Fight to the last fibre: Thrift stores in action!

Thrifting can be traced back to the 19th century when the concept of barter and sale of worn clothes was given a brick and mortar existence. But cut to 2024 and the sale of second hand clothing is set to take 10% of global fashion sales. Global sales of pre-owned clothes increased to $197 billion - an 18% in 2023 - with projected sales estimated to reach $350 billion by 2028.

A number of factors can be attributed to this growth. Since thrifting is more economical than buying new clothes from retail stores, people have resorted to second-hand clothing amidst rising energy and food bills according to James Reinhart, CEO of ThredUp, an online thrift store. The pandemic certainly helped push audiences towards the environmentally and economically more sustainable fashion practice. ThredUp reported a 20% growth in its thrifting business since the Covid19 lockdown. It also reported that more than half of all shoppers bought something second hand in 2023. Heightened climate consciousness is also driving more and more people towards thrifting their items, with 65% of thrifting shoppers being Gen-Z and millennials.

Fashion industry a silky slope as it is

While this news comes as a major step up towards more sustainable shopping trends, we can't forget that the rate of damage still outweighs these good practices. State of Matter reports an approximate 11.3 million tons of textile waste ending up in landfills in the U.S on an annual basis. This accounts for around 85% of all textiles, an approximate 81.5 lbs (37 kgs) of textile waste per person, per year. The single-wear culture doesn't help the cause as the number of times a garment is worn has decreased by approximately 36% in the last 15 years.

All this production is the culprit behind anywhere between 4 and 8.6 percent of GHG emissions globally. The NRDC report believes that a carbon footprint of this scale is much higher than the aviation industry which is already a notoriously high emitting industry, or the footprint of Germany, France and the UK - combined! And these emissions are only projected to grow by 50% by 2030.

You'd think that resorting to more eco-friendly fabrics like cotton would be one solution to the landfill problem. But seeing that roughly 2,700 liters of water is required to make just one cotton tee, the future seems to be fading away faster than a peach fuzz tee.

As if the environmental impact wasn't enough, there's a dark social and cultural underbelly of the glamorous fashion world that puts a huge exclamation on its ethics and performance. Retail giants like Zara and H&M have been linked to the unethical and unacceptable cotton sourcing practices. NGO Earthsight uncovered in its investigation that Better Cotton, one of the leading certifiers of sustainable cotton, laxly certified these producers to source cotton by unjustified means including illegal deforestation, land grabbing and resorting to violence against the local communities.

The fast fashion trends also create dangerous and exploitative labor conditions in economically challenged countries. One such time proved fatal when over 1,100 people lost their lives due to the Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh - with the location being the place where clothes were being made for international brands ike Primark and Bonmarché, among others.. Most of these workers were garment workers and lost their lives as owners disregarded concerns over the building's safety and threatened workers with consequences over not working. Countries like Bangladesh are the largest locations of fast fashion brands producing garments at extremely low wages to the workers.

The world is threading the needle

With retail clothing sales in the US being highest in six years in 2023 at almost $27 billion, it can only take stringent regulations to combat the motivation for fast fashion. France's lower house of Parliament approved a bill that seeks penalties from ultra fast fashion products like those sold by Shein - with the aim of offsetting their environmental impact. The bill entails slowly increasing the penalties of close to $11 per individual piece of clothing by 2030 while also imposing bans on marketing these products.

Reinhart also pointed to how "impending legislation designed to limit throwaway fast fashion around the world was also part of the motivation for brands to do more."

Other initiatives like the UNFCCC Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action and the Fashion Pact initiated by the French President Emannuel Macron were signed by dozens of global fashion signatories. While there's still a long way to go, regulations by leaders around the world and across the fashion industry certainly make hopes for a more sustainable fashion world a dream worth having.

Until then, we can bring back the trend of sporting hand-me-downs among people around the world and make thrifting an everlasting style on humanity.