many of these items remain unworn. On average, Americans have 6.2 items of clothing in their closet that they’ve never worn, with 15% having 11-30 items and 3% admitting to having over 30. In total this amounts to a staggering 1.6 billion items of unworn clothing languishing in American closets.
This has become the dominant trend in more economically advanced economies since the 1980s, with frequent clothing changes becoming culturally ingrained, deeply rooted in consumer psychology and adeptly exploited by the extractive fast fashion industry. Our survey shows that 22% of consumers bought clothing items because they were the ‘latest trend’. 15% bought an item ‘to keep up with friends and colleagues’, while 12% did not wear an item again once their friends had seen it.
Yet according to our survey,
of consumers say fast fashion's environmental impact ‘disgusts’ them, rising to
of Gen Z, who are the most likely to over-consume fast fashion.
of Americans agree the pressure to buy fast fashion harms mental wellbeing, rising to
of Gen Z.
As Rachel Kibbe, CEO of Circular Services Group argues, a cultural shift is needed to make over-consumption less fashionable while focusing consumers on purchasing fewer, higher-quality garments. 47% of Americans also believe there should be more education about fast fashion's harms.
Trends are moving in a positive direction, the SHC's US apparel market share is forecast to increase considerably over the coming years. In 2022, it was roughly 12%, but the World Economic Forum (WEF) projects this more than doubling by 2027, meaning 25% of all clothes to be sold in the US will be secondhand.29
Our survey found large numbers of Americans (78%) already consume SHC. A greater percentage of Gen Z (90%) do than Millennials (85%), Gen X (77%), or Baby Boomers (66%).
Many Americans are also trying to do their part for sustainability, with 70% giving unwanted clothes away to charity, 39% giving them to friends and family and 24% taking them to collection points. Our research indicates that 45% would avoid fast fashion to help the environment (a further 30% possibly would) and 33% plan to stop buying new clothes or reduce purchases in favor of SHC.
Nevertheless, despite significant concern about the social and environmental impact of the fast fashion industry in the US and the willingness of consumers to purchase second-hand items, more work is needed to reduce overconsumption and make purchasing used clothing and footwear habitual.
Adverse environmental impact
Textile production's huge environmental impact is well-known, generating significant carbon emissions while using large quantities of water and raw materials that create toxic pollution.
Fast fashion production dries up water sources while polluting rivers and streams. The textile industry causes 20% of all water pollution, while a third of microplastics polluting the world's seas come from textiles.
Cotton farming consumes 4% of worldwide nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers, 16% of all insecticides, and 7% of all herbicides. 1 kilogram of cotton production for textile manufacturing requires up to 3 kilograms of hazardous chemicals.30 More than 1,900 chemicals are used in the production of clothing, 165 of which the European Union (EU) classifies as hazardous to health or the environment.
Producing one kilogram of fabric also generates 23 kilograms of greenhouse gasses. The global fashion industry emits 1.7 billion tons of CO2 each year, more than all air and sea travel combined. Moreover, greenhouse gas emissions emitted by the fashion industry are expected to rise by 50% by 2030 if current fashion trends continue: on a per capita basis, textile waste grew 55% between 2000 and 2018, indicating increased textile waste generation is not only due to population growth, but increased affluence.31
At present, US consumers generate 17 million tons of textile waste a year; as Figure 1 below makes clear, the majority of that waste goes to landfill:
Figure 1: Destination of textile waste32
Scientific research shows that when left to decompose in landfills, textiles produce harmful leachates and greenhouse gasses including methane. Polyester is made from fossil fuels, is non-biodegradable, and can discharge microplastic fibers releasing toxins into the environment and human food chain.33 Synthetic fibers are particularly prone to releasing greenhouse gasses. And textile waste is an environmental justice issue. One study suggests that landfills where textiles are buried in the US are located in poorer areas where clothing consumption rates are lower.34
When asked what they themselves do with unwanted clothing, most Americans say they donate it to charity (70%).
However on average, according to our consumer survey, people still throw out three garments of wearable clothing per month. This amounts to a staggering 10.4 billion items of wearable clothing thrown in the trash each year, equivalent to 4,000 truckloads of waste per week.
