BUS602: Marketing Management

The excessive consumption of clothing items generates an overflow of discarded clothing, a throw-away culture that is particularly evident in developed economies. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 2014, the U.S. generated 16 million tons of textile and clothing waste, 64.5% of which was sent to landfills with only 16.2% recycled. In the U.K., although the average lifetime of a clothing item is 2.2 years, approximately 30% of these owned clothes have probably not been worn for a year, leading to an estimated £140 million worth of used clothing (350,000 tons) being sent to landfills each year.

Although clothing disposal takes many forms, including binning, reselling, recycling, donating to charity, and using unwanted clothes as rags, the European Commission's 2008 Waste Framework Directive provides clear guidance on the most environmentally significant methods. This directive outlines a waste hierarchy based on environmental impact, with prevention (e.g., using fewer materials or keeping products longer) being the lowest, followed by (preparation for) reuse and recycling. The highest impact methods are recovery (e.g., incineration with energy recovery) and binning (e.g., landfilling or incineration without energy recovery). Although the directive applies to all waste handling, it is especially valid in a clothing context, in which the greatest energy and carbon emissions savings are achieved by increasing clothing longevity and direct reuse, and the next greatest by reuse through charity donation and material recycling. However, even though many consumers discard their clothing by passing it on to family members, donating it to charity, or using it as rags, binning unwanted clothing (i.e., sending it to landfills or incineration) is still common, leading to much clothing ending up in landfills or incinerators that could have been reused, recycled, or otherwise down-cycled. This widespread disposal carries a heavy environmental burden, especially given that the synthetic materials widely used in fast fashion do not decompose, while clothes made from natural fibers such as wool, although decomposable, produce the highly potent greenhouse gas, methane.