Key Insights
Essential data points from our research
Global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014
The fashion industry produces more than 100 billion garments per year
The average number of clothing collections has risen from two per year in 2000 to five in 2011 with some brands releasing up to 24
The average consumer buys 60% more clothing items now than they did in the year 2000
Clothing utilization has decreased by 36% globally since the early 2000s
In the UK the average garment is worn only 7 times before being discarded
The equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned every second
92 million tonnes of textile waste is created annually globally
Less than 1% of materials used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing
The fashion industry accounts for about 8-10% of global carbon emissions
Fashion consumes more energy than the aviation and shipping industries combined
It takes about 2700 liters of water to make just one cotton t-shirt
93% of brands surveyed in the Fashion Checker aren't paying garment workers a living wage
The global secondhand apparel market is expected to grow 127% by 2026
Approximately 80% of garment workers worldwide are women usually aged 18-35
Consumer Behavior & Usage
- The average consumer buys 60% more clothing items now than they did in the year 2000
- Clothing utilization has decreased by 36% globally since the early 2000s
- In the UK the average garment is worn only 7 times before being discarded
- Consumers in the United States purchase approximately 68 garments per person per year
- Nearly 1 in 10 shoppers admit to buying clothes solely to take a photo for social media before returning them
- An estimated 50% of the clothing in people's wardrobes has not been worn in the last year
- Gen Z consumers in the US reportedly spend more time shopping for clothes online than any other demographic
- 33% of women consider clothes "old" after wearing them fewer than three times
- Approximately 20% of online clothing purchases are returned often because consumers buy multiple sizes
- 88% of consumers say they want brands to help them be more environmentally friendly and ethical but buying habits lag behind sentiment
- Impulse buying accounts for a significant portion of fast fashion sales with 40% of purchases being unplanned
- The average American throws away 81 pounds of clothing every year
- One in six young people say they don't feel they can wear an outfit again once it has been seen on social media
- 25% of consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products but price remains the primary driver for the majority
- Online shopping events like Black Friday generate a 600% increase in sales volume leading to massive overconsumption
- The average life of a piece of clothing is 2.2 years in the UK
- 41% of 18-25 year olds feel constant pressure to wear different clothes when they go out
- Renting clothes could reduce the carbon footprint of usage by very little if transportation is high but extends garment life utilization
- Consumers discard clothing primarily due to fit issues (55%) or quality issues (10%)
- 64% of consumers admit to buying shoes they never wear
Interpretation
We buy about 60% more clothes than we did in 2000 yet wear them far less, treating outfits as disposable props for likes and returns, which leaves half our wardrobes untouched, generates roughly 81 pounds of discarded clothing per American each year, and exposes a stubborn gap between consumers' professed desire for sustainability and their price and impulse driven habits.
Environmental Impact
- The fashion industry accounts for about 8-10% of global carbon emissions
- Fashion consumes more energy than the aviation and shipping industries combined
- It takes about 2700 liters of water to make just one cotton t-shirt
- The fashion industry is the second-largest consumer of water worldwide
- Textile dyeing serves as the second largest polluter of clean water globally
- Washing synthetic clothes releases 500000 tons of microfibers into the ocean every year
- Microplastics from textiles have been found in human blood
- About 20% of global wastewater comes from textile dyeing and finishing
- Producing a single pair of jeans requires approximately 7500 liters of water
- Cotton farming is responsible for 24% of insecticides and 11% of pesticides used globally despite covering only 2.4% of land
- The carbon footprint of a polyester shirt is double that of a cotton shirt (5.5 kg CO2e vs 2.1 kg CO2e)
- Fashion production releases 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year
- 1.9 million tonnes of microplastic fibres have entered the ocean from synthetic textiles between 1950 and 2016
- The viscose industry dumps toxic chemicals like carbon disulfide into waterways causing severe local health crises
- If the fashion industry continues on its current path it will use up 26% of the global carbon budget by 2050
- 70 million barrels of oil are used each year to make polyester fibers in our clothes
- Leather tanning utilizes chromium which causes respiratory problems and is a known carcinogen
- 43 million tons of chemicals are used in textile production every year
- Emissions from textile manufacturing alone are projected to increase by 60% by 2030
- Air transport of clothing creates significantly higher emissions yet air freight in fashion is increasing for speed
Interpretation
With every bargain buy the industry stitches together a climate and pollution time bomb: fashion already produces eight to ten percent of global carbon, uses more energy than aviation and shipping, drains thousands of liters of water per garment while poisoning waterways and people with dyes, pesticides and tanning chemicals, and pelts the oceans and our bodies with microplastics, risking consuming twenty-six percent of the carbon budget by 2050 if we keep shopping this way.
