Experts have urged local governments and charities to coordinate more to manage textile waste as they call for a shakeup of how we deal with the growing fashion menace as overconsumption and oversupply continue to be the main drivers of this waste issue.
- Global textiles waste each year weighs 92 million tonnes and this could double by 2030. And what is not helping matters is the fact that charities and collectors have been reporting the plummeting quality of garments over the past 15–20 years, decreasing resale potential.
THE STUDY: A first of its kind study—Urban transitions toward sufficiency-oriented circular post-consumer textile economies—analysed what happens to clothes and other textiles after consumers no longer want them in nine cities — Amsterdam, Austin, Berlin, Geneva, Luxembourg, Manchester, Melbourne, Oslo and Toronto.
- Published in Nature Cities,the RMIT University study said that across most western cities from Melbourne to Manchester it found the same pattern of textile waste being exported, going to landfill or being dumped in the environment.
- Overconsumption and oversupply were the main drivers of the cities’ textile waste, causing the export of between 33% (Australia) and 97% (Norway) of donated clothes.
- In Melbourne, charities export high-quality, often vintage, second-hand clothes to Europe, forcing the city’s independent resale businesses to import similar apparel back from Europe or the United States.
- But the biggest per capita discarders of textile waste, Australia and the US, have no such regulation.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE ROLE OF CHARITIES: Most local governments in the cities studied did not get involved in textile waste beyond providing public spaces and licenses for charity bins and commercial resellers. This indicates the lack of mechanism and incentives in place to drive real systemic change.
- Across cities like Melbourne, local governments send dumped textiles directly to landfill, instead of diverting to recycling or reuse facilities or other local alternatives.
- Amsterdam was the opposite – its municipality manages collection and sorting of unwanted clothes and encourages collection of all textiles, including nonreusable ones.
- Charities are driven by social welfare values and need to raise funds for their programmes. However, their operations are ill-equipped to deal with the volume of used textiles that need to be reused and recycled.
- Given the role of charities within communities, it's essential they expand beyond direct resale in second-hand shops and explore other business models, such as swapping and repair centres.
RECOMMENDATIONS: The study said it was important to incentivise promotion of local alternatives to fast fashion, including reselling, swapping and repairing.
- To create more space for these alternatives, the study called for a ban on fashion advertising in cities.
- A ban on fashion advertisements would give more space to promote more sustainable alternatives.
- Sustainable fashion initiatives like second-hand retailers struggle to compete with fashion brands’ big marketing budgets and convenient locations. Fast fashion alternatives exist but they are under-promoted, despite their potential to significantly reduce cities’ textile waste.
- France recently introduced a ban on advertising ultra-fast fashion, while each item will come with a penalty of up to 10 euros by 2030.
THE TEAM: Co-author Dr Yassie Samie with Katia Vladimirova, Irene Maldini, Samira Iran, Kirsi Laitala, Claudia E. Henninger, Sarah Ibrahim Alosaimi, Kelly Drennan, Hannah Lam, Ana-Luisa Teixeira, Iva Jestratijevic and Sabine Weber.
THE CONTEXT: From January 2025, the Waste Framework Directive (WFD) mandates that European Union Member States must establish separate collection systems for used textiles.