Yet 73% of people agree that unwanted, wearable clothing should not end up in landfill and 62% agree it should not be incinerated, showing a strong desire for environmentally-friendly alternatives to managing discarded clothing. Many Americans want these clothes to be reused (80%) or for them to be given a second life abroad (51%).
With the right education, infrastructure and incentives, many of the items unused or thrown away could enter the circular economy supporting jobs and livelihoods around the world. If all unworn clothes were instead used as SHC, it would prevent 174,136 metric tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere over the next 10 years. It would prevent 255,747 metric tons of waste going to landfill every year, 458,307 metric tons of clothes being incinerated every year, and the equivalent to 3 million Olympic sized swimming pools every year.
We estimate that if current trends in the growth of SHC use continue, from 2023 to 2032 CO2 carbon emissions in the US will be reduced by 167 million metric tons, a very significant contribution to mitigating the effects of climate change.35 Reuse can clearly dramatically lower the environmental penalty of the fashion industry.
Exporting used textiles
The environmental effect of transporting used clothes is relatively low, particularly as it offsets new textile production. Global exports of SHC are estimated to achieve a net saving of the equivalent of 193,000 metric tons of greenhouse gasses and 72 million cubic meters of water use in Nordic countries alone.36
There is concern in the US and Europe that millions of tons of SHC are exported to emerging economies without consideration for how end-of-life textiles will be managed; yet as our data shows, end-of-life textile management is an issue that all countries around the world are grappling with. If fewer clothes are imported to Latin America and Africa, larger quantities of low quality new clothes will be produced in Asia, inflicting even greater long-term social and environmental damage.
Many industrialized economies, particularly in Europe, are striving to reduce their global environmental footprint to meet net zero targets and reduce the risks of catastrophic climate change. For that reason alone, it is vital to invest in the sorting and collection infrastructure of both exporting and receiving countries, upgrading capacity to maximize reuse and deal with waste sustainably, activities that many SHC businesses are already undertaking. Non-OECD countries should be supported and encouraged to manage clothing materials and waste sustainably.
As the journalist Adam Minter concludes37:
If the growth in consumption and in consumers is happening in emerging markets, then it's incumbent upon… the manufacturers of goods to start playing a role in end of life for those goods in emerging markets. That may take a number of different forms. On the textile side, it may take the form of we are going to make more durable textiles, better clothes, that can be used longer. And when they do reach the end of their life, they can be recycled, shredded and turned into (new products).
Fiber-to-fiber recycling processes
To create a sustainable and circular textile sector, recycling will be crucially important. Some collected materials are only suitable for recycling or energy recovery. Even the highest quality garments eventually reach their end-of-life, and if they cannot be reused, they should move down the waste hierarchy to recycling.
However, it is important to be realistic about what recycling processes can achieve: the technological advances necessary to undertake recycling at scale are costly and require both sustained investment and a steady supply of recyclable materials. While the corporate fast fashion sector claims to invest in innovative recycling technologies, these fiber-to-fiber technologies have not been fully tested at scale and many are not yet ready for launch into the market. Even where they are, there is a recognition that not all textile materials can be easily reprocessed and there is no reliable system for acquiring clothing materials.
Moreover, the environmental impact of these new technologies is still unknown.
Emerging evidence suggests recycling can in fact have negative environmental impacts. Recycling is highly energy intensive since it requires large quantities of water and chemicals. Recycling synthetic materials is particularly expensive due to the difficulties in separating components. Elastane, in particular, contaminates the recycling process making the costs prohibitive; while the blending of different polyester types creates significant difficulties. The negative environmental consequences of the chemical recycling of polyester are especially problematic.38 Dissolving polyester and cotton entails highly energy intensive processes.39
Research in Sweden demonstrated that the carbon impact of a recycled white cotton t-shirt is only marginally lower than a newly produced item.
Academic experts Sandin and Peters concluded40:
When reuse and recycling are both considered, the former is found to be more beneficial than the latter except for under certain circumstances relating to transportation differences. Thus the literature strongly supports the waste management options preferred according to the waste hierarchy.
