The Reincarnated Wardrobe

A New Year's resolution leads to a deep dive into the ungreen lifecycle of the clothes on our backs.

Yesterday, two clothing related situations made me happy. I sold a little-used item from my closet, and a package arrived with four thrifted clothing items. To balance this influx, I donated five pieces to charity — more about that later.

In 2024, I made a New Year’s resolution to not buy new clothes. While New Year’s Day was a while ago, I thought I’d see how I’m doing instead of casting aside a resolution like I have done in years past.

My general plan was to either repair what I had, make clothes myself, or buy thrifted clothes. Obvious exceptions were undergarments, swimwear, shoes, and socks.

I’ve dragged favorite but worn items of clothing around for years-- from St Louis to Hawai'i and now to Washington, D.C. with the thought that one day I'd upcycle or repair them. They were too good to just throw away and looked easy enough to make something fun from them.

But repairing clothes sounded sufficiently boring that I didn’t do much other than darn my daughter’s “woof woof” dog lovie for years. Even the word “darn” doesn’t get used much these days other than as an expletive.

Then, I saw some embroiderers on Instagram who used fabric flaws and tears to make inspired pieces. So, when the daughter said she had a favorite thrifted shirt that needed repairs, I pounced on it. Since the fabric still seemed strong, I created a botanical piece using embroidery, lace, and patches of cloth I had also been hauling around. My creative juices were awakened.

From this, my resolution was born. Since then, curiosity has led me to some startling facts about the garment industry, even for a climate groupie like me who has been in the general climate change business for almost 40 years.

A Goliath behind seven veils

The garment industry is the world’s third-largest after the automobile and technology industries. After cars and phones, we buy…clothes. Clothes are a basic necessity of life—but we are in an extreme overproduction phase and the garment industry takes an unhealthy toll on the environment, on greenhouse gas emissions and on people. Industry practices involve enormous waste, and it is one of the last bastions of unregulated labor.

Perhaps not surprisingly, revenue from women’s apparel and footwear makes up over half of the market (53%), more than from menswear (31%) and childrenswear (16 %), according to an industry website Fashion United. Imagine the impact women of a certain age could have by moving from new to thrifted fashion.

Just how big the industry is, and the extent of overproduction is difficult to know.

According to the advocacy site Good On You, the garment industry underreports revenue and production numbers: “…88 percent of 250 of the world’s largest brands don’t disclose their annual product volumes—up by 3 percent since 2022…” Presumably, then, the amount of production, consumption, and waste is much higher than what is being reported, and the industry lacks transparency in delivering information.

Fashion Revolution, another advocacy site, produces Fashion Transparency Index, a comprehensive ranking across 250 indictors covering governance, supply chain traceability, labor, overconsumption, gender and racial equality, sustainable sourcing and materials, waste, water and chemicals, climate change, fossil fuels, and biodiversity.

In the 2023 report, the key finding was that the fashion industry has made “unimpressive progress on transparency.” The report does outline a few improvements, particularly by luxury brands. But the story is the same as everywhere with climate change, human rights, and environmental issues when they intersect with big business—too little too late.

With this underreporting in mind, I waded into the numbers, and here’s what I found.

The garment industry, which is really about manufacturing, is huge. It is valued at USD 1.7 to 2.5 trillion globally. And again, this is likely an underestimate. According to McKinsey’s State of the Fashion report (2017):

“If it were ranked alongside individual countries’ GDPs the global fashion industry would represent the seventh-largest economy in the world.”

China is the biggest exporter of textiles and the European Union is the biggest importer, according to an industry website. How much exactly was unclear, in keeping with the underreporting theme.

Of course, dollars are only one facet of the picture. Worldwide, we produce 100 to 150 billion pieces of clothing each year, and consume 80 billion new pieces, 400 percent more than what we consumed two decades ago.

A giant, largely unregulated polluter, the garment industry is also a major employer. According to the ILO, 60 million people are employed in this industry. Along the full chain of fiber production, spinning of thread and weaving of cloth, apparel design, transport and marketing, the number is more like 300 million — a little smaller than the entire US population. This hits hardest in the global south, where many depend on the garment industry for their livelihoods, impoverished though these livelihoods may be.

The world has become richer, too. Fifty years ago, 46 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank’s data portal. In 2018, this number was down to 10 percent. That means one in ten people still live in extreme poverty, and any job losses in the garment industry could impact the poorest of the poor. Any industry reforms will need to keep in mind that this economic transformation needs to continue to keep people on the path to prosperity.

Gassy, dirty, wasteful

So how much greenhouse gases does this industry emit? A little sleuthing showed that it is about 2 percent of total worldwide emissions, which may not seem like a lot, but that’s about how much total air travel or maritime activities (2.8 percent) produce as well. And air and maritime emissions reduction get much more attention in comparison.

