Clothing destruction in the fashion industry

The fashion industry is considered one of the most wasteful industries in the world, responsible for up to 8% of global GHG emissions. Many clothing brands have faced scrutiny for destroying unsold items, but to fully understand why this may be necessary, it’s important to think about the broader picture.

What is the fashion waste problem?

The fashion industry revolves around two main seasons: spring/summer and autumn/winter. Fashion lines also frequently sell two additional inter-season collections – holiday collections (e.g. swimwear), and pre-autumn collections. This isn’t by chance. We, as consumers, demand variations in attire for different times of the year. We like to wrap up warm in the winter months, keep cool in the summer months, and if we are fortunate enough to get an occasional holiday, we also look for clothes to suit foreign climates. Fashion houses must constantly be thinking about their next line of releases in response to these demands. As the seasons change quickly, this fast-moving industry is impacted by large volumes of unsold or returned stock.

With entire product lines changing every few months, it’s no surprise that between 10% and 40% of clothing items made each year are unsold. This could be anywhere between 8 and 60 billion garments a year. A lot of this ends up being destroyed – either through secure destruction or incineration. Some is sent overseas, and only a tiny portion of fashion waste – at least, in the UK – is currently recycled domestically.

To understand why destruction can be essential in the fashion industry, we must look into three main areas:

• Why the fashion industry is important for individuals and the economy
• The counterfeiting industry and its impacts
• The destruction process, when it can be necessary, and how we keep this process as green as possible.

Why is fashion so important?

In modern society, we wear clothes primarily for comfort in different climates, to cover our modesty, and as a form of expression.

While clothes do not fossilise, anthropologists have studied lice and their evolution to investigate the history of clothing. It turns out, we’ve adorned ourselves with clothing for around 170,000 years. But that’s not all. Researchers have discovered coloured flax fibres from roughly 30,000 years ago. This suggests that for 30,000 years, we’ve been dyeing clothes for decorative and symbolic purposes. We’ve even been accessorising with beads made from animal bones, shells, and ivory. To put it simply, it is in the human condition to use clothes not only for functionality but symbolically.

Fast-forward to the modern day, and clothing is still used expressively. Many psychologists believe that people use clothing to define and communicate their social identities to others. From wearing your home team’s football shirt to wearing black at a funeral, our clothes can communicate our thoughts, feelings, and interests.

The fashion industry not only divulges our desires for commodities and expression, but it’s also hugely beneficial to our economy. The UK’s fashion and textile industry directly supports a £60bn+ contribution to the UK GDP, with 1.3 million jobs across the country and raising more than £23bn in tax revenues. It is the UK’s largest creative industry.

But what does this have to do with shredding?

The UK’s textile recycling market is nowhere near where it needs to be to recycle billions of unsold clothes, and many textiles aren’t recyclable. Without a way to securely recycle or dispose of unsold goods, clothing companies face a risk of reputational damage. This is more so the case for high-end fashion brands where exclusivity is a large part of the customer appeal. But this risk isn’t solely reputational. Without secure destruction, high-end brands risk their garments falling into the wrong hands. This can put them at risk of counterfeiting, which could impact profits, workforce numbers, and the huge contribution they make to our economy.  This brings us to our next point – the clothing counterfeiting industry and how it impacts everyone.

The counterfeiting industry – how does it affect me?

Counterfeiting is a colossal illegal industry, globally worth c.£353bn / $467bn. In the UK alone, the counterfeiting of apparel and accessories costs the economy around £9bn every single year. This translates to tens of thousands of job losses, according to the City of London police.

But counterfeiting isn’t just a problem that affects brands and jobs. Consumers are also vulnerable to deception, with the proliferation of fake products flooding online markets undetected. The poor quality of these fake goods, which consumers often pay full price for believing they are genuine, also results in further damage to brand reputations. This can cost brands their loyal customers.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Group, an international association whose members include fashion giants such as Adidas, Chanel, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Nike and Superdry, works to fight counterfeiting. But this illegal industry doesn’t just damage the retail world and its contribution to our economy; it also helps to fund other kinds of criminal activity. Europol, the EU’s central criminal intelligence agency, reports that counterfeiting often funds other types of organised crime, including human trafficking, money laundering, and modern slavery. By buying counterfeits, you also risk your health and safety, as these products are made without regard to EU safety standards.

Destroying unsold clothing and using secure recycling services are therefore some of the best preventative methods brands can take to avoid counterfeiting. If companies sold off last season’s stock cheaply, it becomes more accessible and could risk being copied. This could result in further criminal and economic impacts as outlined above. But why destroy the items instead of, say, donating them to those in need? This leads us to our final point: why destruction is necessary.

Why is secure destruction sometimes necessary for fashion waste?

One consistent criticism the fashion industry faces when destroying stock is that the clothes could be used to help others. Instead of destruction, why can’t fashion brands donate their clothes to those less fortunate than ourselves?

While this may seem like the most philanthropic answer to the issue of unsold stock, the effects of donating clothes to less economically developed countries may actually do more harm than good. Several nations, including Kenya, Tanzania, Indonesia and Rwanda, have taken steps to ban the import of second-hand clothes.

The reason? It’s damaging to the local industry. Lower-income nations’ textile companies simply cannot compete with the low cost of imported clothes from Western civilisation, and their local textile industries have collapsed. This can have significant impacts on smaller economies. To some, it poses an additional moral question. How can a country thrive and develop with dignity whilst wearing rejected or unwanted clothing items from other countries, often kept and transported in unsanitary conditions? These questions have been debated for many years by many nations, and growing numbers are now choosing to impose the ban.

If donating clothes is out of the question, what else can be done?

Many clothing companies at lower risk of counterfeiting sell their unsold stock to off-price retailers such as TK Maxx. Here, the general public can buy the items at a discount. This supply chain produces less waste. Plus, unsold garments can be used to help the fashion economy and create more jobs.

Many more are also beginning to use recyclable materials, and the fashion industry as a whole is becoming much more conscious of environmental impacts and ecologically sourced fabrics. This is good news for everyone.

However, there are still some cases where destruction is necessary. The safe and responsible destruction of these goods can benefit businesses and the economy, preserve jobs, and reduce crime.

Here at Shred Station Ltd, we have a zero-tolerance for landfill policy and recycle textiles wherever possible. Non-recyclable materials are shredded and incinerated under strict controls to generate electricity for the National Grid.

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