Production & Manufacturing Trends
- Global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014
- The fashion industry produces more than 100 billion garments per year
- The average number of clothing collections has risen from two per year in 2000 to five in 2011 with some brands releasing up to 24
- 69% of all clothing is made from synthetic fibers like polyester which are derived from fossil fuels
- Global fiber production increased to a record 124 million tonnes in 2023
- Polyester production volumes have increased from 5.2 million tonnes in 1980 to 60.5 million tonnes in 2021
- Fast fashion brands usually design manufacturing and sell clothing products in less than two weeks
- Global footwear production reached 24.3 billion pairs in 2019
- It is estimated that 30% of clothes produced every season are never sold
- The global apparel market is projected to grow from 1.5 trillion USD in 2020 to 2.25 trillion USD by 2025
- Ultra-fast fashion retailer Shein adds significantly more styles daily than typical fast fashion brands sometimes up to 6000 new items a day
- China remains the largest exporter of textiles and clothing in the world holding over 30% of the market share
- The production of viscose fiber has more than doubled since the early 2000s
- Global consumption of apparel and footwear includes an estimated 62 million tonnes of product annually
- Cotton cultivation covers about 2.5% of the world's arable land
- The leather goods market is expected to reach 624 billion USD originally by 2025 partially driven by fast fashion accessories
- Around 150 billion garments are produced annually worldwide to meet demand
- Manufacturers burn or shred millions of dollars worth of unsold stock annually to maintain brand exclusivity
- Over 90% of cotton continues to be genetically modified often for yield maximization
- Packaging waste from e-commerce fashion orders including production boxes amounts to millions of tons of plastic and cardboard annually
Interpretation
Churning out roughly 150 billion garments and 24 billion shoes a year, with polyester and other fibers derived from fossil fuels dominating the mix, ultra-fast fashion that drops thousands of new items daily has turned clothing into a disposable, profit-driven machine that floods the planet with plastic and unsold stock often burned to protect brands while consuming cropland, water and attention far faster than ecosystems or people can cope, effectively turning wardrobes into landfills before you can say "new drop".
Socio-Economic Factors
- 93% of brands surveyed in the Fashion Checker aren't paying garment workers a living wage
- The global secondhand apparel market is expected to grow 127% by 2026
- Approximately 80% of garment workers worldwide are women usually aged 18-35
- The fashion industry loses over 500 billion USD annually due to the lack of recycling and clothes that are thrown away before end of life
- Resale is expected to grow 3 times faster than the primary global apparel market between 2022 and 2027
- The average garment worker in Bangladesh earns roughly 95 USD per month which is below the living wage
- Modern slavery impacts the fashion supply chain with the GSI estimating 49.6 million people in modern slavery some in garment work
- US secondhand market value is projected to reach 70 billion USD by 2027
- Returns cost retailers in the US roughly 816 billion USD in lost sales in 2022 a portion of which is apparel
- Fast fashion giant Zara's parent company Inditex posted a net profit of 4.1 billion Euros in 2022
- The cost of labor accounts for only 1-3% of the total retail price of a clothing item
- Over 160 million children are engaged in child labor globally with many in the cotton and textile supply chains
- Only 15% of brands publish their supplier lists hindering transparency on labor conditions
- 62% of Gen Z and Millennials say they look for an item secondhand before buying it new
- The repair sector has declined as the cost of repair often exceeds the cost of buying a new fast fashion item
- Circular business models like rental and resale could be worth 700 billion USD by 2030
- A survey found that 38% of consumers have switched from their favorite brand to another because it stood for positive environmental or social practices
- The Global North dumps the economic burden of waste management on the Global South through second-hand exports
- 60% of sustainability claims by fashion giants in the UK were found to be misleading (Greenwashing)
- The global apparel manufacturing market size was valued at 893 billion USD in 2021
Interpretation
While fashion giants pocket billions selling cheap clothes, the real bill is footed by underpaid young women, child labor and modern slavery in tangled supply chains, dumped waste and misleading green claims sent to poorer countries, and a booming secondhand and circular market racing to stitch back an industry that has long been ripped apart.
Waste & Disposal
- The equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned every second
- 92 million tonnes of textile waste is created annually globally
- Less than 1% of materials used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing
- 85% of all textiles worldwide end up in landfills each year
- In the US alone 11.3 million tons of textile waste ended up in landfills in 2018
- About 40% of used clothes exported to Akkrah Ghana become waste almost immediately due to low quality
- The Atacama Desert in Chile is home to a landfill of unsold fast fashion visible from space containing an estimated 39000 tons of clothes
- Textile waste is expected to increase by 60% annually by 2030
- Polyester clothes take between 20 and 200 years to decompose in a landfill
- Incineration of clothes releases plastic microfibers into the atmosphere making it a polluting disposal method
- France bans the destruction of unsold non-food inventory including clothing as of 2022
- Australian charities spend 13 million AUD annually sending unusable donated clothing to landfill
- Only 12% of the material used for clothing globally ends up being recycled in some form mostly into insulation or mattress stuffing (downcycling)
- Textiles make up 7.7% of municipal solid waste in US landfills
- The EU exports 1.7 million tonnes of used textiles annually mostly to Africa and Asia
- 59000 tonnes of used clothes arrive at the port of Iquique Chile every year of which a large portion is dumped
- Nylon fishing nets and synthetic clothing waste account for substantial plastic debris in oceans
- New York City residents throw out 200000 tons of clothing and textiles annually
- The recycling rate for collected clothing is often limited by blended fabrics (e.g. cotton-poly blends) which are hard to separate
- Canada generates approximately 500 million kilograms of textile waste per year
Interpretation
We are treating wardrobes like disposable receipts and the planet like an overflowing closet: every second a garbage truck of textiles is burned or buried, less than one percent of clothing material becomes new garments, vast volumes of low quality exports and unsold fast fashion rot from Ghana to the Atacama while polyester and microfibers persist for decades, and unless we curb production and consumption this tidal wave of waste, set to grow by sixty percent by 2030, will keep choking soils and seas.
References
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