Secondhand clothes could be going to waste
- 82newsbulletin
- Nov 26, 2020
- 1 min read
Written by Emile Stragyte
Your country is under a lockdown, you spend a lot of time at home and so you finally decide to clean up your closet. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of people did that. So much that Europe is “drowning in second-hand clothes.”
Fashion industry and ecological problems are not a new issue: fashion produces 20% of global wastewater and 10% of global carbon emissions - more than all international flights and maritime shipping. Fast fashion - characterised by mass production, cheap prices and quick trend changes - enlarges the problem. Recently, the growth of the secondhand market - which involves resale, traditional thrift and donation - has been celebrated as a positive step towards tackling the problem. Second-hand market is set to hit $64B in the next 5 years.
Yet, there is a need for innovation about how we deal with used clothes. With the second lockdown in Europe, the time is ever more pressing. The collection and sorting processes are expensive: “the entire process costs 45 cents per kilogram, while we can sell it to recyclers for 4 cents per kilogram.” The stockpile of used clothes and the sales of the secondhand market are both growing. There is supply and there is demand. What are we going to do with the middle part?
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