How much does fashion contribute to landfill? (2024)

How much does fashion contribute to landfill?

It might come to a surprise to learn that around 85% of textiles thrown away in the U.S. are dumped into landfills or burned -- including unused textiles and unsold clothes.

It's also said that textile waste is to increase by around 60% between 2015 and 2030, with an additional 57 million tons of waste being generated annually, reaching an annual total of 148 million tons.

Fast-fashion choices are ending up in landfills.

The Council for Textile Recycling reports that the average American throws away between 70 and 81 pounds (30-36 kg) of clothing and other textiles annually. Globally, 17 million tonnes of clothes go to landfills — mostly in the Global South.

The volume of clothing Americans throw away each year has doubled in the last 20 years, from 7 million to 14 million tons. In 2018, 17 million tons of textile waste ended up in landfills, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, making up 5.8 percent of the total MSW generation that year.

The most pressing issue right now however is that of textile waste, both from consumers and from corporations. In 2018, around 350,000 tonnes of clothing was sent to landfill, a staggering figure. Broken down, it works out that of every 30kg of clothing disposed of, only 4.5kg of it is recycled.

Fifteen per cent of all unwanted garments are collected while the vast majority, 85 per cent, ends up in landfills. Each year, people consume more than 80 billion pieces of new clothing, making the clothing industry one of the world's biggest polluters.

Fast fashion produces over 92 million tonnes of waste a year, study finds.

On average, 700,000 tons of used clothing gets exported overseas and 2.5 million tons of clothing are recycled. But over three million tons are incinerated, and a staggering 10 million tons get sent to landfills.

Garments given up early and thrown out instead of recycled combine to produce massive wastage, estimated at around $500 billion every year. A large portion occurs on the consumer's side, but retail stores are just as guilty, often spotted tossing or burning unsold stock.

Fashion production makes up 10% of humanity's carbon emissions, dries up water sources, and pollutes rivers and streams. What's more, 85% of all textiles go to the dump each year (UNECE, 2018), and washing some types of clothes sends significant amount of microplastics into the ocean.

Why is fashion waste a problem?

Clothing has clearly become disposable. As a result, we generate more and more textile waste. A family in the western world throws away an average of 30 kg of clothing each year. Only 15% is recycled or donated, and the rest goes directly to the landfill or is incinerated.

Along with massive water consumption, textile waste and toxic dyes leaching into soils and waterways, fast fashion also releases microplastics when washed, which leads to about 500,000 tons of microfibres in the ocean every year - the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.

The fashion industry overproduces products by about 30-40% each season, contributes roughly 10% of all global carbon emissions and is the world's second worst offender in terms of water and plastic pollution.

Overall, toxic fashion contributes to 35% or 190,000 tons per year of ocean microplastic pollution. Even greater, the fashion industry produces 92 millions ton per year of textile waste which primarily ends up in landfills or incinerated. 85% of all textiles go into landfills each year.

Fashion's environmental impacts

Fashion is responsible for 10 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and 20 percent of global wastewater, and uses more energy than the aviation and shipping sectors combined.

20% of industrial pollution comes from the textile manufacturing process. Over 8,000 chemicals are used to turn raw materials into clothing. Workers come in direct contact with these chemicals—often without adequate safety protections—and are at risk of contracting deadly diseases.

Donated clothing is sorted and the best quality items are selected to be sold in stores in the Global North – think of the vintage and charity stores where you may shop preloved. In the US, 10 to 20% of donated clothing will be sold somewhere in the US and another 10 to 20% might be down-cycled into rags or insulation.

The recycling rate for all textiles was 14.7 percent in 2018, with 2.5 million tons recycled. Within this figure, EPA estimated that the recycling rate for textiles in clothing and footwear was 13 percent based on information from the American Textile Recycling Service.

Many shops sell it to discount stores like TK Maxx, or online discounters like the Outnet. Others launch periodic online sales of what needs to go, or have their own outlet stores that sell last season's merchandise at a discount.