Key Insights
Essential data points from our research
The global fashion industry generates approximately 92 million tonnes of textile waste annually
Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned globally
By 2030, global textile waste is expected to surge to 148 million tonnes annually
The average American throws away approximately 81 pounds of clothing every year
Consumers buy 60% more clothing items today than they did 15 years ago
Clothing items are kept for half as long as they were 15 years ago
Textile waste in landfills releases methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than CO2
Synthetic fibers like polyester take between 20 and 200 years to decompose in a landfill
Textiles in landfills can leach toxic dyes and chemicals into groundwater
Less than 1% of materials used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing
Only 12% of the material used for clothing ends up being recycled in some form (mostly downcycled)
87% of the total fiber input used for clothing is eventually landfilled or incinerated
The global economy loses over $500 billion annually due to the underutilization and lack of recycling of clothes
Waste management costs for textiles in the UK alone are estimated at £82 million per year
Municipalities in the US spend over $3 billion annually to dispose of textile waste
Consumer Behavior & Discard Habits
- The average American throws away approximately 81 pounds of clothing every year
- Consumers buy 60% more clothing items today than they did 15 years ago
- Clothing items are kept for half as long as they were 15 years ago
- In the UK, the average lifetime of a garment is estimated to be just 2.2 years
- 33% of young women consider clothes "old" after wearing them just once or twice
- One in two people throw unwanted clothes directly in the trash rather than donating them
- Consumers discard clothing primarily due to damage or fit issues rather than the item being worn out
- 95% of discarded textiles could have been recycled or reused but were thrown away
- 40% of clothes in wardrobes across the UK are rarely or never worn
- 30% of clothes produced are never sold and are often discarded by consumers shortly after purchase
- The #OOTD (Outfit of the Day) trend encourages single-use wear, increasing discard rates
- Shoppers in the EU discard about 11kg of textiles per person per year
- 7 in 10 consumers admit to needing to change their consumption habits to reduce waste
- Men throw away worn-out clothes almost twice as often as women who tend to donate
- 20% of unsold stock is discarded by retailers directly without ever reaching a consumer
- A survey showed 54% of US consumers throw away clothes simply because they are bored with them
- Returns of online purchases often end up in landfills because restocking is too expensive
- On average, a piece of clothing is worn 7 times before being gotten rid of
- 69% of consumers are confused about where to properly dispose of textile waste
- The rise of ultra-fast fashion has shortened the trend cycle to less than 2 weeks, accelerating disposal
Interpretation
We're turning wardrobes into landfills: buying 60% more clothes than 15 years ago and keeping them half as long, so Americans now toss about 81 pounds of clothing per person each year and waste a 95% recycling opportunity thanks to ultra-fast fashion, single-use trends and a confusing, broken disposal system.
Economic Cost & Fast Fashion Specifics
- The global economy loses over $500 billion annually due to the underutilization and lack of recycling of clothes
- Waste management costs for textiles in the UK alone are estimated at £82 million per year
- Municipalities in the US spend over $3 billion annually to dispose of textile waste
- Brands destroying unsold inventory costs the industry millions in lost revenue and disposal fees
- Luxury brands burn over $100 million worth of goods annually to protect brand value
- The value of unused clothing in wardrobes in the UK is estimated at £30 billion
- Fast fashion companies operate on a model where 10% waste is built into the cost margin
- Tipping fees for landfills are rising, increasing the economic burden of textile disposal on cities
- Resale, which reduces landfilling, is expected to be bigger than fast fashion by 2029
- Handling second-hand clothing exports creates a low-value economic trap for receiving countries
- The "cost per wear" of clothing has plummeted, incentivizing the purchase of cheap, landfill-bound goods
- Shein adds up to 10,000 new items to its app daily, overwhelming disposal systems with cheap goods
- Cities miss out on millions in revenue by not recovering textiles for resale markets
- The cost of environmental damage from the fashion industry is projected to be €148 billion by 2030
- Sorting facilities often operate at a financial loss when dealing with low-quality fast fashion waste
- Taxpayers bear the brunt of the cost for landfill management of private textile waste
- Unsold inventory worth $4.3 billion was destroyed by a single Swedish retailer over 5 years
- The logistics of reverse supply chains for recycling cost more than the value of the recovered materials
- Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes are estimated to save municipalities millions in tipping fees
- The secondary market for vintage clothing is worth $36 billion, diverting value from landfills
Interpretation
With the global economy bleeding over $500 billion a year, luxury brands burning more than $100 million in stock, cities and taxpayers spending billions on disposal while untapped wardrobe value like the UK's £30 billion rots unused, the fashion system is effectively taxing thrift and throwing away value, and only a serious shift to resale, proper recycling infrastructure, and producer responsibility will stop us all from paying for its self-inflicted ruin.