Fashion producers’ claims about the ease of reprocessing and the sustainability of recycled products can amount to greenwashing unless supported by credible scientific evidence. Industry stakeholders expressed concerns that because fiber-to-fiber recycling technology processes are still at a relatively early stage of development, well-known fashion brands prefer to have unused items sent to landfill or incineration rather than reuse, a practice that would appall most consumers. These brands believe that widespread reuse would undermine the prestige of their products. Yet 68% of consumers surveyed for this report disagreed with brands destroying usable clothing.
Another factor underlined by stakeholders interviewed for this study is that recycled textile products are often prohibitively expensive for the consumer. Economics significantly favors reuse over recycling.
There is concern that large fast fashion corporations may advertise clothing as ‘green and sustainable’ if they contain high proportions of recycled fibers.41 Yet to obtain a supply of recyclable material, producers may divert second-hand clothing from reuse by purchasing it externally or collecting it in their own stores. Regulation is needed to prevent such misuse.
Requirements to relabel new clothes with the content of recycled fibers also risks creating additional demand for materials that would push large quantities of reusable clothing into the recycling process, contrary to the emphasis on reuse as the first priority.
While recycling has obvious potential, policymakers should avoid regulations that undermine textile, clothing and footwear reuse.
Finally, there is a risk that funding for innovation and research and development will be diverted solely to the development of fiber-to-fiber recycling technologies, rather than on continuing to develop impactful clothing reuse business models. Government investment in innovation should be directed to reuse models, at least as much as recycling. While there are limits to automating the reuse sorting process, which requires manual pre-sorting and skilled operatives with experience and judgment, a once-in-a-generation opportunity exists to mobilize public and private sector investment to advance textile reuse business models.
There are, of course, recycling processes that have a less negative impact on the environment. For instance, cotton-based industrial rags can be recycled with relatively little reprocessing.
The recycling of knitwear into new yarn and the processing of blended materials into filling used in multiple products are also relatively low impact; and there are new recycling methods, particularly involving cotton, one of the most heavily demanded recycled fibers.42 Clothes with high cotton content are also often in high demand in second-hand clothing markets.
Given the uncertainty surrounding recycling, it is imperative that reuse and waste prevention in the textiles industry retain their priority in sustainability and circularity. Fiber-to-fiber recycling has a role to play, but it must not be at the expense of the reuse sector.
Policymakers must consider that the viability of SHC and reuse businesses is crucial for securing a more ecologically sustainable textiles sector. SHC enterprise operators are willing to collaborate with those developing fiber-to-fiber recycling processes as there are synergies that can benefit both, particularly where clothing items are no longer fit for reuse or unable to be sold. However, reuse must be recognized as the most effective solution for preventing waste and promoting long-term ecological sustainability. Policymakers must avoid regulations and EPR schemes that inadvertently push large quantities of reusable clothing into recycling, contrary to promoting circularity.
Working with consumers
It is vital that consumers fully understand the distinction between reuse and recycling in order to ensure informed decision-making.
Our survey shows that US consumers are as likely to support reuse
as recycling
Labeling clothes to include information such as the proportion of recycled content is important, but it should not manipulate consumers into believing that recycling is preferable to reuse. Labeling must not create artificial demand for recycled fibers, leading to the recycling of perfectly reusable clothes.
Public authorities must use labeling regulations to ensure that fashion producers provide transparent information to consumers, making clear the considerable difference between recycled and reusable clothes in their environmental impact. Encouraging and incentivizing repair and reuse is essential to promote long-term changes in consumer behavior.
Increasing reuse
of survey respondents agree that second-hand clothing will reduce the global carbon footprint, while
say it is key to reducing the impact of fast fashion on the environment.
The SHC sector can help achieve increased clothing reuse worldwide. However, the used clothing industry needs clarity, a stable long-term regulatory framework, and where necessary, public support and investment to advance innovation and incubate scalable business models. Countries cannot achieve net zero without changing their textile production model, and reuse must sit atop the circular economy hierarchy.
All countries need infrastructure to ensure the environmentally responsible management of collected items to maximize rates of textile reuse. Given the urgent imperative for policymakers to address climate change globally, there is not a moment to lose.