No one knows exactly how many coats, jeans, T-shirts and sneakers are produced each year; This means that no one knows how many clothes are left in warehouses that are unsold and will be thrown away or destroyed. Trying to reduce the fashion industry’s carbon footprint without this information is like trying to solve a puzzle in the dark.
Current statistics show that between 80 and 150 billion garments are produced each year, and 10% to 40% of them remain unsold. So there may be a surplus of 8 billion or 60 billion garments per year; An alarming inequality.
“Production volumes represent a really important opportunity to bring integrity back into the conversation,” says Liz Ricketts, co-founder and chief executive of the Or Foundation, an environmental justice charity based in Ghana. “It’s a data point that everyone can access. “It’s just a matter of companies being willing to share it.”
Believing that transparency around production volumes is central to assessing and tackling the scope of fashion’s environmental problems, the Or Foundation launched its Speak Volumes campaign in November, calling on brands to reveal how many units they produce in 2022.
So far, 32 small and medium-sized businesses have participated. The biggest statement came from the British brand Lucy & Yak, which produced 760,951 pieces; The smallest belonged to the Scottish brand Mlambo, with only 100 units. This is a far cry from the billions of garments thought to be produced by fashion’s biggest players, with none of them participating.
“The reason they don’t like to talk about how much product they have is because it’s the industry’s dirty secret,” says circular economy and sustainability strategist Francois Souchet. “There is likely to be a huge public outcry once people realize how much of the product is unsold.”
At the Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana, where the Or Foundation works to support the community trading unwanted clothing from the global north, approximately 40% of each bale of textiles ends up as waste. This figure led Ricketts to ask brands to commit to a 40% reduction in new clothing production over five years; This can only be achieved by making production volumes visible. “It feels like bad business,” Ricketts says. “Why did you do so much extra stuff?”
There are several reasons why brands produce more than they sell: Manufacturers insist on minimum order quantities; an increasingly accelerating retail cycle supported by frequent new product deliveries; Not being able to read the market. While there are some new technologies to counter this problem, including artificial intelligence to predict consumer demand and made-to-order models, none of them show signs of widespread adoption.
Just as brands produce a lot of clothes, they also create demand.
Liz Ricketts, OR Foundation
Overproduction is also symptomatic of an archaic manufacturing system that encourages volume: The more T-shirts ordered, the cheaper the price of each garment. This is because the biggest costs of producing fabric and assembling garments are in the installation phase; The longer the assembly line runs, the more efficient it becomes. “On top of all this, brands are afraid of missing out on a sale, so they always order too much instead of ordering enough,” Souchet says.
The exorbitant waste in the industry is a result of how disposable clothing is treated in rich countries. This is also symbolic of how well supply chains are hidden from and misunderstood by consumers.
“There is so much human labor in our clothing, from cotton picking, spinning and weaving to garment workers and how often they don’t get to see their children because of the hours they work,” says founder Christina Dean. anti-waste charity Redress. “The fact that these items are thrown away so carelessly shows how incompatible we are with other people in this world.”
A recent survey by Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) found that 78% of brands have goals to reduce overproduction. But participants cited a lack of clarity around what overproduction means as a barrier to tackling it, according to Holly Syrett, GFA’s director of impact programs and sustainability.
“We define overproduction quite simply,” he says. “When a company purchases or produces more stock than it can sell, those shares are then sold at a discount, resold to other parties, or potentially destroyed. “The feedback we received was that our definition was not specific enough.”
But overstock isn’t the only problem, says Ricketts: “We try to use the language of ‘oversupply’ rather than ‘overproduction’ because we’re talking about marketing mechanisms used to push oversupply to consumers.” “Just as brands produce a lot of clothes, they also create demand.” This demand is created through relentless marketing on social media, targeted digital ads, email campaigns, and a seemingly never-ending cycle of discounts and promotions.
Of course, the other side of the coin is excessive consumption. It’s hard to say without knowing how many products are unsold, but it’s clear that like that Purchases make up most of the industry’s carbon footprint. “If we conservatively say that 60% to 70% of clothing is sold, that’s where most of the emissions occur,” Souchet says.
This is the harsh truth that industry summits and corporate goals almost always avoid. The fashion industry will have to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least half from 2018 levels by 2030 if it wants to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, according to sustainability think tank Hot or Cool Institute. levels. While other business models such as rental, resale and repair are frequently mentioned, Hot or Cool says reaching 1.5C in the high-income countries of the G20 (including the UK, US, France and Australia) will require reducing consumption by 60%.
At current trends, the sector’s emissions will double in the next 10 years. It is clear that the pending European legislation on extended producer responsibility schemes to curb production and consumption rates cannot come soon enough.
“Rapid and radical changes in production and regulation are critical,” says Lewis Akenji, managing director of Hot or Cool. “Expanding producer responsibility [EPR] “Moving to post-use is a promising avenue for fashion brands… but it should not be a burden-shifting mechanism.”
The EPR schemes discussed are a small fiscal tax of as little as €0.06 per product payable by the manufacturer, and textile-to-textile recycling, upcycling, downcycling, rental, resale and repair.
Ricketts and Souchet believe any tax would have to be much higher to lead to a meaningful reduction. Because overproduction makes economic sense, Souchet says the sum must be “significant” to change the industry. Ricketts says it’s critical that EPR legislation ensures the funds raised reach communities like those in Ghana that shoulder the burden of textile waste.
“How do we think we move to circularity by continuing to pump out this endless supply of products? “This is not possible,” he adds. “Policies need to take production volumes into account. No matter how much innovation or money brands pour into solutions [such as textile recycling]“If we don’t slow down, we won’t be successful.”