Second-hand Clothing Industry Turning the Tide on Fast Fashion

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Article from BizCommunity

“We don’t have enough resources to keep feeding this monster” – the stark words of warning about the new clothing industry from Maria Chenoweth, chief executive of Traid, a UK charity working to stop clothes being thrown away.

Chenoweth says the average lifetime for a garment in Britain is just 2.2 years and McKinsey’s State of Fashion report concluded that more than half of fast-fashion items are thrown away in less than a year. This trend is exacerbated by, what’s described by a British MP as, “the Instagram look and chuck mentality”.

One estimate is that 11 million clothing items a week in the UK go to landfill (or 300,000 tonnes a year). The equivalent South African statistics are hard to track but the move towards disposable fashion here has been just as marked, especially with the relentless rise of cut-price chains like Mr Price and H&M. And a recent Gumtree SA survey showed 65% of respondents owning 10 or more items of clothing which they never used.

On several levels, excessive consumption of new clothing is environmentally damaging and, according to many experts, unsustainable. Stephanie Campbell of the UK Love Your Clothes campaign, believes “the single most important action we can all do is to prolong the life cycle, which starts by never putting clothes in the bin.”

Fast-growing segment

Increasing awareness of this issue has given rise to a growing eco-movement in favour of second-hand clothing. Fashion blogger Charlotte Yau reports that “from reselling, recycling, gifting, swapping and reusing, the second-hand industry is becoming one of the largest growing consumer segments”.

Online trading sites like Gumtree are booming in this category and, globally, there’s a new genre of specialist pre-owned designer clothing consignment sites like HEWI (Hardly Ever Wore It). Even the legendary Selfridges in London had a second-hand pop-up store last year. Top fashion designers are starting to buy in as well with Stella McCartney launching ‘The Future of Fashion is Circular’ campaign to encourage consumers to purchase sustainable clothing that retains value and then resell it to expand its lifespan, avoiding landfill or an incinerator.

Estelle Nagel of Gumtree SA says the market for second-hand clothing is significant in South Africa with more than 20,000 second-hand clothing items listed, and there’s a definite shift in attitude. “The status issue was big for so many people – they weren’t confident to admit to buying second-hand but now it seems smart, savvy and eco-friendly. Previously unthinkable second-hand niches like wedding dresses and matric dance outfits are growing all the time.

“The secondhand market makes even more sense in a tough economy. As Nagel points out: “you win both ways by making money on your own old clothes and saving money on the replacements”.

The Human Cost of Fast Fashion

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Article by Aaisha Dadi Patel, Bizcommunity

Lauren Dixon-Paver faced a dilemma a couple of weeks ago when she needed to get a new pair of pants: for over a year now, the 25-year-old graphic designer has made a concerted effort not to buy new clothing from fast-fashion retailers. Dixon-Paver, who also runs a YouTube channel which focuses on craft and sewing tutorials, has been a consistent critic of the fast-fashion industry for two reasons: the ways in which it oppresses workers in far-flung countries, and encourages mindless shopping. She got her first sewing machine when she was 12, and has been making much of her own clothing since.

The fast-fashion industry exploits people in far-flung, often Eastern, developing countries, using cheap labour to quickly mass-produce clothing that keeps up with trends.

These trends are quick-evolving, and as soon as something’s outdated, people simply don’t want to buy it anymore; Bloomberg reported in March last year that H&M had a record piled-up inventory of unsold garments worth more than $4 billion.

A report compiled by Oxfam Australia called ‘Made in Poverty: The true price of fashion’ highlights the human cost of fast fashion. The report, part of the ‘What She Makes’ campaign, surveyed 470 workers at factories in Bangladesh and Vietnam, and found that they live on “poverty wages,” with many earning the equivalent of just over R5 an hour. 100% of the women surveyed in Bangladesh, who are employed at factories which supply brands including H&M and Cotton On, are unable to make ends meet.

Jehan Ara Khonat, co-owner of modest fashion and lifestyle store My Online Souk, says analysing the social structure of trends is integral to understanding how fast-fashion operates. “As soon as the fast-fashion industry catches on to what’s trending, an elite group creates something else to differentiate themselves. Fast-fashion companies make it available for the masses, and the cycle continues.”

What She Makes

The What She Makes campaign is calling for big clothing brands to pay the women who make clothes that they sell a living wage. “The women who make our clothes do not make enough to live on – keeping them in poverty. Despite long hours away from their families, working full time plus many hours of overtime, big clothing brands do not pay garment workers enough money to cover the basics of life – food and decent shelter,” the campaign website reads.

According to the report, available on the website, one factory owner in Bangladesh reported the extensive measures a company had taken to keep the clothing they produced safe in case of a fire, but a lack of interest from the very same company in fire safety measures for the workspaces where the people who sew the clothes spend the better part of their day.

One of the workers that Oxfam spoke to, 20-year-old Fatima, lives in a two bedroom apartment with 10 other people, including her landlord, and sleeps on the floor. When Fatima gets paid late, she stresses about paying rent on time and getting money to her sick mother, who lives in a rural area in Bangladesh. As is sometimes the case with outsourced contracts, Fatima’s seniors don’t always pay her and her colleagues their full agreed-upon wage. “The owner doesn’t know about this, that the line chief keeps our money,” she says. If Fatima has low wages some months, she forgoes her budget for food, sending the money to her mother instead.

Another woman that Oxfam interviewed, 22-year-old Forida, earns the equivalent of R3.50 an hour. This is below the minimum wage in Bangladesh, because deductions have been illegally taken from her overtime wage for mistakes and not meeting unrealistic daily targets.“I feel embarrassed when I am scolded in front of so many people [when I make mistakes] and then I feel bad about myself because I’m not able to do the work properly. If I could do the work properly, then I wouldn’t be scolded so hard and this makes me cry.”

Forida and her family – her husband, mother-in-law, and toddler son – live in a hot and cramped compound with six other families, including her landlord’s. There is just one toilet and place to bathe for the whole compound, and two shared cooking areas. Her income usually runs out before the end of each month, leaving them without food. “If we were paid a little more money, then I could one day send my son to school,” she says. “I could provide food for the last week of the month. We could live happily, we could lead a better life.”

As part of the campaign, Oxfam have initiated a company tracker to monitor the progress that brands are making, with both Cotton On and H&M ranked as having taken action to be transparent and committed to change.

But for now, stories like Fatima’s and Forida’s still remain a reality. “People are working in awful conditions to make clothes for us, so we can buy fantastic bargains,” says Dixon-Paver.