Where do Unwanted Clothes end up?
What happens to all the clothes that we no longer want to wear? It has been estimated that in the UK alone, around 350,000 tons of clothing ends up as landfill every year, where they can take as long as 200 years to decompose. According to clothes waste charity TRAID, the average piece of clothing is worn only 10 times before being thrown away. This isn’t just a waste of the clothes themselves, but also of all the time, human skill, and resources used to make the clothes. It also leads to still more pollution.
It’s not just cheaply produced clothing that can lead to waste, however. Top fashion brands were in the news in 2018 for burning millions of pounds worth of brand new clothes. Why would they do this? Simply to stop people being able to get hold of these ‘luxury’ items cheaply, which might make the brand look less exclusive or desirable. Nearly all fashion brands routinely dispose of unsold stock by burning it at the end of each sale season, even if there is nothing wrong with the clothes, bags or shoes at all.
