Somewhere along the way, we stopped careing about the quality of our clothes to the move to believing that more is better, especially now that they arrive on our doorstep with 2 day shipping. Enter the term “Fast Fashion”. In the past, retailer use to launch mnew styles about four times a year to match the seasonal changes. Today, it’s now almost monthly. Add to that the constant production of new styles,our consumer culture in impulse consumption of quantity over quality has fueled this “Fast Fashion” craze.
When we do a closet audit for our image clients, we use four piles for clothes; keep, repurpose/alter, donate or eliminate. Even though many Americans donate clothes, textiles still make up a shocking amount of the US waste stream. The EPA reports that Americans generate 16 million tons of textile waste a year, equaling just over six percent of total municipal waste On average, 700,000 tons of used clothing gets exported overseas and 2.5 million tons of clothing are recycled. But over three million tons are incinerated, and a staggering 10 million tons get sent to landfills.