Environmental Impact & Pollution
- Textile waste in landfills releases methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than CO2
- Synthetic fibers like polyester take between 20 and 200 years to decompose in a landfill
- Textiles in landfills can leach toxic dyes and chemicals into groundwater
- Decomposition of natural fibers in anaerobic landfill conditions generates significant methane emissions
- Burning landfill waste contributes to atmospheric releases of microplastics
- The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions, much of which is embodied in landfilled goods
- Rainwater runoff from textile landfills contains heavy metals like lead and antimony
- The Atacama Desert has a landfill of unsold clothes visible from space due to its immense size
- Discarding clothes instead of recycling them wastes the water used in production (2,700 liters for one cotton shirt)
- Landfilled textiles contribute to global warming potential due to lack of circularity
- As synthetic clothing degrades in landfills, it releases microfibers into the soil structure
- 35% of all microplastics in the ocean are traced back to synthetic textiles, often from degradation and washing before landfilling
- Incinerating landfilled textiles releases CO2 and can release dioxins if not properly filtered
- The footprint of UK clothing in landfills is 3.1 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent annually
- Fashion waste dumped in the Global South alters local ecosystems by choking riverbeds with fabric
- Landfill sites with high textile content are prone to subsurface fires which are hard to extinguish
- The decomposition of wool in landfills generates ammonia, which contributes to acidification
- Nylon fabric in landfills can withstand decomposition for 30 to 40 years, occupying space
- Chemical finishes including formaldehyde on landfilled clothes prevent composting and leach into soil
- The carbon footprint of a garment is increased by 150% if it ends up in a landfill rather than being recycled
Interpretation
Throwing away clothes doesn't just free your closet, it turns garments into long-lived pollutant capsules, with polyester lingering 20 to 200 years, anaerobic decay releasing methane 28 times more potent than CO2, synthetic fabrics shedding microfibers that help make up 35 percent of ocean microplastics, toxic dyes and heavy metals leaching into groundwater, 2,700 liters of wasted water per cotton shirt, and a boost to the fashion sector's roughly 10 percent share of global emissions so that a garment's carbon footprint can rise by 150 percent when landfilled instead of recycled; the scale is so vast unsold clothing piles in the Atacama are visible from space and fashion waste fuels subsurface fires, chokes rivers in the Global South, and risks toxic dioxin releases if incinerated.
Global Magnitude & Volume
- The global fashion industry generates approximately 92 million tonnes of textile waste annually
- Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned globally
- By 2030, global textile waste is expected to surge to 148 million tonnes annually
- In the United States, 17 million tons of textile waste were generated in 2018 alone
- Textiles comprise approximately 7.7% of municipal solid waste landfilled in the United States
- The main sources of textile waste in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream are discarded clothing and other textiles like sheets and towels
- Between 2000 and 2015, clothing production doubled, significantly increasing the volume of potential landfill material
- In Europe, roughly 5.8 million tonnes of textiles are discarded every year
- Australia is the second-highest consumer of textiles per person in the world, sending 800,000 tonnes to landfill annually
- Canada generates approximately 500 million kilograms of textile waste per year
- In Hong Kong, approximately 343 tonnes of textile waste are dumped into landfills every day
- 85% of all textiles thrown away in the US are either dumped into landfills or burned
- The volume of textile waste sent to landfills in the UK is approximately 350,000 tonnes annually
- Landfills in Accra, Ghana, receive about 15 million used garments every week from Western countries
- China generates 26 million tonnes of textile waste annually
- New York City alone disposes of 200 million pounds of clothing annually
- Textile waste has increased by 811% since 1960 in the United States
- Approximately 5.8% of all landfill space is occupied by textile waste
- In France, 600,000 tonnes of clothing, linen, and shoes are put on the market annually, eventually becoming waste
- 60% of all clothes manufactured worldwide end up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being made
Interpretation
Every second a garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned, 60% of new clothes vanish into incinerators or dumps within a year, and global textile waste is set to leap from 92 to 148 million tonnes by 2030, which makes it painfully clear that our addiction to fast fashion is literally burying the planet.
Recycling & Circularity Gap
- Less than 1% of materials used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing
- Only 12% of the material used for clothing ends up being recycled in some form (mostly downcycled)
- 87% of the total fiber input used for clothing is eventually landfilled or incinerated
- In the U.S., the recycling rate for all textiles was only 14.7% in 2018
- Lack of technology to separate blended fibers (like cotton-polyester) forces most blends to landfill
- Current recycling infrastructure can only process a fraction of the 100 billion garments produced annually
- Most "recycled" clothing is downcycled into insulation or cleaning rags, not new clothes
- Mechanical recycling shortens fiber length, limiting the quality of the recycled output
- Only 1% of collected used clothing is recycled back significantly into same-quality applications
- Manual sorting of textile waste is labor-intensive and inaccurate, hindering recycling efficiency
- Buttons and zippers make garments difficult to recycle and often condemn them to landfills
- Elastane (Spandex) mixed into jeans makes them virtually unrecyclable with current technology
- The recycling rate for footwear is near 0% due to the complexity of mixed materials and glues
- Automated sorting technologies for textiles are only just emerging and not yet at global scale
- Chemical recycling is energy-intensive and not yet commercially viable for most landfill waste
- Contamination of textile waste bins with other trash reduces the volume of recyclable material
- Traceability issues prevent recyclers from knowing the chemical composition of waste textiles
- The global market for recycled textiles is projected to reach incredibly low targets compared to production growth
- Closed-loop recycling systems are practically non-existent in the fast fashion sector
- Many donation bins export "recyclable" clothes to developing nations where they end up in landfills anyway
Interpretation
Fast fashion churns out 100 billion garments a year and then pretends recycling will save the day, but blended fibers, stubborn trims and elastane, poor sorting, limited technology and markets, and exported "recyclables" mean almost none are remade into new clothes and most are downcycled, landfilled, or burned.
References
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