What happens to clothing that gets returned?

Aug 29

You ordered a new dress online, it arrived and you rushed to try it on. You put it on and BOOM! It doesn’t look good or it doesn’t fit right, which means you return it, hoping that it will find a new loving fashionista. Well… That’s not quite what goes on.. So what really happens?

Most of the clothes you return end up in landfill. This happens after it has been shipped all over the country or even across the globe.

Based on a data set of 630,000 returned clothing items in Europe, 44% never reach a second consumer. Half of them are recycled and a quarter end up in landfills, which is 69,000 pieces of clothing in landfills and a seventh are incinerated. The rest end up lost somewhere along the way.

Only as few as 1% of clothes are being recycled into new ones. Despite the huge environmental issues, the fast fashion industry, e.g. SHEIN and H&M, still continues to expand. Based on a report made in 2016, clothing production has doubled from 2000 to 2014. The average person buys 60% more clothing every year.

The fashion brand ‘FIVE OF US’ analysed the amount of waste clothing brands produce in a single year. Their analysis has discovered:

Every year we produce over 32 billion garments.
94 million kg of single-use outfits are bought in a single year, which has a negative impact on the sustainability of the fashion industry.
Regardless of the increase of demand from consumers, 25% of fast fashion pieces are never sold and 12% of fibers are being discarded on shop floors.
The fashion industry is one of the fastest-growing polluters on Earth. Its emissions are predicted to increase by 49% by 2030 if actions are not taken.
Consumers can’t place all the blame on the industry itself, half of us throw unwanted clothes directly to the bin, instead of giving them to charity or reselling them.

Here are some interesting facts to truly put into perspective how bad clothing waste has become:

Every 16 seconds the equivalent of the height of the Eiffel Tower is thrown in landfill (324m)
The height of the Burj Khalifa is thrown in every 42 seconds (830m)
The height of Mt Everest is thrown in every seven minutes (8,849m)
In six hours, the pile would be able to reach the International Space Station (408,000m above Earth)
In nearly eight months (228 days) the pile could reach the Moon, more than 384 million metres away from Earth

With our growing world population, estimated to reach 9 billion by 2050, the solution to fast fashion and over-consumption is vital for the continuation of life on Earth.