Capitalism produces waste – billions and billions of tons of waste every year – with nearly all of that unloaded from the Global North to the Global South.
No one knows exactly how many coats, jeans, T-shirts, and trainers are produced every year, which means no one knows how many garments remain unsold in warehouses, destined for landfill or destruction. Without this information, trying to reduce the fashion industry’s carbon footprint is a bit like trying to solve a puzzle in the dark.
The available statistics suggest that between 80 billion and 150 billion garments are made every year and that between 10% and 40% of these are not sold. So it could be 8 billion or 60 billion excess garments per year – an alarming disparity.
“Production volumes represent a really important opportunity to bring honesty back into the conversation,” says Liz Ricketts, the co-founder and executive director of the Or Foundation, an environmental justice charity based in Ghana. “It’s a data point that everyone has accessible to them. It’s just about companies being willing to share it.”
“The reason they don’t really like to talk about how much product they have is because it’s the dirty secret of the industry,” says Francois Souchet, a circular economy and sustainability strategist. “There’s likely to be a huge public backlash when people understand how much product is not sold.”
Overproduction is also symptomatic of an archaic manufacturing system that incentivises volume: the more T-shirts ordered, the cheaper the price for each garment. This is because the biggest costs of producing fabric and assembling garments are in the setup; the longer the assembly line runs, the more efficient it is. “On top of all that, brands are afraid of missing out on a sale, so they always order too much, rather than not enough,” says Souchet.
The exorbitant waste in the industry is a result of how disposable clothes are considered in wealthy countries. It is symbolic, too, of how well supply chains are hidden from and misunderstood by consumers.
But excess stock is not the only problem, says Ricketts: “We try to use the language of ‘oversupply’ more than ‘overproduction’, because we’re talking about the marketing mechanisms used to push oversupply on to consumers. Brands are manufacturing demand in the same way they manufacture too many clothes.” This demand is created through relentless marketing across social media, targeted digital adverts, email campaigns, and a seemingly never-ending cycle of discounts and promotions.
Of course, the other side of this coin is overconsumption. It’s difficult to say without knowing how much product goes unsold, but it’s clear that garments that are bought account for most of the industry’s carbon footprint. “If we say, conservatively, 60% to 70% of garments get sold, that’s where the bulk of the emissions are,” says Souchet.
@breadandcircuses In addition, the lifespan of any of these clothes continues to decrease, both with faster and faster fashion fads as well as less and less durable clothing that simply falls apart.
@breadandcircuses
It's not simply that it produces waste. It's product is waste. Waste is the biggest brand of capitalism. Without waste there can be no momentum to profit making. The more waste, the more product. So, capitalism depends on the destruction of the environment.
Further evidence of this issue can be seen by walking into any thrift store or spending half an hour going to garage sales in the summer. I would estimate that 80% of the floor space in any thrift store is packed with clothing. We already know they don't sell it all and there is a whole supply chain of dealing with the mountain (range) of clothing that the first world simply doesn't want any more.
Stuck by this: "This is the hard truth almost always avoided at industry summits and in corporate targets. According to the sustainability thinktank the Hot or Cool Institute, the fashion industry will have to at least halve its greenhouse gas emissions from 2018 levels by 2030 if it wants to meet the Paris agreement goal of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. While other business models such as rental, resale and repair are often cited, Hot or Cool says meeting 1.5C in the G20’s high-income countries – including the UK, the US, France and Australia – will require reducing consumption by 60%."
@breadandcircuses on the other hand, this overproduction is increasing employment (albeit exploitive employment) in the producing countries. Reducing production will put poor people out of work.
On a related aside, as a result of soil compaction, those wasted garments don't compost in landfills. They just sit there compacted with plastics and other trash, waiting for landscapers to put a park on top of it all.