A 2016 study says the apparel and footwear industry will need to cut emissions by 80 percent to meet global ambitions. And that was several years ago when the world was cooler than it is now.

Water use in the clothing industry is another huge part of its impact.

For example, it takes 2,700 liters of water to make one t-shirt. It would take a single person three years to drink this much.

The Ellen McArthur Foundation emphasizes the intense resource use and large carbon footprint of the clothing industry:

• Textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of water globally

• The industry contributes about 9 percent of microplastics in water

• It is responsible for 20 percent of global wastewater.

Clothing waste is increasing at a very fast rate. Less than 0.5 percent of post-consumer textile waste is recycled. The rest ends up incinerated or in a landfill, according to Science. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates global clothing waste at USD 500 billion. 

$500 billion! The entire Green Climate Fund, biggest-ever pot of money for climate projects is a mere $100 billion. In a generous estimate, only about $14 billion is committed to this Fund right now. In other words, garment waste is five times bigger than the aspirational Green Climate Fund, and 35 times larger than the actual amount currently being deployed by the Fund.

So, just looking at the amount of money wasted, that’s a lot. Diverting some of this waste by buying and selling thrifted clothes (after repairing what’s in your closet and downsizing it altogether) could be impactful if done at the right scale.

Thrifting megamarts are still chump change

Casting around, I found several options for thrifted clothes: online mega marketplaces like ThredUp and Poshmark, smaller clothing companies like MMLeFleur and Britt Sisseck, and charities like Goodwill and ReFresh that are tied to humanitarian causes.

First, the mega stores. When I came across ThredUp, I was delighted. I didn’t have to go into stores to try on clothes (I buy, not shop). Besides, there don’t seem to be thrift stores near where I live (why is that, anyway?). But the megamarts for thrifted fashion are still small compared to the fast fashion companies, the “regular” fashion companies, and the luxe brands.

ThredUp’s revenue in 2023 was USD 81 million, and Poshmark’s was USD 84 million (2021). ThredUp’s 2023 annual report says the thrifted industry in the US will be USD 70 billion by 2027, and globally expected to reach USD 350 billion and these sound like big numbers. But keep in mind that the overall garment industry is USD 1.7 to 2.5 trillion (2021 reports).

By contrast, fast fashion house Shein’s revenue alone was USD 32 billion (2023). Nike, the third largest publicly traded company brings in revenues of USD 51 billion (2023). Luxe brands bring in even more--like the Louis Vuitton conglomerate which is in the USD 95 billion range.

I came away with the uneasy sense that the bigger companies, even thrifted fashion ones, have the usual corporate issues—big discrepancy between executive salaries and the lower-level employees, and questions around who benefits from the corporate tax breaks (hint: not the rank-and-file), and so on. So I turned my attention to smaller retailers.

Smaller retailers, healthy attitude

There were all those professional clothes that I had stopped wearing because I was working from home. That’s where my clothes from M. M. LaFleur came in. Their website describes its commitment to sustainability goals, including its newly established Second Act shop that reduces waste, and through which I sold my jardigan. I shipped direct to the buyer, with a label generated and paid for by M. M. LaFleur.

Easy, and I was relieved to have found it a new home.

A friend said to look up Britt Sisseck, they advertise high quality clothes made in the EU. At $300 a shirt, they are expensive, so I ordered from their Save-a-Shirt section. While it was a disappointing unboxing (no note, no tissue, only the shirt in a plastic bag), I appreciate the no-waste sentiment. But a little joy would have been nice. Keeping this in mind, when I sold my MMLaFleur, I reused packaging, tissue, and even added a little note.

Britt Sisseck’s Waste Not Want Not statement says “We use every metre [sic] of fabric we produce. If it's not used for production, we will use it in another way (e.g. for prototyping or sampling). Leftover cuttings are put into fabric recycling machines, which cut the pieces into tiny fibres [sic]. These tiny fibres can then be re-spun into threads, ready to begin the whole cycle again. We do not destroy unsold garments. We sell every piece that we produce through our own sales channels or through selected partners.”

While what they do is admirable, small companies like MMLaFleur and Britt Sisseck are not going to move the needle on garment waste, and its environmental impacts. MMLaFleur is about USD 17 million (2023 sales). Britt Sisseck is likely much smaller and not publicly traded, and they wouldn’t disclose earnings to me (fair enough). In the face of the global garment industry, even larger planet-healthy companies like Patagonia pale.

Working cleanly together with a little help from AI

 So how can this giant, dirty, wasteful manufacturing industry transform into a healthy planet loving, people loving one?

First, moving to energy efficient and renewable energy systems will help decarbonize this industry and curb GHG emissions. Most of this will come in electricity use and waste disposal, and work is underway in these sectors globally.

Second, AI could be a piece of the solution moving us towards a circular and more socially just system. A double-edged sword, AI’s energy use, grid dependence, and technology waste issues are as complicated in the garment industry as with other manufacturing — and efforts need to be redoubled in these areas to provide a solid framework for people and the planet.

