How Shopping Resale Supports Sustainable Fashion
Earth Day is April 22nd. And in honor of Earth Day, we wanted to share how we support sustainability here at HIPS and how you can too! Selling your used clothes keeps them out of landfills and gives someone else the opportunity to use and enjoy them. Shopping used clothes reduces your carbon, water, and waste footprint. Buying and selling resale is essentially a form of recycling, and it's one small way that you can help support sustainable fashion.
Our friends at BoutiqueConsultants.com created this Sustainable Fashion Fact Sheet for us to help honor Earth Day and teach others about clothing waste and sustainable solutions. More in the full post...
Shopping resale is one simple way to support sustainable fashion. When you buy used jeans, you're cutting down on the water usage and greenhouse gas production that would otherwise go into producing a brand new pair. We looked at our sales numbers for jeans this past year, and we bought and sold close to 500 pairs during that time. That's a savings of 22,000 pounds of greenhouse gasses and 1,254,817 gallons of water. And that's just jeans. And that's just here at HIPS. When you consider the number of resale stores across the country and the thousands of pounds of clothing they buy and sell, that adds up to real significant savings.
Americans are becoming more conscientious about the environment and atmosphere and their role in protecting it. 30% of Millennials are likely to shop resale. And a third of Millennials say they're more likely to buy from companies that value sustainability. It's no wonder then that the apparel resale sector is estimated to grow at a rate of 13% between 2016-2021. And it's currently growing at a rate 20 times faster than retail. Resale is trendy right now, but it's sustainable always.
Nearly half of Americans trash perfectly reusable textiles, hence the 13 tons that pile up in landfills each year. Consider how you might personally chip away at that textile waste. Sell your gently-used items instead of pitching them. Donate and recycle what you can't use or sell. And shop resale to help keep others' clothes out of landfills.
Interested in learning more about sustainable fashion and the resale market? Check out the resources below:
https://www.crowdrise.com/mceco
https://www.thredup.com/resale
http://www.greenstrategy.se/sustainable-fashion/
Thanks for reading, and Happy Earth Day!