The Price of Waste: Who Should Pay?

Fast fashion is normalising overconsumption and shaping how we think about purchasing and disposing of our clothes. Eco-conscious consumers may turn to second-hand shopping and donating or reselling unwanted clothing as a solution, but even these strategies have a significant environmental impact.

Because fast fashion clothing isn’t made to last, consumers often turn to donating their unwanted fast fashion pieces. It’s easy to feel guilt-free about continuing the cycle of shopping and unloading unwanted items when those unwanted items go to someone who needs them. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The massive amounts of unwanted clothing that come from the fast fashion industry create an enormous burden on donation systems, who need extensive human labour to sort through the clothing. Many donations never make it to a charity shop because they are too low-quality. The rest are shipped to the Global South, where they create problems for local economies and environments.

The detrimental impact of outsourcing waste

Around 1 million tonnes of textile waste is created in the UK each year and approximately 300’000 tonnes of this ends up in landfill. As significant portion of this waste is exported to the Global South. In 2017, Oxfam reported that at least 70% of clothing donations are sent to Africa. When they arrive, they create jobs for locals in the second-hand market, but they also inhibit the development of local textile and fashion industries who can’t compete with the rock bottom prices of unwanted clothes from the Global North. Yet there still isn’t enough demand for clothing donations in the Global South—at Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana, the largest second-hand clothing market in the world, second-hand textile waste ends up as tangled masses on beaches, blocking gutters and incinerated in landfill, causing environmental degradation, destroying local livelihoods, decimating the local textile industry and placing communities in severe debt cycles. While a recent report by the Dutch Government reveals that only 4% of textile bales arriving in Ghana are now defined as waste, the problem of general waste management prevails and we need to shift perceptions to understand that waste must be paid for. The Global North, who is disproportionately responsible for generating sheer volumes of waste, because of overproduction and overconsumption, must be held accountable. 

            Donating clothing can’t be part of a truly circular fashion system. When we donate our clothing, we are oftentimes outsourcing the burden of waste management to regions of the world with less resources to handle it. While some of the clothing we donate might be diverted to charity shops or people in need, most of it ends up in the landfill. But because we “donated” it, we aren’t taking responsibility for where it eventually ends up and for our role in environmental and economic damage.

 Incorporating waste management into responsible clothing consumption

            We believe that consumers should take responsibility for overconsumption and the waste they produce. The clothing donation system is flawed and detrimental, so it is important to consider your role in participating in this harmful model of consumption. While the opportunity to “donate” unwanted items may seem like a good excuse to buy more, it is better to buy only what you need and consider whether unwanted items will be of value to others before choosing how to dispose of them. When you do donate, consider options for repurposing as well as how the item will eventually be disposed of. Getting rid of waste is easy for us but very difficult for our planet. 

Traditional waste management has a financial and environmental cost—but when you pay for FibreLab’s textile recycling service, you are turning waste into something valuable. Instead of sending textile waste to landfills or incinerators, we shred it and use it to make new products like paper and wadding. Our ongoing material research continues to explore new ways to use the recycled fibres that come from clothes and other textiles. Solving the problem of textile waste isn’t easy, but FibreLab is one step towards decreasing the volume of textiles that are polluting our planet.

Sources:

De Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko. 2017. “For Dignity and Development, East Africa Curbs Used Clothes Imports.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/world/africa/east-africa-rwanda-used-clothing.html

 Durfee, Nell. 2018. “The troubled second life of donated clothes.” Science Line. https://scienceline.org/2018/06/the-troubled-second-life-of-donated-clothes/

Rhoades, C. 2018 “Written evidence submitted by Cyndi Rhoades, CEO, Worn Again Technologies" https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/94280/html/

Textile Recycling Association. 2024 “Ghanaian Used Clothing Dealers Association Report”. https://www.textilerecyclingassociation.org/press/ghanaian-used-clothing-dealers-association-report/