But, as AI becomes more sophisticated, garment production will become fully mechanized. That AI might actually help us see the end of sweatshops is good news because of worker rights violations, coercion, and disasters in factories like fire, flooding, and air toxicity. Unfortunately, the future disappearance of sweat shops is only the beginning of what needs to happen to make this a planet-loving industry.

AI might also bring garment manufacturing back to countries like the United States and save time and money from shipping. Even offshore, countries like Bangladesh are vying to buy garment manufacturing machines to speed up the process. However, we cannot take lightly that so many jobs could be lost, especially for those that need them the most, and this transition will need some careful choreography, and will be a long, painful transition.

Third, collective action can be powerful, as we’ve seen in the eradication of smallpox when the world came together to make it a thing of the past. Cooperation needs strong institutions “—from government agencies and judicial systems to trade unions—capable of advancing justice across borders" according to the Solidarity Center.

Global collective action includes UN efforts and agreements to address the environmental issues associated with garment manufacturing. The UN’s Alliance for Sustainable Fashion addresses one of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, namely “Responsible Consumption and Production.” It calls for “[t]ransforming the textile value chain into one that is sustainable, and circular will allow us to address these environmental and social impacts, while also supporting people, prosperity, and equity. However, no single group of actors can achieve this scale of sector transformation alone, but rather it requires all stakeholders to use their resources and efforts to work together towards a common goal.”

These efforts establish industry wide goals for net zero emissions, environmental pollution reduction, and investment in transitioning to a circular economy where waste is minimized.

All fine and dandy, but then comes the question of how to actually implement these lofty goals. A quick look at the Paris Agreement, in which countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (hint: emissions continue to rise), suggests a dim future.

Until such time when energy use is completely renewable and clean, AI frameworks are in place, a just workforce transition has taken place, and collective action gains sufficient momentum, thrifting would be a win-win for everyone—the consumer, the producer, the company, and the planet.

To Goodwill, To Goodwill, To Buy a Used Skirt

Now, to the last category of thrifted clothes--good old Goodwill. There doesn’t seem to be one near me in DC (that in itself says something), so I visited the one in Honolulu when I went back for work. I found a nice summer shirt for $8, Calvin Klein no less. If they’d asked me to pay a little more towards a donation, I’d have gladly done so right there and then.

Then I remembered this cool store from when we lived in St Louis. ReFresh is a clean, bright, beautiful resale shop that raises funds for children in foster care. ReFresh hosted a “red carpet” fashion birthday party for my daughter and six middle school friends. Party favors were gift certificates to the store, and birthday presents were donations of gently used clothes. The girls dressed mannequins, dressed themselves, and walked the red carpet. A pretty low-impact birthday. And we introduced them and their wealthy brand-conscious parents to a new concept—thrifting, back in 2012 before ThredUp was even born.

To offset what I bought through ThredUp, I decided to donate five brand-name pieces to ReFresh, rather than sell them to one of the megamarts. I get a tax write off, and it helps someone in need.

One missing element in all this is a clear imprimatur for the garment industry. I’d like to see a garment/footwear equivalent of the Marine Stewardship Council and the Forest Stewardship Council which set standards for marine and forest products. The apparel industry has many different certifications, but no one single stamp of approval for planet conscious consumers.

Until that happens, I’m searching for low impact fibers like regeneratively grown cotton which uses less water, recycled fibers, or those that contain reduced microplastics. Also high tech solutions to recycling fiber blends (like the work that scientists at the Aarhus University and other places are doing). For shoes, I’ll be favoring brands such as Alohas which produce on-demand shoes to minimize waste.

For the rest of my clothes, I’ll be thrifting, culling, and holding onto my garments longer. ThredUp has a fashion calculator that is easy to use and gave me an idea of the size of my fashion footprint (small, this year!). It also has interesting facts and figures, along with tips to reduce that footprint. I haven’t delved deep into how it was constructed, but it’s an engaging starting point for a fashion-impact newbie.

This is about leading an intentional life, actively examining an action and deciding whether it has a place in my life. By working through all the ins and outs of the garment industry, I realized: I eat healthy food, why wouldn’t I wear healthy clothes?

So, to make my New Year’s resolution endure through the years, I decided to tweak it a bit. I’ll be wearing healthy clothes going forward—and that means paying attention to the lifecycle of a garment and help it through all the reincarnations it can achieve.

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Lirio Hittle served as the first climate change coordinator for the State of Hawai'i. She is now

based in Washington, D.C., and helps governments and community organizations respond to

climate change. She misses the beautiful ocean and mountains of Hawaii but loves the majestic

native forests and raptor life of the east coast.

Images:

Two mannequins by Roman Bezzhanov

Many mannequins by Clem Onojeghuo

Corset X-Ray from the Public Domain Review

Mannequin in sunlight by Mak