Fashion Consumption

How many items do you buy in a year? What factors do you consider when buying fashion apparels? For how long and how many times do you use an item?

Let’s look at some fashion consumption statistics:

• In 2016, 107 billion units of apparel and 14.5 billion pairs of shoes were purchased around the world. That is 13 pieces of clothing and 2 pairs of shoes per person. |Source: Market research provider, Euromonitor International via Common Objective|
• 62 million tons of apparel was consumed in 2017. By 2030 this is estimated to reach 102 million. That is a 63% increase in consumption. |Source: Global Fashion Agenda & Boston Consulting Group, Pulse of the Fashion Industry (2017)|
• We consume 400% more clothing than we did 20 years ago. |Source: Forbes 2014 via Fashion Revolution|
• Clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014 and the average consumer bought 60% more number of garments. |Source: Style that’s Sustainable: A new fast fashion formula (McKinsey&Company 2016)|. There was a shift towards fast fashion. High end brands went on from making 2 main collections per year to producing 5 or 6 collections while some high street fast fashion brands started introducing new styles weekly.
• The fashion industry is projected to use 35% more land for fibre production by 2030—an extra 115 million hectares that could be left for biodiversity or used to grow crops to feed an expanding population. |Source:Global Fashion Agenda & Boston Consulting Group, Pulse of the Fashion Industry (2017)|
• If the global population hits 9.6 billion in 2050, almost 3 planets could be required to give us the natural resources consumed to sustain our current lifestyle. (This includes natural resources required for food, energy, fashion and more.) |Source: United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals, Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns |

Fashion Waste

How many items do you discard in a year? What factors do you consider when discarding fashion apparels? Where do those items go once you are done using them?

Waste is one of the most challenging and ironic aspects of fashion. It really shows that an item that uplifts people and gives them that sense of looking and feeling better causes an ugly scenario of wastage through production, consumption and discarding cycle.

Let’s look at some fashion waste statistics:

• Fashion causes water wastage during the raw material and textile production. During manufacturing there are scraps of cloth discarded during the cutting process. 35% of all materials in the fashion supply chain ends up as waste before reaching the customer. |Source:Global Fashion Agenda & Boston Consulting Group, Pulse of the Fashion Industry (2017)|
• Microfibers released from synthetics such as polyester, elastane and acrylic make their way through waste water into oceans. They contribute to 35% of microplastics accumulated in marine habitats worldwide. |Source: Primary Microplastics in the Oceans: a Global Evaluation of Sources, Authors: Julien Boucher, Damien Friot|
• The rapidly growing buying and discarding habits contribute to 39 million tonnes of post-consumer textile waste (at a minimum) that is generated worldwide each year primarily in the form of garments. |Source:Global Fashion Agenda & Boston Consulting Group, Pulse of the Fashion Industry (2017)|
• Four fifths (80%) of discarded clothing go into the waste disposal stream, of which roughly 70% go to landfill and 30% are incinerated. |Source:Global Fashion Agenda & Boston Consulting Group, Pulse of the Fashion Industry (2017)|
• Of the one fifth that goes for recycling/sorting, roughly half is recycled and 40% is re-used as second-hand clothing. The remaining 10% is ultimately disposed. |Source:Global Fashion Agenda & Boston Consulting Group, Pulse of the Fashion Industry (2017)|
• A 10% increase in second hand sales can cut carbon emissions per tonne of clothing by 3%, water use by 4% and waste to landfill by 1%. |Source: Valuing Our Clothes: the cost of UK fashion|
• It has been widely reported that the influx of second hand clothing to developing countries is destroying local textile and tailoring economies |Source: BBC News, 2015 via Fashion Revolution|

I’ve tried to keep the information restricted to fashion consumption and waste only. Feel free to read all the cited sources for in-depth analysis on the subject. Please note that fashion consumption and waste is distributed unevenly around the world.

Click here to see some of my personal upcycling projects.