New Circular Textile Industry Report Findings
Planet Aid partner and textile reuse industry leader, Garson & Shaw, released in June a report titled, “Promoting the Circular Textile Industry: A Call for Strategic Policy Action in the Americas." The ten-page document, investigates the wide ranging and significant negative environmental impacts of textile overproduction and overconsumption. The report asserts that the textile industry is currently the fourth most environmentally damaging industry in the global economy following food, housing, and transportation.
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The report also provides an overview of the secondhand clothing (SHC) industry in the U.S. and globally, economic opportunity in the U.S. and Central America, and the policy action to incentivize circularity in the textile value chain, and more.
American Consumerism and Textile Waste
The report focuses heavily on the U.S. because America purchases 7.7 billion fast fashion items annually. The breakdown of these numbers is an astounding 148 million items per week. Perhaps, just as important—1.6 billion items of clothes remain unworn, translating to wasted resources like water and energy, and higher carbon emissions from production and transport.
According to Garson & Shaw’s report, 32 percent of Generation Z buy items at least once a week, and 6 percent admit to buying something every day. This overconsumption of fast fashion is promoted and marketed heavily on social media, with advertising, celebrities, and influencers emphasizing what’s trending. Regrettably, what’s in today is out tomorrow. Subsequently, enormous sums of textile waste are landfilled.
Garson and Shaw’s survey data quotes an annual total of 5.5 million tons of reusable items thrown in the trash by consumers. Organizations like Planet Aid provide options for textile recycling and reuse; however, only a small portion of clothing is reused or recycled in most industrialized economies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates only 15 percent is recycled or reused in America.
Advancing a Circular Economy
Garson and Shaw promote the SHC circular economy to mitigate what can seem like an impossible challenge. The report notes that the average adult has 6.2. items of unused clothes in their closets, if these items were to enter the SHC market and replace new purchases, it would prevent 255, 747 metric tons of waste from going to the landfill each year, plus 458, 307 metric tons of clothes from being incinerated every year, and save 3 million Olympic sized swimming pools of water.
Promoting the urgency of reducing needless consumption, and personal environmental stewardship in shopping are goalposts, and the good news is the SHC industry is growing within the U.S. If the trend continues, the research states that the U.S. will reduce carbon emissions by 167 million metric tons, which is a number spanning from 2023 to 2033. It’s the equivalent of removing over 40 million gasoline-fueled cars from the road for one year.
But the industry will need some help.
"Advancing a circular economy and maximizing clothing reuse across the Americas requires promoting the strategically vital secondhand industry," the report states.
