By It’s truly astounding how many articles of clothing are created each year worldwide. The Wall Street Journal reports that as of 2019, 100 billion items of clothing are produced each year. Of that 100 billion items, about 20% go unsold.
Those unsold clothes are translating into major clothing waste. In 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency found that 10.5 million tons of textiles, the majority of which was clothing, were sent to landfills by Americans. This is problematic on a number of levels. It’s evident that it is not environmentally safe or sustainable to make clothes or dispose of textiles at that rate annually. Aside from that, it’s a waste of resources our communities and our planet as a whole depends on. Here are some more facts you may not have known about clothing waste.
1. It takes over 700 gallons of water to make a single cotton t-shirt. Many people don’t realize just how much water is used in the production of cotton. For a cotton t-shirt, the water used is the equivalent of the amount of water a human is recommended to drink over nearly two and a half years.
More than double that amount of water is needed to make a pair of jeans. American consumers demand an estimated 450 million pieces of denim each year. Worldwide, it’s believed that over 6 billion pieces of denim clothing are produced every year, 30% of which never gets worn. When you consider that it takes about 1,800 gallons of water to create the average pair of jeans, that adds up.
2. The lifespan of modern clothing is 2-10 years. That’s relatively short when you consider that 56 million tons of clothing are bought worldwide each year, a number that’s expected to rise to 93 million tons by 2030 and 160 million tons by 2050, according to BBC. Underwear and t-shirts have the lowest lifespan, lasting just a year or two. Suits and coats are the longest-lasting items.
3. Synthetic fabrics take a long time to decompose. While natural textiles like cotton, silk, and wool break down easily, synthetic fabrics are another story. Polyester, nylon, and other synthetics can take anywhere from 20 to 2000 years to fully break down. According to the Council for Textile Recycling, the average US citizen throws away 70 pounds of clothing and other textiles annually.
When synthetic fabrics do deteriorate, they are one of the leading causes of microplastics found in water supplies. Those microplastics then enter the food chain through small water-dwelling wildlife. Since microplastics are so tiny, they evade many filtration systems. The harm of microplastics when ingested over time is unknown.
4. The average US resident throws away 70 pounds of clothing and other textiles each year. The amount of clothes the typical American buys today is five times more than what it was in the 1980s. As a result, the amount of textile waste we produced has also gone up. It’s actually doubled in the last 20 years, producing 70 pounds of waste per person on average. Need some perspective? That’s the equivalent of nearly 200 t-shirts.
According to the Council for Textile Recycling, that adds up to 21 billion pounds of post-consumer textile waste annually. That also means that only 15% of what’s being created each year is being recycled, which is a low number considering all the different options for recycling textiles like clothing.
It’s not just the United States. In the UK, one out of every five people admits to throwing an item of clothing away after a single-use. That kind of waste adds up fast, costing consumers unnecessary amounts of money and doing unnecessary damage to the planet.
5. Of the textiles produced, 95% can be recycled. That means 80% of recyclable materials are being thrown away. Altogether, 3.8 billion pounds of textiles are recovered through donation and recycling programs, averaging about 12 lbs per person.
That number has seen improvement in recent years, thanks to textile recycling initiatives. If we were to recycle everything possible, it would have the same environmental impact as removing 590,000 cars from the road every year.
6. Shoes can take up to 1,000 years to break down. Many sneakers use a mix of materials, which complicates matters when it comes to recycling. As a result, many shoes are doomed to landfills.
While many components will break down in 20-30 years, some shoe soles can last much longer. The addition of ethylene-vinyl acetate, which is used in comfort technology to create the shock-absorbing midsole often found in many pairs of sneakers, can take around 1,000 years to break down.
7. Clothes can be recycled into some surprising items. There’s no telling what can happen to your clothes after you recycle them, but there are so many uses for them. Recycled shoe soles can turn into some carpet padding or athletic field flooring. Fibers can be repurposed for stuffing pillows or furniture cushions. Cotton and linen fabrics can even be reused in the making of paper money!
8. More than half the world wears secondhand clothes. Thrift stores or second hand stores get a bad reputation from people who think their items are dirty or lesser than. While that kind of unrealistic thinking might keep some shoppers away, the truth is that much of the world is just fine with secondhand items.
Over 70% of the world’s population wears secondhand clothing. Women are much more likely to do so than men, with the world’s supply of used clothing being seven times as great as the supply of men’s clothing.
There are many reasons why we need to look at sustainable fashion practices as a society moving forward. From production to the moment an item of clothing reaches a consumer, there are improvements to be made that can change our relationship with fashion, as well as the environment’s relationship with textiles. Of those practices, the easiest is making use of what’s already out there. BundleUp can help by allowing you to resell baby clothes and kids’ clothes to families who would love to have them.
