Shopping habits fuel push for sustainable apparel
Browsing clothing racks at Savers in Parkville, Md., Mariah Lamm found some good deals: a Tahari suit for work and a skirt, vest and accent scarf for going out, all for about $30. Lamm, 22, makes frequent trips to the thrift superstore — and not just for the discounts. Buying used clothing, she says, lets her do her part to curb fashion’s growing impact on the environment.
Lamm is part of a growing movement to embrace sustainable fashion — keeping apparel in use as long as possible, and then recycling it. She shops almost exclusively at secondhand stores.
Traditional brands such as Under Armour, Gap, H&M, and Levi Strauss & Co. have begun to join in, taking steps to boost sustainability.
The push toward a circular economy has been fueled in no small part by the rise of “fast fashion,” where brands respond to trends and make affordable items more quickly and more cheaply than ever before. Consumers are being hooked into expanding and quickly refreshing wardrobes, treating lowpriced items as disposable.
At one extreme, ASOS, a global fashion hub for 20-somethings, can add up to 4,500 items daily to its website, said Deborah Weinswig, CEO of retail think tank Coresight Research. ASOS, based in London, did not respond to requests for comment.
The take-make-dispose model has environmental as well as economic and social costs, new research shows. About 80 billion pieces of new clothing are bought globally each year, and 26 billion pounds are sent to landfills, Savers said in its State of Reuse Report for 2018. The 300-store, “purpose-driven” thrift chain, based in Bellevue, Wash., noted that it takes 700 gallons of water to produce a single T-shirt and 1,800 gallons to produce a pair of jeans.
Researchers for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and McKinsey & Co. found more than $500 billion of value lost every year because customers throw away clothes they still could wear. Clothing production doubled from 2000 to 2014, they said, thanks to rising consumer spending, falling production costs and the fastfashion phenomenon. But people are holding on to clothing about half as long as they did 15 years ago.
All that production and disposal is straining natural resources as never before, Coresight’s Weinswig said, and for many, supply chain sustainability has become a priority.
H&M has laid out steps toward a 2030 goal of using only recycled or other sustainably sourced materials. Those inputs now account for 35 percent of its total material use.
Levi Strauss urges shoppers to bring their old clothes and shoes to any Levi’s store in the U.S. for repurposing or recycling through a partnership with I:Collect. I:Collect reuses items or recycles them into yarn for denim or insulation. Levi Strauss also pioneered a technique that reduces the amount of water used in the finishing process, expanding the technique to 70 percent of its collections.
The Gap says it’s working toward getting all of its cotton from more sustainable sources by 2021.
Baltimore-based Under Armour makes some shirts using Repreve, a brand of fiber made by Unifi from recycled plastic bottles. The fiber, which the North Carolina-based textile firm spins into yarn for fabric, has made its way into about 2.5 million shirts over about three years — the equivalent of 10 million plastic bottles.
“You are reusing a resource, as opposed to extracting new petroleum to make the polyester you have to convert into fiber,” said Michael Levine, Under Armour’s vice president of sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
Patagonia, which touts its lifetime-guaranteed outdoor clothing as sustainable, encourages customers to trade in used Patagonia gear, which it resells, in exchange for credit toward new or used garments. It also offers garment repair services.