From Black Friday to Boxing Day and every Secret Santa in between, the holidays make it increasingly appealing to buy more goods – including clothing. Whether it’s an ugly Christmas sweater for your family gathering or a new outfit for a New Year’s celebration, sales at seemingly every street corner can be difficult to resist. While our fashion habits may seem innocuous, they come at a cost to the environment.
What is the environmental footprint of clothing?
The use of synthetic fibres and the rise of fast fashion has shifted our relationship with clothing. From 1975 to 2020, the production of fibres – the building blocks for making clothes—increased five-fold. Over the same period, the global population only doubled. This means we are buying more clothing and wearing each item less.
We need to make better use of the clothing we have and to buy fewer newly made items. Typically, the reason that we dispose of clothing is not because of wear and tear but to keep pace with changing fashion trends, poor fit, or boredom. This trend is generating large amounts of waste.
Clothing waste starts even before we take a garment home. Before a piece of clothing ever hits store shelves, up to 30% of fabric is lost during the manufacturing process. Once created, producers even dispose of products they are unable to sell.
What happens to that sweater that you no longer wear? Many products we dispose of can be repaired and/or reused, via resale shops or charities. Worn garments are also exported to other markets, a trend which has been gaining speed. Between 2010 and 2022, the reported export weight of worn garments by OECD Member countries increased by 59%. High volumes of used clothing exported to low-income countries can overwhelm them. In Ghana for instance, a significant portion of imported clothes end up in illegal dumpsites and flow into waterways.
If not reused, many clothes can be recycled, but separating different materials and fasteners can be difficult and costly. In practice, less than 1% of clothes globally are recycled to make new fibres for a textile of similar value, while 12% are downcycled into things like upholstery or rags.
Finally, that sweater may end up as waste. Clothing makes up roughly 10% of all plastic waste globally. If left unchecked, plastic waste generated from textiles is projected to more than double by 2060.
The role of extended producer responsibility schemes for clothing
An extended producer responsibility (EPR) approach makes producers responsible for products at the post-consumer stage of their lifecycle. Additionally, it may help to reduce environmental impacts generated by the production by changing the economic incentives for producers. Policymakers and business could help each other reach targets for separate collection and recovery. This approach is widely used for other products, like electronics and packaging.
Few countries currently use EPR schemes for clothing. While governments have not yet widely adopted EPR policies for clothing, the limited available experience suggests that they improve collection rates. France's EPR scheme supports the provision of publicly available drop-off points for used textiles. In the decade following its introduction, this scheme increased clothing collection volume by 85% (from 2 kg in 2009 to 3.7 kg per capita in 2019), with France outperforming the EU-average collection rate at 31% compared to 22% in the EU-27.
The scheme is also evolving. Since 2023, France requires producers to help cover the net costs of social enterprises that enable re-use, issue credits to households to repair their clothing and to establish a fee structure that encourages more durable products. When consumers go to certified clothes repair shops, for instance, they can receive a discount of up to EUR 25.
Governments around the world are taking notice. California (the United States), the Netherlands, Latvia and Hungary are in the early stages of implementing an EPR policy for textiles that includes clothing.
A promising approach, but not a silver bullet to tackle fast fashion
Policymakers and business can work together to make it easier for households to repair products, improve collection and sorting of unwanted clothes and change the business case for durable clothes.
However, clothing production is the key driver of environmental impacts and EPR by itself is unlikely to curb this growth. Rather, a suite of tools will likely be needed to help countries realise their circular economy ambitions. To complement EPR approaches, additional policy measures include:
- Standards for garment waste, recycled content and re-use to help curb the disposal of products.
- Regulations to limit the use of harmful chemicals during clothing production and end-of-life treatment.
- Behavioural interventions to help individuals identify best practices to extend the use phase.
